Leading progressive magazine gives Palestinian solidarity the Swastika stamp

One of these days I am going to do a post on Howard Jacobson’s award-winning and very superficial novel, The Finkler Question, drawing attention to the book’s climactic passage, in which a Jewish anti-Zionist assaults another Jew for being Jewish. Aha! Anti-Zionism = anti-Semitism. But the passage is pure fiction. I have never witnessed any such assault, or heard of any such assault. I dare Jacobson to substantiate the claim. And yet his claim is emblematic. The guardians of high culture, both in England and the U.S., have encouraged the belief that in the slimy bottom of their hearts those who criticize Israel really don’t like Jews. Exhibit B: Graham Sugden spotted the above cartoon in a leading leftwing journal. He writes:

Attached, an anonymous cartoon, complete with its very own “swastika” stamp of approval, that New Internationalist, a leading progressive magazine (I’m guessing you and many of your readers may know of it) that “exist[s] to report on the issues of world poverty and inequality; to focus attention on the unjust relationship between the powerful and powerless worldwide; to debate and campaign for the radical changes necessary to meet the basic needs of all; and to bring to life the people, the ideas and the action in the fight for global justice” [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Internationalist] treated its readers to in its latest addition.

I can vouch that the cartoon occurred in the latest print edition (issue 447) of NI; it is available online too (Frank again!), although you’d have to subscribe to get it much bigger than a postage stamp. You can at least make out the context in which it appeared: just opposite the crossword, having fun with the other cartoons! Are we missing the joke?! I thought it might be of interest, and perhaps worth an article, or better (and fairer) some kind of public challenge (to go along with the private ones I know they have, and will receive) from the truly progressive Jewish angle that you guys (and many of your readers, as well as the countless others!) represent? It is worth noting that over the years that I have subscribed to New Internationalist they have done a reasonable (if at times, to my mind, somewhat naive) job of covering the occupation, to the extent that their being able to carry a cartoon such as this is almost a surprising to me as it is offensive.