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An Israeli cartoonist was sacked on Thursday for an image rendering Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Likud lawmakers as pig characters from George Orwell's "Animal Farm".

Avi Katz, a freelance cartoonist for the Jerusalem Report, a news magazine published by the Jerusalem Post daily, was dismissed after the cartoon ran in the magazine's edition this week. 

The cartoon was meant to criticise the Israeli government's passage of a controversial law that critics compared to apartheid, caricaturing a photo of right-wing lawmakers taking a selfie with Netanyahu after the bill's passage. 

Critics say the legislation, which defines Israel as a Jewish state and downgrades the Arabic language's official status, marginalises the country's Arab minority.

It's captioned with Orwell's line: "All animals are equal but some are more equal than others."

Hundreds of Israelis criticised the cartoon on social media, particularly the use of swine imagery. Some accused Katz of anti-Semitism.

However, Israel's Union of Journalists criticised the firing, saying that "[c]ausing harm to a journalist because he expressed an opinion, let alone when it was approved by his editors, is a dangerous step that must not be accepted. We call on Katz's editors to retract this unacceptable step".

The editor of the Jerusalem Post was reportedly unhappy with the cartoon, according to Haaretz. 

Nissim Hezkiyahu, the founder and director of the Animix Festival, an Israeli animation festival, also criticised the move. "We now get the firing of a cartoonist from a newspaper in response to a legitimate and brave cartoon that the editor did not like (but which was published in his newspaper)," he said.

Agencies contributed to this report. 

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