Friday, March 27, 2009
Cartoon wars
A) anti-Semitic
B) anti-Zionist
C) darkly funny criticism of Israeli policy towards Gaza
D) all of the above
E) some of the above (specify: A&B, B&C, A&C)
F) none of the above
My first impression of the work is that any cartoon that depicts Israel as having the characteristics associated with Nazi Germany (goose stepping jack boots, right arm raised at an angle suggesting a particular type of salute) is in incredibly bad taste, given the events of the 1930s and 1940s. If you are a cartoonist, and you really despise Israeli policy, can't you pick another objectionable totalitarian regime to use for comparative and mocking purposes? Or is the desired ironic implication just too irresistible?
For now, I'll leave it at that, awaiting comments, except to add that I do not know of any papers or online sites publishing this cartoon whose employees have been threatened with death, which distinguishes this incident from other cartoon wars this decade.
18 Comments:
By 
, at
Fri Mar 27, 10:00:00 PM:
By , at
Fri Mar 27, 10:19:00 PM:
A+B. Also outrageously biased against the truth, another liberal slander against a nation whose future is very much in doubt. The new left is as anti-Israel as any group has ever been. Sadly, there are many other jews who agree with this thinking.
If Israel is to survive, and I hope it does, they are going to have get focused quick. The two state solution and Hillary Clinton will finish them off. There is no PALESTINE, nor any palestinians. These wretched people don't deserve their own country carved out what little Israel has left. If the philistines hadn't left Jordan some years ago, Israel wouldn't be dealing with this mess now. This is simply Arab vs. Jew and right now the arabs have a lot of support mostly from the altruistic, ignorant, anti-semites.
By 
Anthony, at
Fri Mar 27, 10:20:00 PM:
I think it's anti-Semitic. Olipahnt has to know the derivation of the imagery he used, which would not have looked out of place in Der Sturmer.
By , at
Fri Mar 27, 10:53:00 PM:
The Israelis should kill off the Palestinians and be done with it.
By , at
Fri Mar 27, 10:57:00 PM:
meta-4, I think there is a bit of a philosophical gray area when it comes to Palestine and Israel. I obviously agree that whether it is anti-Semitic or anti-Zionist or not, it is in extremely bad taste to include Nazi imagery in such a cartoon.
I think that there is plenty of blame to go around on both sides. Both sides have willingly engaged in breaking the rules of war more times that anyone can count. The cycle of violence will never cease until both sides admit wrongdoing.
By , at
Sat Mar 28, 04:20:00 AM:
I actually saw it as suggesting that the Palestinians were somewhat pawns in a game being played by bad people, 'rolling the Jewish star' ahead of them to make the Israelis the scapegoat.
I don't know enough about the rules broken or not, but someone funds and fuels lobbing bombs into Israel, and someone suggests hiding behind innocents when the retaliation happens. I do NOT believe that sane people wilfully injure the innocent, particularly women, old people, sick people, children. And I don't think the Israelis are insane. Nor do I believe that most Palestinians are down with the Hatfield-McCoy imagery we get here about what's behind this.
The sword made me wonder ... a reference to Iran, Russia?
By , at
Sat Mar 28, 10:04:00 AM:
TO JT: Interesting. I hear this alot: "everyone has to share the blame"..... "everyone must bear the guilt", etc., etc. The trouble with this sophistry is that it relieves the observer of the demand for critical, historical analysis. Is this merely a question of, since Israel exists, they must be guilty? Please be serious. The enmity between the Arabs and Isrealites goes back thousands of years. The fact that Israel is centrally located between ALL of it's sworn enemies is not likely to be peaceful.
Israel will continue to exist only if it finds the will to do so. Right now, I'm not sure they can. Already the vilification/destruction of Netanyahu government has begun in the U.S. Media. Isreal is in a very precarious situation.
By , at
Sat Mar 28, 10:06:00 AM:
By , at
Sat Mar 28, 10:42:00 AM:
Here a reading suggestion: "Return to Sodom and Gomorrah, by Charles Pellegrino, Avon Books. Don't be mislead by the title. The author is a paleo-botanist, and this book is a vast look at many subjects, including the origin of the "palestinians".
I believe you will find it most interesting. Enjoy.
By Dawnfire82, at
Sat Mar 28, 10:48:00 AM:
'Admit wrongdoing?' Touchy-feely-hippie crap. One of the two sides is absolutely dedicated to the utter destruction of the other, (and brags about it) and the other refuses to be destroyed. The cycle of violence will only end when one side wins.
If you want a deeper understanding of the whole clusterfuck, I recommend the (1131 page) book A History of Israel: From the Rise of Zionism to Our Time.
By Elise, at
Sat Mar 28, 11:16:00 AM:
TigerHawk Teen, the problem with your point of view is that it presupposes two sides who both agree the other has the right to exist. That's not the case in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. A significant leadership element among the Palestinians has as its stated goal the destruction of the country of Israel and the death of her people. That is black and white and until that Palestinian goal is off the table none of the shades of gray matter - because if you're Israel you can't allow them to matter.
If Israel agreed to withdraw to its 1947 borders, let the Palestinians and their Arab neighbors set up whatever type of country they wanted, and never set so much as a foot or a bullet outside Israeli borders, do you believe the Palestinians would stop trying to kill Israelis? I don't.
On the other hand, if Palestinians from this moment forward stopped suicide bombing and rocket attacking Israel, I do believe Israel would leave the Palestinians alone. It would take a while until Israel was convinced the situation was permanent but once it became clear that it was, I believe Israel would be delighted to be able to stop doing things militarily that no decent democracy can be happy about however necessary they may be.
As for the Oliphant cartoon, if his intention is to say that Israel is Nazi-like, it's trite. If that's not his intention, then all I can say is "I don't get it."
By Roy Lofquist, at
Sat Mar 28, 11:22:00 AM:
I have been following Oliphant's stuff for over forty years. Every once in a while, say every couple of years, he has a good one. The rest show him to be a vile, vicious no talent hack.
By , at
Sat Mar 28, 11:54:00 AM:
Dawnfire and Elise:
I see what you mean. And taking into account the last 20 or 30 years or so of the conflict, it's clear that the Palestinians haven't done themselves any favors, though noticeably the main issue seems to be Gaza rather than the West Bank. It's clear that Hamas, which definitely is full of murdering scumbags, is more concerned with killing Israelis than helping Palestinians. It's very much like an old-style Italian Mob. They do your family some favor when you really need it, and they take your first-born son and money for their pay.
Really, if they should be angry at anyone, it's the British for triple-crossing them. But they're angry at the Israelis because the Israelis are living in their old homes. Many older Palestinians still have the keys to their old houses as a reminder.
Still, in every war that has ever happened, it is not inaccurate to say that "both sides have willingly engaged in breaking the rules of war more times that anyone can count." It is true that neither side is totally blameless. However, it is obvious that basically the Israelis want to be left alone, and the Palestinians will not do that,and as long as Saudi Arabia and Iran can distract their population with this conflict, they're not going to let it end, either.
By Roy Lofquist, at
Sat Mar 28, 01:56:00 PM:
Teenager says:
"But they're angry at the Israelis because the Israelis are living in their old homes".
Couldn't be more wrong. Theirs is a tribal culture with a religion of pure hate toward infidels. And when they can't find infidels they kill each other.
Folks, this war with Islam has been going on for 1,400 years. The United States Navy was formed specifically to fight the "Musselmen". They are anatomically human beings but their heads are from a different planet. Don't make the mistake of thinking that their motivations resemble those of the civilized world.
By Elise, at
Sat Mar 28, 03:46:00 PM:
TH Teen, I wish more people understood that in every war ever both sides break the rules - it would help everyone understand that a few bad acts are an inevitable consequence of war rather than being a sign of an unjust war.
Looking back at who did what to whom for the last 60, 100, 1000 years is an interesting exercise. But for so long as the Palestinians focus on what they think should have happened, for just that long will they make their lives now worse than need be. Imagine what Palestinians’ lives would be like today if for the past 60 years their leaders had spent their time, money, and lifeblood making the best of what is rather than raging about what isn’t.
When thinking about the Arab-Israeli conflict, religion matters. First, anti-Semitism is real. Second, 6 million Jews died in Europe in the 1930s and 40s. These days there is a tendency for people to go, “Yeah, yeah, whatever” when asked to consider this fact important but it is crucial. There is nothing the world can ever offer Israelis to persuade them to give up their country or even to put it at significant risk. What safe haven could we ever believably promise them? Whose promise of undying support could they ever trust? By the same token, there is also probably not much that the Israelis will not do to protect their country. And there is no reason to think Israel will be particularly susceptible to international opprobrium: being a pariah beats being exterminated hands down. This means a resolution of the Middle East conflict is not possible if the world honors the anger of the Palestinians yet refuses to credit the understandably adamantine resolve of the Israelis.
By Gary Rosen, at
Sat Mar 28, 04:30:00 PM:
"But they're angry at the Israelis because the Israelis are living in their old homes. Many older Palestinians still have the keys to their old houses as a reminder."
You are just regurgitating the popular meme. It is open to question just how many of the "Palestinian" refugees can actually trace their ancestry in the area back further than Jews who migrated there in the late 1800's/early 1900's or even later.
Israel is not perfect but overwhemingly the fault for the perpetuation of this conflict belongs to the Arabs. This goes back at least as far as the aftermath of the 1948 war when the Arabs refused to establish a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza that they still controlled at that time. Of course they may have had good reason to keep out the Palestinians' Nazi mufti but that's another story ...
By Dawnfire82, at
Sat Mar 28, 06:19:00 PM:
"But they're angry at the Israelis because the Israelis are living in their old homes."
Between 600k and 700k Arabs fled Palestine in 1948, from the total 1.35 million.
1.5 million now live in Gaza.
2.2 million now live in the West Bank.
2 million live in Jordan as Jordanian citizens.
409k live in Lebanon.
That's about 6.1 million 'Palestinians,' about 4 times the number who lived there in 1948 and about 9 times the number who fled in the war 3 generations ago.
The number of Jews in Palestine in 1948 was about 650k. Note that it is entirely likely that there were fewer Jews in the whole territory than the number of Palestinians who left in that year, presumably almost all of whom already had a home.
So, naturally, I'd like to hear more about all these stolen homes. Especially since the Arabs in question abandoned their homes to aid and abet the extermination of their former neighbors, to boot. Now they're just pissed off that their their attempt at ethnic cleansing backfired.
In the 61 years since, the Israelis have turned their poor, indefensible, agrarian state into a First World country. The Palestinian Arabs, on the other hand, have no political structure or economy to speak of that doesn't involve the consistent and terroristic use of violence, despite being the single most receivingest group of charitable and foreign aids in all of human history. What other little economic structure does exist is wholly dependent on Israel and/or Jordan.
It's the Israelis have built their country, and the Palestinians who are now trying to steal it.
Ironic, no?
So sure, the Palestinians are angry. Angry with the rage of a petulant child who tried the steal the lunch money of a smaller child, and lost his own instead. But just because they're mad doesn't mean that their anger is justified.
By , at
Sun Mar 29, 12:30:00 PM:
Not to sound too bitter, and certainly not condescending, but what are these "rules of war" that you all speak of? If you mean the "Geneva Conventions", those are usually flouted whenever it is convenient. The Germans of WWII generally treated the POW's of the US and Britain in a somewhat hospitable way. Russian POW's were sometimes starved in plain sight of the same Allied POW's. Don't get me started on the Japanese (Bataan Death March?), and they are without a doubt a civilized country. I'm not being sarcastic here, I know a lot of Japanese, and they are a civilized people. Ask the Chinese and Koreans.
And their cities were firebombed by the USAAF, then at the end, two of them were nuked. Rules? We don't need no steenkin' rules, we intend to win.
Where is Ghalid Shalit? Dead in an unmarked grave somewhere, after probably being tortured.
These are the agreements between allegedly civilized countries, which usually go out the window when expediency and the necessities of war demand it.
Winners usually write the histories. Not so much a rule as a guideline, I guess.
Where are the Carthaginians now? Who speaks for the dead?
David
