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Halloween 2023

The scenes across the world of people screaming for Jewish blood are simply unbelievable.

Credit: Yaakov (DryBones) Kirschen.
Credit: Yaakov (DryBones) Kirschen.
Political cartoonist Yaakov Kirschen grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y., made aliyah to Israel in 1971 and began drawing “Dry Bones” in January 1973. The internationally syndicated, award-winning cartoons ran in The Jerusalem Post for 50 years. They were reprinted in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, TIME and other mainstream media publications. The “Dry Bones” story has been covered by CBS, CNN and Forbes, among other outlets. He was a member of America’s National Cartoonists Society and the Israeli Cartoonists Society. Kirschen died at 87 on April 14, 2025.

While working on today’s cartoon I had the TV on in the background.

I caught a news video of a mob of Russians smashing past police in Dagestan to take over the runway where a plane from Tel Aviv had landed. They were screaming for Jewish blood while terrified passengers remained on the plane.

I went back to sketching and trying to come up with a cartoon, and caught another news video.

It was a mob of students in America screaming for Jewish blood while terrified Jewish students watched from their windows.

The scenes were simply unbelievable.

I looked at the calendar. Oct. 31. It’s Halloween.

“Jewish New Yorkers deserve to mourn in peace, free from hatred and intimidation,” stated New York Gov. Kathy Hochul. “There is no excuse for this. None.”
Gideon Sa’ar urged unity, and warned that violence in Judea and Samaria is damaging ties with Israel’s closest friends.
“Mamdani could not even give us one day to mourn without defaming the Jewish people and giving cover to our enemies,” Inna Vernikov, a Jewish member of the New York City Council, told JNS. “We will not let Mamdani and his radical pals rewrite Oct. 7.”
“The charging by the FBI of Haverford College associate professor Guangtian Ha for harassment and intimidation of a Jewish Israeli professor closes the dotted line between verbal acts of harassment and actionable violence which, when Jews are the recipients, is far too often ignored,” Lori Lowenthal Marcus of the Deborah Project told JNS.