"Blood libel" cartoon in Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet. Photo: Dagbladet.

Norwegian newspaper, Dagbladet, has sparked outrage after publishing a cartoon “blood libel” Tuesday.

Norway’s third largest newspaper, published the cartoon, in which a modestly dressed woman can be seen holding a blood soaked book and telling law enforcement officers: “Mistreating? No this is tradition, an important part of our belief”!

A bearded man wearing a hat and black coat on the left holding another book, has stabbed a child in the head with a Devil’s pitchfork while another hand is cutting off the toes of the child with a wire cutter, apparently mocking the practice of circumcision.

The officers who are present, appear to be permitting the ritual to continue. The first officer responds: “Belief? Oh yes, then it is all right,” while the second apologizes for the interruption.

Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a leading Jewish Human Rights NGO,  who is currently attending the Global Forum on Antisemitism in Jerusalem, denounced the “blood libel cartoon” as “so virulently anti-Semitic it would make Hitler and Himmler weep tears of joy.”

“We call upon Norway’s leaders to denounce this incitement to hate and especially urge the Ombudsman for Children’s Rights to denounce this outrageous denigration of a core Jewish rite dating back to the biblical times of Abraham,” Cooper added.

According to the JTA, “Dagbladet cartoon artist Tomas Drefvelin said he did not mean to draw Jews in his caricature, which he meant ‘not as criticism of either a specific religion or a nation [but] as a general criticism of religions.'”

“I gave the people in the picture hats, and the man beard, because this gives them a more religious character … Jew-hatred is reprehensible. I would never draw to create hatred of a people, or against individuals,” he added.

The Algemeiner was unable to reach the paper by phone for immediate comment.