[shniad at sfu.ca: [R-G] Satire or Anti-Semitism?]

[Hans Ehrbar]

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On Monday, 'The Independent' published a savage cartoon of Israel's Prime
Minister, Ariel Sharon. [To view the cartoon, click
http://www.independent.co.uk/images/editorial_images/2003-01/sharonmain.gif
] The cartoon prompted complaints from the Israeli Embassy, Jewish groups,
and some of our readers, who were offended by the image. Today, we ask the
question: was this cartoon anti-Semitic?

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=374143

The Independent   31 January 2003 

Satire or Anti-Semitism? Satire

'Democracies cannot be awarded a licence to carry out odious policies. "Hey,
hey, LBJ, how many kids have you killed today?" was not seen as an
unacceptably anti-Christian denunciation'

By Gerald Kaufman, Chair, Select Committee on Culture and Media

The labelling as anti-Semitic of Dave Brown's cartoon, which depicted the
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as a naked, child-eating ogre, was
entirely spurious – but entirely predictable. Nor is it surprising that the
lynch-mob was led by the Israeli embassy in London, once a respected
diplomatic mission, but now the instrument of Israel's worst-ever Foreign
Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu.

Anti-Semitic material can easily be spotted. The front page of the New
Statesman on 14 January last year was blatantly anti-Semitic. It depicted an
enormous Star of David impaling Britain's Union flag with, underneath in
huge, bold letters, the strap-line: "A kosher conspiracy?" Brown's cartoon,
specifically based on, and attributed to, a Goya picture, contained no Star
of David. Indeed, no Star of David or other Jewish symbol was to be seen
anywhere in the cartoon.

Sharon's genital area was concealed beneath an election rosette saying:
"Vote Likud". If opposing such a slogan is anti-Semitic, then 69 per cent of
the Israeli electorate, who voted for parties other than Likud, are
presumably anti-Semites.

Of course, the depiction of Sharon was deliberately unflattering. That is
what cartooning is about. George Bush, Tony Blair and other Western leaders
are depicted in similarly unflattering terms every day of the week, but no
one denounces the cartoonists as anti-Christian, though both Bush and Blair
are much more high-profile in their religious observances than Sharon.

No; the attempt to discredit Brown's cartoon as a sort of continuation of
the Holocaust by other means is the latest manifestation of a sedulous,
insidious campaign by Likud, over many years, to discredit critics of its
consistently nasty policies by equating such criticism as anti-Semitic. This
Likud campaign was brilliantly categorised in 1982 by the great Israeli
novelist Amos Oz, in his wonderful book of essays The Slopes of Lebanon:
"Our sufferings have granted us immunity papers, as it were, a moral carte
blanche. After what all those dirty goyim [non-Jews] have done to us, none
of them is entitled to preach morality to us. We, on the other hand, have
carte blanche, because we were victims and have suffered so much. Once a
victim, always a victim, and victimhood entitles its owners to a moral
exemption."

More than 20 years later, the murderous atrocities carried out by
Palestinian terrorists against innocent Israeli civilians are deemed by
Likud and its cronies to have extended that exemption. Today, because of
that terrible trail of slaughtered Jewish children, Likud would like it to
be regarded as impolite, at best, and anti-Semitic if at all possible, even
to draw attention to the killing of innocent Palestinians, including babies
(and others, as well, such as the British United Nations worker Ian Hook) by
Israeli troops. It would, of course, be outrageous to depict the Israeli
army's attack on Gaza at the beginning of this week – in which a dozen
Palestinians were killed – as Likud's version of a pre-election rally.

The fact is that Israel's right-wing government wants it both ways. It
desires, on the one hand, to be accepted as a nation among nations,
entitled, for example, to trade concessions from the European Union. On the
other hand, whenever circumstances suit it, it plays the victim card – for
example, dragging off visiting statesmen, such as Robin Cook when he was
Foreign Secretary, to pay their respects at the moving Holocaust memorial
Yad Vashem in Jerusalem in penance for having done or said anything not to
the liking of Likud prime ministers.

The other card played by right-wing Israelis and their apologists to seek to
justify policies that must be unacceptable to many thinking people, is the
democracy card: Israel as the only democracy in the Middle East, surrounded
by a rogues' gallery of Arab autocracies. That Israel is a democracy is
undeniable; but even democracies cannot be awarded a free licence to carry
out odious policies. The United States democracy under Lyndon B Johnson's
presidency immersed America in the Vietnam morass. "Hey, hey, LBJ, how many
kids have you killed today?" was not regarded as an unacceptably
anti-Christian denunciation. British governments at Westminster permitted
torture in Kenya and Cyprus, and British MPs in the House of Commons
denounced them for it. Democracy may be a preferable form of government, but
it is not always perfect and its acts cannot be immune from condemnation.

So these cheap and glib accusations of anti-Semitism, as a way of
intimidating into silence justified criticism of the policies of this
ghastly Israeli government, must be rejected with the derision they deserve.
One way in which Israel is a democracy is that it has a free and lively
press. I do not always admire the way in which the British press uses its
freedom, but when foreign countries try to prevent and discredit that
freedom, as the Israeli government and its acolytes are attempting with
Brown's cartoon, it is time to tell them to buzz off. 

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