Since then, News International executives and journalists have been caught in an avalanche of criminal investigations and resignations. Some of Mr. Murdoch’s most senior former executives are set to stand trial later this year on a range of charges.

Mr. Scarfe’s work has appeared in The Sunday Times since 1967. In a message on his Web site, Mr. Scarfe said: “First of all I am not, and never have been, anti-Semitic. The Sunday Times has given me the freedom of speech over the last 46 years to criticize world leaders for what I see as their wrongdoings. This drawing was a criticism of Netanyahu, and not of the Jewish people: there was no slight whatsoever intended against them. I was, however, stupidly completely unaware that it would be printed on Holocaust Day, and I apologize for the very unfortunate timing.”

The Board of Deputies of British Jews, the main representative body for British Jews, said it had complained to the Press Complaints Commission, the body by which British newspapers regulate themselves.

Like Mr. Pollard, the board said the cartoon “is shockingly reminiscent of the blood libel imagery more usually found in parts of the virulently anti-Semitic Arab press.”

Initially, The Sunday Times defended its decision to publish the cartoon, British news reports said, saying it was “aimed squarely at Mr. Netanyahu and his policies, not at Israel, let alone at Jewish people. It appeared yesterday because Mr. Netanyahu won the Israeli election last week.”

But Martin Ivens, the acting editor of The Sunday Times, said it would not countenance insults to the memory of Holocaust victims or blood libel, a term denoting medieval superstitions falsely accusing Jews of using the blood of children in rituals.

“The paper has long written strongly in defense of Israel and its security concerns, as have I as a columnist,” he said in a statement published by the Press Association news agency. “We are, however, reminded of the sensitivities in this area by the reaction to the cartoon, and I will, of course, bear them very carefully in mind in future.”

Mr. Ivens planned to meet British Jewish leaders on Tuesday to apologize in person for the cartoon.