Spokesperson for party accuses 'media and politicians' of mounting 'further attacks towards Zack in the wake of a violent attack on his community'

The Green Party said it has submitted a complaint to The Times editor Tony Gallagher over the caricature, which it said displays “tropes so clearly associated with antisemitic depictions of Jewish people”.

It said in a statement that it was “astonishing” given the “rising climate of antisemitism in the UK” that a “national newspaper has chosen to publish a cartoon of the only Jewish political leader in the country using tropes so clearly associated with antisemitic depictions of Jewish people”.

The cartoon shows Polanski with a hooked nose, kicking police officers who are arresting Essa Suleiman, a 45-year-old Somali-born British national accused of stabbing two Jewish men in Golders Green, a neighbourhood of northwest London with a large Jewish population. Suleiman is also accused of attempting to murder Ishmail Hussein, a Muslim man he had known for about 20 years, earlier that day.