Minister Gilad Erdan drew a link on Sunday between last week's antisemitic cartoon in the New York Times and Saturday's murder in a California synagogue. Writing on Facebook, he said, "Anti-Semitism also appears in caricatures, but never ends only in the newspaper but as Jewish blood in a synagogue or elsewhere identified as 'Jewish', including of course in the State of Israel, the state of the Jewish people. This is always the true motive for terror and murder against our people. Not 'territories' and not 'concessions' - hatred of Jews."
Responding to the newspaper's apology, Erdan wrote, "This is not 'faulty judgment'. It is racism and refined anti-Semitism that is pervasive in your newspaper! You would not accept such a low condemnation of racism and incitement of such intensity against any other minority, and this teaches us everything about the problem (and you as a newspaper) - that is how hatred and anti-Semitism are not eradicated from the root."