In my time at The Red & Black, the newspaper has been called many labels: anti-Greek, anti-SGA, racist, liberal, conservative.

As of last week, there’s a new one to add to the list: anti-Semitic.

In Thursday’s edition, we ran a cartoon depicting two IDF soldiers standing at a West Bank wall. Created to look like the Berlin Wall, the sign read, “Checkpoint Chaim, You are leaving the West Bank sector. No Palestinians beyond this point” and one soldier says to the other “And to think we got all this great stuff on clearance!”

We received more than 30 e-mails and several phone calls in response. I was horrified.

Most couldn’t understand how we could run a cartoon so obviously degrading to Jewish people. Some were downright vitriolic and threatening. This apology is not for those latter few.

This column is for the University community and those who were offended by the cartoon. This is for everyone who deserves an explanation – even my close Jewish friends, who know that I and the staff alike are not anti-Semitic in any way.

When I read the cartoon Wednesday night while proofreading the page, I only read it in the context of the Berlin Wall. The awful stereotype brought to my attention by the letters didn’t occur to me at all. That’s just not a part of my mindset.

I studied abroad in Berlin in May for a photojournalism class and saw the remnants of the wall firsthand – what it looked like and felt like and could only image how people must have felt who lived there. I saw the cartoon as a reference to last week’s 20th anniversary of the fall of the wall as tied to a current event.

I didn’t realize until late Thursday morning what exactly it came across saying.

I talked to Bill Richards, our cartoonist, and he realized the same. He told me the balloon should have read something that more explicitly tied it to the Berlin Wall.

I also realized another unsettling thought – in the minds of our readers, The Red & Black was being aligned with other seemingly anti-Israel publications across the nation.

Before I traveled to Berlin in May, I went to Washington, D.C. to attend the annual conference for AIPAC – America’s pro-Israel lobby group. One session shook me the most: media portrayal of Israel and Jewish people.

The presenters showed example after example of what they saw as unfair media portrayal of events in the West Bank. They bashed mass media in general and lumped them into a group of biased, hating reporters.

I came away from the session determined. I don’t want to be a part of that. I want to be educated about the situation. I want to stand against it where I can.

And that’s what makes me the most upset about the cartoon and the responses – I didn’t see questionable content when it was right in front of me, even with my editor’s eyes. We would never knowingly print or condone a hateful stereotype. Our cartoonist wasn’t directly saying that the purpose of the two walls is the same. But it didn’t come across that way.

I want to say now what Friday’s editor’s note didn’t clarify at all: We offer our sincerest apologies.

- Carolyn Crist is the editor-in-chief of The Red & Black.