Author Rafael Medoff stated that his book, "Cartoonists Against the Holocaust," was canceled after he refused to include criticisms of Israel and the United States in its introduction. Medoff, a scholar of the Holocaust and founding director of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, alleged that editor Craig Yoe insisted on adding passages that he believed contained falsehoods.
According to Medoff and the Jewish civil rights group StandWithUs, Yoe began demanding that Medoff denounce Israel after the Hamas invasion on October 7, 2023. Medoff reported that Yoe sent an email on September 1, 2025, outlining a "note" to be added to the book. This note reportedly criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for whom warrants for alleged war crimes have been issued by the world's top war crimes court, and accused the Trump administration of attempting to create "concentration camp-style prisons" for migrants.
Medoff objected to these claims, calling them "factually inaccurate" and warning that they would politicize the book. He stated in response to Yoe, "There are no concentration camps in America, and it’s not a Nazi country. …Misusing the term ‘concentration camps’ diminishes the suffering that was experienced by the Jewish victims of the real concentration camps in the 1930s-1940s." Medoff also asserted that accusing Israel of "genocide" and "crimes against humanity" was a falsehood and described the demand as "antisemitic bullying."
Prior to this controversy, Dark Horse had published two of Medoff's previous books, "Whistleblowers" and "Cartoonists Against Racism," without issue. Yoe, a former creative director for the Muppets and a longtime cartoonist, worked as an editor with Dark Horse on Medoff's book but has since ended his association with the publishing house.
Philip Simon, legal counsel for Dark Horse, confirmed that the publishing company canceled the book. However, Simon attributed the decision to Yoe's failure to meet the publication schedule as the project's packager. Simon stated in an email to Carly Gammill of StandWithUs on June 3, 2026, that Dark Horse "stepped away from it and decided not to publish it last year" due to "financial needs and some scheduling issues." Neither Dark Horse nor Yoe have commented on Medoff's allegations.
Carly Gammill of StandWithUs commented on the situation, stating, "When a comic book publisher pressures a Holocaust scholar to denounce the Jewish state before his own book on the Holocaust can see print, the irony is hard to miss."
Medoff's account places this cancellation within a context of what StandWithUs describes as "punishing Jewish artists and public figures" following the October 7 Hamas invasion. Other examples cited include comic book creator Miriam Libicki, who was initially removed from the Vancouver Comic Arts Festival in 2024 before being reinstated after public outcry, and filmmaker Nadav Lapid, who reportedly faced removal from the FID Marseille film festival.
The canceled book, "Cartoonists Against the Holocaust," was intended to feature 150 editorial cartoons. Nine of these cartoons were previously published in The Post during the 1940s, illustrating contemporary American awareness of the Holocaust as it unfolded.