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One in a Thousand: The Art and Wit of Carlos Latuff

Dear Mondoweiss community:

For Mondoweiss to keep providing the news and images that you value, we need to ask for your help by the end of December. That’s the deadline for us to raise $100,000—which will in turn unlock $60,000 in challenge funds. I hope that you, like me, are inspired when you think about the Thousand Voices for Truth—all those who have delivered to you ideas and information about Palestine/Israel via Mondoweiss.

Today, we’re highlighting Mondoweiss’s gifted political cartoonist Carlos Latuff, who has made the site’s visual style take a big leap forward. About two years ago, Mondoweiss Editor-at-Large Annie Robbins became friends with Carlos on Twitter, and her matchmaking enabled us to get Carlos onto the team. Now that we’ve published almost 100 of his brilliant satirical images, it’s hard to believe we ever managed without Carlos’s visual eloquence.

Read on to learn about Carlos’s quirky approach to activism—and its impact worldwide. In order to keep showing you his thought-provoking art, we need your help. Please give today.

Here’s a very current testament to the power of Carlos’s drawings: since December 6, when Trump announced that he’d recognize Jerusalem as the Israeli capital, people all over the world have used Latuff cartoons published in Mondoweiss to express their anger. Check out his original images below, followed by a slideshow of protests in Germany, Indonesia and Greece, as well as Nablus and Gaza City in Palestine. (The spanking cartoon was also on display at demonstrations in Malaysia and France.)

Embed from Getty Images

On a personal note, I can’t imagine a work week without little nudges from Carlos, sharing his irrepressible creativity. Although he’s thousands of miles away in Brazil, if I take more than a few hours to reply to one of his ideas, I’m liable to receive a drawing of myself relaxing on the beach—a not-so-subtle message that I’m not working hard enough!

Here are Carlos’s answers to a few questions I sent on behalf of you and everyone else who enjoys his drawings.

Adam: Have you learned anything from working with Mondoweiss?
Carlos: I have improved my satire, putting some humor in such an utterly serious topic. Sometimes I feel like I’m working for something like an anti-Zionist version of MAD magazine. By the way, Adam, are you related to Alfred E. Neuman?

Adam: How did you get involved with the issue of Palestinian human rights?
Carlos: On my first trip to the West Bank in 1998, I witnessed the apartheid Israel inflicts on the Palestinians, and that made me decide to support them with my art. I appreciate that Mondoweiss helps me get my visions out to people everywhere—and I urge readers to donate so we can keep spreading the truth about Palestine.

Adam: If full freedom and justice were achieved tomorrow for all Palestinians, what issue do you think you’d work on? Or would you be happy to stop being political?
Carlos: The world is full of trouble, man…Probably I would draw about Arab dictatorships, police brutality in Brazil, you name it. Unfortunately, humankind will remain a fruitful land for political cartooning. To be a visual chronicler of barbarism will be my job forever, I’m afraid.

Adam: What personal risks have you faced due to your work on Palestine?
Carlos: In 2006 I received a public death threat, and in 2012 the Simon Wiesenthal Center for “Human Rights” labeled me the world’s third most anti-Semitic person. Not to mention the countless articles attacking me, private messages with insults, public defamation campaigns and so on. Defending Palestinians isn’t a cause for the faint-hearted and cowards afraid of being called “anti-Semite.”

Adam: What has been most rewarding for you about cartooning for Mondoweiss?
Carlos: I respect both Phil Weiss and you, as men of principle who could be working for the Israeli propaganda machine but instead picked the side of the colonized, the oppressed—the side of Palestinians. It’s a great honor to be part of the team.

Both the Mondoweiss team and all of you who read and share what we publish are fortunate that Carlos Latuff is one of our Thousand Voices for Truth. If you have already contributed to the current campaign, thank you so much! If you have not…please add your voice to the thousand. We appreciate the strength and generosity of our community, and pledge to use all funds to invest even more in reporting and spreading the truth about Palestine.

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Carlos is beyond brilliant, and a huge immeasurable addition to Mondoweiss.

Keep up the good work, Carlos!

Carlos — sometimes you have more truth in one simple cartoon than a writer could put in an entire essay. If your cartoons don’t make undecideds think, what would?

Carlos and Katie are my two favorites!

“I am a quarterly donor to MW but the actions of two very special people have promted me to donate to your latest fund raiser.

I refer to the 16 year old Tamini Girl and Abu Thurayeh ,the amputee who gave his life for his nation.Would that I had 1 % of their bravery.

I will make an additional donation in honour of these two very special human beings .I marvel at their strength and heroism in the face of a criminal lawless rogue entity .

May their efforts one day be rewarded with the lowering of the zionist flag in occupied Palestine and the departure of millions of zionist thieves and murderers.