Israel/Palestine
Related: About this forum'Sunday Times' Posts Israel Cartoon On Holocaust Day
The Sunday Times marked Holocaust Memorial Day in a less-than-traditional manner, running a virulently anti-Israel cartoon depicting a big-nosed Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu paving a wall with the blood and limbs of writhing Palestinians.
The cartoon included a caption beneath the image entitled "Israeli elections- will cementing peace continue?" Drawn by Gerald Scarfe, the cartoon appeared in the national paper on Sunday.
This cartoon would be offensive at any time of the year, but to publish it on International Holocaust Remembrance Day is sickening and expresses a deeply troubling mindset, said European Jewish Congress President Dr. Moshe Kantor. This insensitivity demands an immediate apology from both the cartoonist and the papers editors.
Amazingly, as this cartoon was published days after the only democracy in the Middle East, Israel, underwent fully democratic elections, as others in the Middle East were being butchered by the tens of thousands, the Sunday Times focuses its imagination solely on the Jewish State. This contravenes many of the criteria laid out in EUMCs Working Definition of Antisemitism and is part of a worrying trend to legitimize the growing assault on Israel by opinion-shapers.
MORE...
http://www.jpost.com/JewishWorld/JewishNews/Article.aspx?id=301128
Walk away
(9,494 posts)What do the Palestinian people have to do with the Holocaust? Are you implying that no one can criticize Israel's policies because of the persecution that the Jewish people suffered in Nazi Germany? I understand that you never want to forget but I don't get how it excuses the behavior of SOME people of the Jewish faith in a country that didn't even exist at the time. I don't see the connection.
shira
(30,109 posts)but more typical now in many western media outlets.
sickening.
Scootaloo
(25,699 posts)"Textbook blood libel" asserts that Jews - or other minorities - consume the blood of children in their religious rituals, or in some other core feature of the culture. It makes the collection and consumption of blood a standard feature of the group so being libeled, a defining quality of their being.
This cartoon presents a warlike national leader as playing with blood and the lives of people it spills from. It being a particular individual, rather than a class of people depicted, and that person being a national leader known for his hostile behavior sweep it out of the "blood libel" category. It displays a policy of that leader and the repercussions the cartoonist sees from that policy.
Compare it to this cartoon:
This is blood libel. Yes it depicts a leader particularly known for butchery and warmongering. Sharon is most definitely a person who deserves depiction with blood on his person and dead people at his feet. What makes it different than the Netanyahu cartoon in the OP? Sharon is depicted as a shopkeeper with a cleaver, offering dead children and their blood as salable commodities; and who do you suppose is going to buy them? And for what purpose?
Now, have a look at this one:
Again, this is blood libel. You have the child, whose blood is being guzzled by a Jewish vampire. It is not an individual being depicted; the kippah and star of David are simply a way to label the creature "Jew." The consumption of blood is thus attributed to Jews as a body; you have the full spread of "textbook" blood libel here; Jews depicted as sustaining themselves from the blood of a child.
In the Netanyahu cartoon, we have a specific individual being depicted, and without any marks of "Jew" - no kippa, no Stars of David, not even so much as a torah scroll laying somewhere. The face is caricatured, but not in a way that resembles caricature of "Jews." In fact the features make him look like a chunkier twin to a George W. Bush caricature, if anything (if intentional, an apt comparison.) The blood is being used as a tool, but is not being consumed; it is mortaring a wall, and as you might know, there's a certain wall that Netanyahu is a fan of.
I'm not going to say the cartoon isn't questionable; it could very easily tip over into "textbook blood libel." Put a kippa on him, there you go. Make it the wall of a settlement home instead of a barrier, and there you go. Make it an indistinct "Israeli" working the spade, and it would qualify. Hell, if you trade Netanyahu out for Lapid even, it would fit, as Mr. Lapid certainly doesn't have Netanyahu's record.
Not every depiction of bloody-handed Israelis is "blood libel." Certainly a lot are - the two cartoons I provided are just an extremely tiny sample of what I found in a google search - but to assume that each and every single instance always is, is simply incorrect. It's fair to be wary, or even to assume the wosrt, but it does bear examination and consideration before you press the red button.
R. Daneel Olivaw
(12,606 posts)be bigoted in some way? Right?
I've heard that Israel never does anything wrong that is worthy of criticism. I've also heard that George Dubya Bush never did any wrong either so any cartoons of him must be equally evil. Right?
shaayecanaan
(6,068 posts)in medieval times anti-semites would spread rumours that Jews used the blood of Christian children mixed with Portland cement to build retaining walls, gazebos and swimming pools.
They even portrayed Netanyahu wearing a singlet (!!!) and holding a trowel.
Disgraceful.
oberliner
(58,724 posts)Where on earth do you come up with these ideas?
oberliner
(58,724 posts)1. It is not directed at Jews: There is absolutely nothing in the cartoon which identifies its subject as a Jew.
2. It does not use Holocaust imagery: It has become generally accepted - justifiably I think - that comparing Israel's leaders and policies to those of the Third Reich is borderline, if not full-on anti-Semitism... But there is nothing in Scarfe's cartoon that can put the Holocaust in mind.
3. There was no discrimination: Netanyahu's depiction is grossly offensive and unfair, but that is only par for the course for any politician when Scarfe is at his drawing-board.
4. This is not what a blood libel looks like: Scarfe's cartoon has blood-cement but no blood libel components - it almost seems he was careful not to include any small children among his Palestinian figures (one of the eight is arguably an adolescent) so as not to have any sort of libel scenery.
http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/jewish-world-news/four-reasons-why-u-k-cartoon-of-netanyahu-isn-t-anti-semitic-in-any-way.premium-1.496880
Eugene
(61,592 posts)Source: Reuters
By Tim Castle
LONDON | Mon Jan 28, 2013 5:02pm EST
(Reuters) - Rupert Murdoch apologized on Monday for a "grotesque" cartoon in his London-based Sunday Times newspaper depicting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu building a bloody wall trapping the bodies of Palestinians, after complaints from Jewish groups.
The image, which shows Netanyahu holding a trowel dripping blood, was published on Holocaust Memorial Day and carried the caption "Israeli elections. Will cementing peace continue?"
The Board of Deputies of British Jews said the cartoon was "shockingly reminiscent of the blood libel imagery more usually found in parts of the virulently anti-Semitic Arab press".
[font size=1]-snip-[/font]
The wall image by the weekly paper's cartoonist Gerald Scarfe was a reference to the barrier that Israel has been building for a decade on West Bank territory.
[font size=1]-snip-[/font]
Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/28/us-newscorp-cartoon-idUSBRE90R14120130128