Iranian Reformist newspaper Arman Daily has been criticized for running a cartoon depicting the two sides in the current war in Gaza as playing with innocent people’s lives, an accusation the publication reportedly denied. In its July 26 edition, Arman’s cartoon on the back page brought attention to the civilian lives lost in Gaza since the war began in the first week of July. The war has killed over 1,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians, and over 40 Israelis, mostly soldiers.

The cartoon depicts two sides, one wearing blue and white, the other red, playing ping pong. But instead of a ping pong ball, they are lobbing a bomb with a lit fuse back and forth. Instead of a dividing net, there is a women and two children lying in terror in the middle of the table. The woman is wearing a keffiyeh as a head scarf to represent that they are a Palestinian family.

Tasnim News Agency was the first conservative outlet to bring attention to this cartoon, in an article titled, “Arman newspaper’s strange insult to the Palestinian resistance front.” Such accusations, some believe, sometimes come as warning signs before newspapers are shut down.

The Tasnim article read, “With the first interpretation, the person opposite the individual with the shirt depicting the Zionist usurper (in blue and white) could be described as a symbol of Palestinian resistance (in a red shirt), specifically Hamas. However, with another look, one could take away that the person opposite the Zionist is Iran. Because the shirt the enemy of the Zionist is wearing in this cartoon could suggest that it is Iran’s national team.” For any publication to suggest that Iran and Israel are playing with innocent Palestinian lives is a serious accusation in Iran.