Amazing how the Gaza slaughter continues to reverberate--as the deaths of children should. Pat Oliphant did a stunning cartoon of a jackbooted headless Israeli pushing a star of David over the little people of Gaza. "I paused when I saw this cartoon," writes a Muslim friend. "It does have goose-stepping and imagery (sharp teeth and a Star of David) that seems to be reminiscent of an earlier era." I don't have a problem; these were atrocities, and artists/commenters need to be able to respond in honest ways to it.
The parallel between the Nazi goal of Aryan purity in Germany is not very different in principle from a Jewish state that will use various tactics to main its demographic makeup. The major difference, however, is the use of genocide. And that is why I do not resort to this comparison.
The fascination here is that:
--It does appear that artists/commenters are finally getting past the inhibition about being labelled antisemitic. Ezra Klein says the Oliphant cartoon isn't antisemitic, Foxman says it is. The average person/writer/speaker ends up saying, Who the hell knows? (Especially when Jeffrey Goldberg wants as little conversation on this subject as possible for the usual reason: that It's all just the Protocols of the Elders of Zion; not a helpful guide.)
--Yesterday the Financial Times did a big piece on the only thing anyone is talking about, Israel's loss of international legitimacy as war crimes allegations gain traction. The Guardian's documentation of atrocities--"Cut to Pieces" is this headline--has had a viral effect. Gaza is undoing the old order. It's catastrophic for the Israel lobby. Dan Levy understood this while it was happening.
--I sincerely wish the Times would begin to cover this story. American leaders need to understand the crisis. Consider: Benny Morris was given the Times Op-Ed page at the start of the Gaza slaughter to "explain" why Israel's loss of international opinion, its sense that the walls are closing in, fed the assault. But was that an explanation or a disturbed rationale?
Oh my. It is scary when a country with nukes goes off the rails of the world community. American media must begin covering this story, because American leadership is essential to finding a way out of this mess; and Obama can do nothing till the conventional wisdom (sole democracy in the Middle East) shifts.
Another, typical product of an unimaginative mind; superimposing Nazi images on Israel is an example of extrapolating from common cocktail party chatter and Muslim anti Jewish propaganda in order to make some money.
Who is Oliphant? What is important about the cartoons he draws? He has no stake in the outcome of the conflict. He's just another foreign tourist, exloiting the life and death struggles of the Jewish people for his own enrichment.
"… because American leadership is essential to finding a way out of this mess"
good comment – and the reason I place very little hope in Israeli divestment / boycott efforts – unless perhaps the heat generated by those efforts contributes positively to the growing criticism here in the US – which is the only place change can start. Cut the lifeline, I say. But what is to be done with the carcass? It will still stink up the neighbourhood for quite some time.
The German Nazi-Zionist equation is completely accurate and necessary for correct historiography and rational foreign policy analysis: Zionizing Muslims via Interfaith Dialogue.
Zionists are not Nazis. They are fascists/racists/sadists. The ideologies are similar but Nazi is trademarked. Holocaust has a capital H.
Typical of people like Sylvia to blame all the woes of Jewry on Muslims and antisemites.
Can we give the Germans a rest? The Israelis atrocities can stand on their own. The Israelis are the here and now. The continuous conjuring up of the Nazis only serves to lessen the Israeli/Jewish responsibility by providing a "we're not the only ones, it was done to us first" salve. It's time to take responsibility without the crutch.
The average person/writer/speaker ends up saying, Who the hell knows?
no, the average person ends up saying "Who the hell cares?"
the art work by Oliphant shows the Truth and if the Truth hurts / shows Reality, so be it.
When thugs separate men and boys in a town or village and herd them into concentration camps or dungeons to be tortured or killed, when people are singled out by ethnicity or nationality for brutalization, when a defenseless society is characterized as bestial and unworthy of compassion and subjected to round-the-clock violence and dehumanization, then comparisons with Nazism are not only apt but unavoidable.
The Israelis take their cue from their former oppressors. They FEIGN indignance over the comparison with Nazis but the truth is, they are quite proud of being Nazis. Doubtless, they loathe the anti-Semitism of the German Nazis but everything else, they admire and emulate.
Why not compare the the Israelis with the Bolsheviks/Jews, rykat? (Look up the Cheka, the Russians didn't call it the Jewish revolution for nothing). Answer, because there wouldn't be the cover of the holocaust, plain and simple. Cover blown rykart. Good cop – bad cop, it's been done before.
The soldier is not a Nazi; there is no swastika or other markings on the uniform to indicate that he is a Nazi. He is just a headless (brainless) soldier marching forward, probably "just following orders" to run over a terrified woman and her baby. He's a scary monster and a accurate depiction of the Israeli military.
For most of the 20th century Jewish communism and Zionism (ethnic Ashkenazi Nazism were competing ideological movements among Jews.
Freeman, American Naiveté, Israel Lobby summarizes some of my understanding of Jewish ideological movements/conspiracies at the beginning of the 20th century.
If Ewa Smagacz can comment, I would be much appreciative.
This cartoon is so critical of Israel I'm surprised it was printed anywhere in the United States. Tomorrow and the next couple of days look for dozens of retractions/apologies by editors and publishers saying they are sorry for the pain the cartoon has caused, they never would have published it if it had come across their desk beforehand, that in the past they could always trust Oliphant so they didn't review his work, that they are sure Oliphant is not anti-Semitic but in this case he had a terrible lapse of judgment. The apologies and mea culpas will go on for days.
Still I wonder what Oliphant was thinking. He's going to get the Walt and Mearsheimer treatment. Dershowitz will try to get him fired and/or de-syndicated. Columbia University will reconsider it's awarding him the Pulitzer Prize. There will be calls to investigate him for hate crimes. It will not blow over. This will be a fight to the death. And Oliphant and his career with take some big hits. I haven't looked yet but I bet his Wikipedia entry has already been rewritten to be far more critical.
Oliphant Israel-Gaza cartoon called 'hideously anti-Semitic'
Jeremy Gantz
Published: Wednesday March 25, 2009
The latest cartoon by the most widely syndicated political cartoonist in the world has raised the ire of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which is dedicated to fighting anti-Semitism.
The ADL's director called the syndicated cartoon, published Wednesday and reprinted below, "hideously anti-Semitic."
"Pat Oliphant's outlandish and offensive use of the Star of David in combination with Nazi-like imagery is hideously anti-Semitic," Abraham Foxman said in a statement released Wednesday. "It employs Nazi imagery by portraying Israel as a jack-booted, goose-stepping headless apparition. The implication is of an Israeli policy without a head or a heart."
As of late Wednesday, Oliphant had not responded publicly to the ADL's criticism of the cartoon.
Israel in late December launched a three-week offensive in Gaza which left over 1,300 Palestinians dead and countless of homes destroyed. The offensive was a retaliation for Palestine rocket attacks on Israeli territory. Rocket attacks from Gaza and Israeli military responses have occurred sporadically since the end of the offensive.
On Monday, a United Nations expert called called for a probe to assess if the Israeli forces could differentiate between civilian and military targets in Gaza. A U.S. State Department spokesman called that official's views "biased."
The cartoon by the Pulitzer-Prize winning Australian native was published by the Washington Post, Slate, and Yahoo! News, among other publications and websites.
Oliphant, who has published 20 books collecting his drawings, is no stranger to controversy, having once said that political correctness "drives me crazy." His cartoons upset the Asian American Journalists Association in 2001 and American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee in 2005.
But while Oliphant's work has made him enemies, it has also won him accolades: He has won the National Cartoonist Society Editorial Cartoon Award, along with a Pulitzer.
Oliphant's cartoon comes barely one month after a New York Post cartoon depicting a dead chimp triggered protests. Protesters believed the chimp represented President Barack Obama and demanded the newspaper be shut down. Post Publisher Rupert Murdoch later apologized for the cartoon
Laurie – I commonly compare the activities of Israel to a whole stable of historical events. Anywhere prejudice works in large ways, there are comparisons to be made, especially with the Brits of the Empire. But the aftermath of the Austrian-Prussian Empire is fertile ground, because of the voluminous documentation available about WWII. Besides, the history is recent and resonates with people still alive who have at least a vivid memory of hearing about it, if fewer and fewer are alive who remember the experience.
Interesting reaction regarding what could be episodes of explosive anger, Laurie. Games? Good possibility to keep in mind.
It is important, also -as noted- to keep in mind the tendency of States to take out the men of dissident groups as a tactic for decimating a population, i.e. 1900's Turkish actions toward the Armenian population. (Which I also consider a possible concern regarding Afghanistan.)
Right you are, Ana. That's a good explanation of the question: Why headless? I was thinking perhaps because the parliamentary process still is in flux? But symbols allow more than one explanation.
Duscany and Citizen – Oliphant's cartoon didn't appear in the Wednesday McClatchy print edition for California's Central Valley. It may on Sunday. He is considered blasphemous by a large majority of the McCLatchy news-reading public, according to the Letters; he also offends the left and far-left with regularity. It will be interesting to see the response of papers running the cartoon.
I sincerely wish the Times would begin to cover this story. American leaders need to understand the crisis.It is scary to think, that with all the resources they must have at their fingertips, that the American leaders do not understand it. It is scarier still to think that they do, and do nothing.
"…the walls closing in…"
What a powerful symbol Israel has created in erecting the Separation Barrier.
Masterful dialogue between Goldberg and Ari Roth. Roth seems to be one of the every-day variety of great men, the people who are your friend &/or mine, and brilliant. Goldberg's going to have to work harder to rise above clever. (We do all have our prejudices, some we battle, some we enjoy.)
It is scary to have a nuclear nation so belligerent. Thank you for noticing, makes it a bit less so.
Sylvia, Oliphant is widely syndicated, enjoyed by millions throughout the nation.
fultronix – My turn to say: not a carcass. People. Many of whom support BDS and equal rights for Palestinians.
… common cocktail party chatter and Muslim anti Jewish propaganda… Posted by: Sylvia Navon | March 26, 2009 at 02:13 PM
This implausible combination actually reflects populist-style inverted snobbery, a very common affectation of the vulgar Right.
Thank you Margaret. I understand and appreciate your reasoning. The reason I shy away from Nazi comparison is that it reinforces the Jewish sense of victimization and entitlement neither of which are a healthy states of mind. The Jews (and I'm using broad strokes here) must see themselves the way they are and not the way they imagine themselves to be (as all peoples should). I owe the Jews honesty and that is what I try to give. I do not owe them sympathy.
Hamas pulled a night of the "long knives" on the P.A. in Gaza, shot their fellow Palestinians in cold blood during the recent Gaza war, ruthlessly suppresses all dissent., uses its own women and children as shields in war and drops rockets on civilians with Guernica-like insouciance. Who are the real Nazis and fascists in this struggle?
@Peter Brier:
This garbage is without doubt the worst and stupidest assertion I've come across in a long time. True, Mohammed Dahlan and Ernst Rôhm has some common qualities, but giving them both the role as innocent victims can only come from a twisted mind.
I am not a big fan of Hamas, but they did win the election,and represents the only legal authority on the Gaza strip. Dahlan and his thugs had to be subdued to restore
law and order. Which they did, according to international NGO's reporting from Gaza .
From Vanity Fair
Laurie – One of the most meaningful moments for me in questioning what was going on in Israel/Palestine was when I came across a 1939 diary which included a recitation of prejudicial comments made by Germans about Poles which were almost identical to what I had just read in Haaretz comments. I later read almost identical words regarding the Irish in a British newspaper editorial printed during the Great Potato Famine of the mid-1800's. I encountered them again in reading about the Boer War. One also finds the same attitudes reading Roman and Greek history, the history of both Catholic and Protestant persecution and about the native North American Indians. So using such examples expands the group of victims considerably and in doing so, IMHO, offers an opportunity to understand victimization in a different frame of reference.
Even knowing about the history of prejudice, comparing the attitudes of Germans during the Nazi regime to those of the pro-Israeli readership had great impact, probably because there is widespread agreement that the Nazi were culpable of crimes against humanity.