Israeli hasbara cartoon features white man fighting jungle animals

by on November 19, 2012 35
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“Israeli explanation” art project, on Facebook, features this cartoon, I believe by Lior Arditi:

Israeli hasbara cartoon
Israeli hasbara cartoon

About Philip Weiss

Philip Weiss is Founder and Co-Editor of Mondoweiss.net.
Posted in Israel/Palestine

{ 35 comments... read them below or add one }

  1. pabelmont says:
    November 19, 2012 at 9:45 am

    Do not ask for whom the bell tolls. The snake is Israel. The dead are Palestinians.

  2. bobsmith says:
    November 19, 2012 at 10:08 am

    This was actually a picture of good old Rudyard Kipling wrestling with a Hindustani python, but it was found in the British memorabilia and repurposed by the hasbarists. On the original is written:

    Take up the White Man’s burden—
    Send forth the best ye breed—
    Go send your sons to exile
    To serve your captives’ need

    To wait in heavy harness
    On fluttered folk and wild—
    Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
    Half devil and half child

    Take up the White Man’s burden
    In patience to abide
    To veil the threat of terror
    And check the show of pride;

    etc.

  4. W.Jones says:
    November 19, 2012 at 10:34 am

    Notice that the ground they are fighting on is “Israel”, not ” Israel | Gaza “.
    In other words, Hamas is really in Israel, and therefore Gaza does not exist as a separate territory. Thus, claim is being laid to all the land.

    • Mooser says:
      November 19, 2012 at 12:18 pm

      W.Jones, there’s something going on here, and you, as far as I can see, have found out what it is! Good work.

    • Elliot says:
      November 19, 2012 at 12:42 pm

      The animals have the entire jungle to themselves, why can’t they let the White Man have that little clearing to himself?

      But the White Man is a decent bloke. Since the snake doesn’t have a machete, he doesn’t use his either. That wouldn’t be cricket. He just uses his bare hands.
      Rest assured that, should the snake win this bout, the White Man will lop off the snake’s head with one swipe of his machete.

    • robin says:
      November 19, 2012 at 9:52 pm

      Good point. This cartoon is revealing in a lot of ways. Notice also that the clearing is surrounded by jungle, not on the edge. Not a natural occurrence but clearly conquered and colonized.

      And the constricting action of the snake seems like a great representation of Israeli fears. Though Israel largely manages to avoid the sharp pain of a bloody attack (in the cartoon, a bite), Israelis increasingly feel threatened with sudden extinction. Iran is one example of that, but the representation here seems more related to the Palestinian “demographic threat”: a tightening noose, in their minds, threatening to abruptly end the life of “Israel” defined as an apartheid state. (Israelis show that they define their state that way by describing Palestinian political inclusion as “the destruction of Israel”.) And to many of them (though perhaps not to people who recognize Palestinians as normal human beings), that development implies physical violence and death on a large scale.

      • W.Jones says:
        November 20, 2012 at 8:50 am

        Robin,

        It’s ironic that despite the nationalistic claim that that Arabs were saying they would drive them into the sea in 1948- a claim that is apparently exagerrated or wasn’t really said- it was actually the Israelis that drove 750,000 Palestinians out into neighboring countries.

        In this cartoon, there isn’t any role for the Palestinians of the West Bank or the PA, they have already been conquered, right?

  5. eljay says:
    November 19, 2012 at 10:44 am

    Poor Mr. Jewish State – just a tiny blue suit in a sea of jungle green. :-(

    The aggressor-victimhood image wouldn’t have worked nearly as well had the artist shown Mr. Jewish State with his colonialist boot on the serpent’s neck, a nuclear-tipped missile in his hand like a thunderbolt waiting to be unleashed, a squadron of high-tech, bomb-laden Jewish State jets screaming overhead and a pile of charred and bloodied serpent corpses nearby.

  6. Abdul-Rahman says:
    November 19, 2012 at 10:44 am

    I like how Hezbollah that has defeated the Zionist regime in both 2000 and 2006 is supposedly a deer in this cartoon it seems!

    link to atimes.com

  7. seafoid says:
    November 19, 2012 at 11:02 am

    The picture probably makes sense to 90% of Israeli Jews . .

    link to haaretz.com

    Haaretz poll: More than 90 percent of Israeli Jews support Gaza war

  8. Shmuel says:
    November 19, 2012 at 11:12 am

    Who’s the bunny supposed to be, and why does that poor white man have such a small machete?

  9. Reuben_Manhattan says:
    November 19, 2012 at 11:15 am

    Wasn’t this line considered an anti-semetic cunard?

    “The Jew Cries Out in Pain as He Strikes You”

    I guess they don’t mind using it on someone else ayy?

    Is it anti-semetic if its true?

    Who else complains about being attacked while at the same time oppresses, occupies, and decimates the people that are attacking them?

    • Mooser says:
      November 19, 2012 at 12:22 pm

      “Who else complains about being attacked while at the same time oppresses, occupies, and decimates the people that are attacking them?”

      Well, if my scanty knowledge of history isn’t completely worthless, just about every colonial project does that. Look, I’d like to claim it was original with us, but damn, how many Nobel Prizes does one people need?

  10. David Nelson says:
    November 19, 2012 at 11:16 am

    Just another common (and quite elementary) projection by the Israelis. A defense mechanism to deal with its own dissonance. Israel cannot perceive itself to be a liberal democratic state without expunging its own contradictions. Benji uses projection all the time when he talks about his “enemies.” These sorts of defense mechanisms are usually obvious to outsiders, but outsiders are not who the mechanisms are erected to protect. A defense mechanism in intended to protect the ego from the harsh realities of the outside world and as such only has to fool ego, not the outside world. A city’s walls look different depending on where one stands.

  11. Talkback says:
    November 19, 2012 at 11:52 am

    But when the hypocrits see an Israeli octopussy strangeling the Mavi Marmara they cry antisemitism. What does the ADL say?

    • seafoid says:
      November 19, 2012 at 12:23 pm

      link to adl.org

      “ADL expressed support for the targeted military action taken today by Israel to protect the civilian population in southern Israel against the renewed barrage of rocket and mortar fire from Hamas-controlled Gaza.

      Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director, issued the following statement:

      Israel has shown tremendous restraint in the face of the unceasing rocket and mortar fire launched from Gaza. This operation is directly targeting the leadership responsible for these attacks, as well as the warehouses and facilities housing their weapons. No country in the world would stand by and tolerate such attacks on more than a million civilians.

      The international community has a clear obligation to condemn these attacks and to support the actions taken by Israel against Hamas and other terror organizations operating in Gaza as Israel carries out its basic duty to defend its civilian population.”

      Back in 1915 of course the ADl issued a press release following the murder of Leo Frank

      “ADL expressed support for the targeted military action taken today by the whites to protect their women against the renewed barrage of Jewish wolfwhistles. ”

      What a mess.

  12. LanceThruster says:
    November 19, 2012 at 12:08 pm

    The Israelis treat Palestinians so much like animals to be slaughtered to the extent that PETA should become involved.

    War crimes that set the stage for the establishment of Israel = BAD

    War crimes committed by Israel to maintain their supremacy = What war crimes?

    Maybe they should return to the cockroaches in a bottle storyline as it might it make it easier to push the vermin pest control narrative.

  14. Les says:
    November 19, 2012 at 1:31 pm

    Ashkenazis are white first, Jewish second, which is why they are comfortable producing such racist cartoons.

  15. RoHa says:
    November 19, 2012 at 8:10 pm

    Artistic blunder. The animals look quite lovable. The hunter doesn’t.

  16. YoungMassJew says:
    November 19, 2012 at 11:14 pm

    If you want to compare Israel to another country and pinpoint the region with respect to this incredibly racist photo, you can say Israel is the American South of the 19th century. Israel can say “Look theres Arabs in the Knesset, we’re a real democracy” and then its military (the KKK) goes and slaughters innocent civilians in Gaza, while other people in Tel Aviv sit back and enjoy the perks of the 21st century by sitting back and enjoying watching their military kill those civilians on a plasma flat screen TV. A Truly sickening country.

  17. tear-stained uzi says:
    November 20, 2012 at 4:03 am

    He looks like a psychotic, pigeon-toed postman who has foolishly wandered into the forest. I dunno, he seems more nebbish than “New Jew.”

    I’ve believe we’ve seen this cartoon before, and in the next scene, the animals are happily lazing about with full bellies; the wolf picks his teeth, while the bear comically tries on the pith helmet, to the delight of all the woodland creatures…