Cartoons and Extremism: Israel and the Jews in Arab and Western Media
Joel Kotek’s “Cartoons and Extremism: Israel and the Jews in Arab and Western Media” is overwhelming. A portable gallery of some of the most revolting antisemitic cartoons and images available, the book traces popular antisemitic imagery from its theologically based origins in the medieval period — with side trips to Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union — to its main focus on contemporary anti-Israel and antisemitic cartoons in the modern Arab, Iranian and Western press.
Unpleasant as they are to look at, there is no question that vicious antisemitic cartoons should be collected and documented in order to understand the persistence of an angry and futile Judeophobia that spans the globe. Kotek, a professor at Belgium’s Free University of Brussels, has done a yeoman’s job amassing such a large collection of them. They are culled mainly from anthologies, like that of the Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism, as well as from such Web sites as Memri and Palestine Media Watch, and those of the Arabic Press. Kotek indicts not only Arab cartoonists for engaging medieval anti-Jewish tropes but also their fellow travelers elsewhere, including those from Europe who should know better.
Essentially a continuation of Arieh Stav’s 1999 work “Peace: The Arabian Caricature,” which also chronicled the development of early antisemitic imagery into similar, contemporary manifestations in the Arabic press, “Cartoons and Extremism” fulfills a need that became apparent at a 2001 United Nations’ anti-racism conference in Durban, South Africa, during which antisemitic cartoons were disseminated by a number of anti-Israel NGOs. Originally published in French in 2005, under the title “In the Name of Anti-Zionism: The Image of the Jews and Israel in Caricature Since the Second Intifada,” the book has since been updated with material from the infamous Iran Holocaust Cartoon Contest and with sprinklings from the Western press.
The offending cartoons are categorized according to theme: those that engage what Kotek calls “antisemyths,” or antisemitic myths — among them, the Jew as demon; Christ-killers, and Jews as animals, dominators of the world, vampires and child murderers. There are also conflations of anti-Zionism and antisemitism. Unfortunately, however, the book is not particularly well organized: With a preface; three forewards; author’s notes, and five chapters with 33 subchapters, four appendices, an epilogue and footnotes, it’s a bit unwieldy. Many of the drawings were apparently reproduced from low-resolution Web images, leaving them pixilated and difficult to read. Additionally, many of the cartoons’ texts are left without translation, leaving the reader to wonder what they say. One may add to this a number of typos (including the caption “… the 1911 Mendel Meilis blood libel …”— it’s “Beilis”).
Though Kotek provides a good historical overview of European antisemitism and the imagery it produced, the book lacks a cogent analysis of these contemporary cartoons other than to point out their salient antisemitic features. For the most part, the cartoons are simply thrown in the reader’s face with the apparent intention to shock and to disgust. And guess what? It works. But the underlying questions of why and how these cartoons have traction in the places they are published are left untouched. There is, for example, a chapter on Greek antisemitic cartoons that lacks any commentary whatsoever, leaving the reader with more questions than answers.
If the many grotesque images aren’t enough, the level of revulsion is augmented by the placement of unrelated antisemitic quotes from the Arabic press next to many of the cartoons. It is not clear what purpose this serves, other than to increase the antisemitism quotient and to make the reader uneasier still about the way the Arabic press treats the Jews. Rather than to inform and contextualize in a serious way, the collocation seems more like a scare tactic and an attempt to turn the book into an angry tour de force of Arab antisemitism rather than a thoughtful analysis thereof.
While Kotek rightly notes that cartoons function best in the “democratic public arena,” he also states bizarrely that the “cartoon is an art form that requires a minimum of freedom in order to exist” — an odd comment, considering the fact that it appears in the middle of a book full of cartoons, most of which come from oppressive societies. Moreover, he is not correct: Totalitarian societies produce a great many cartoons. The difference is that they function more as propaganda than as editorials, something he doesn’t discuss. He seems to allude to it when he argues that an important factor in the scapegoating of Israel and Jews arises from a lack of Arab self-criticism, but with the book providing no background on such attitudes in Arab culture, it’s difficult to know.
The lack of an assessment of the context means it’s difficult to know if what we are seeing is an accurate and representative appraisal. It is problematic that the book does nothing to ground the reader in Arab journalism or in Arab cartooning. The impression is given that every newspaper in the Arab world, from Morocco to the Persian Gulf, visually resembles the Nazi weekly Der Stürmer. While there may be a certain level of consensus regarding Israel, the Arabic press is by no means a single entity and is certainly not homogeneous in appearance or opinion. And while Kotek may show us antisemitic and anti-Israel cartoons from many different countries, there is no sense of the frequency or intensity with which they appear, nor do we know in which places and on what occasions. As a result, “Cartoons and Extremism” paints the entire Arab world (as well as Iran and Turkey) with a wide brush, one that does not seem particularly accurate.
Adding to the confusion is that the book also includes many cartoons that criticize Israel severely — sometimes in extremely harsh and upsetting ways — but are not truly antisemitic. An entire chapter, for example, is dedicated to the work of Brazilian cartoonist Carlos Latuff (see box below), whose material is furiously critical of Israel and its leaders in often terribly obnoxious ways. His work will surely upset even nominal supporters of Israel, but it is a stretch to categorize his cartoons as antisemitic, and it is a disservice to the fight against genuine antisemitism to have included them.
“Cartoons and Extremism” even calls Latuff “the contemporary Drumont of the internet.” For the uninformed, Edouard Drumont was the founder of the French “League of Antisemites” and the publisher of La Libre Parole, a magazine that printed numerous classically antisemitic cartoons during the years of the Dreyfus Affair. So, this is a serious charge.
But who is Carlos Latuff? He is an extreme left-wing cartoonist who has produced thousands of cartoons on world political events. A mostly self-taught artist, Latuff gained an interest in politics after he had seen a documentary on the Zapatista uprising in Mexico. He began drawing political cartoons. “The main inspiration for my political cartoons,” he explained, “is my indignation about the cowardice, police brutality, state terrorism, imperialism, capitalism, in Brazil, in the Middle East and everywhere. It’s my way to expose the crimes of the oppressor and the resistance of the oppressed.”
A significant number of Latuff’s cartoons have to do with the Israel-Palestine conflict, something that became important to Latuff after he visited the area in the late 1990s.
It’s true that Latuff’s Israel-Palestine cartoons are harshly (this may be too soft a word) critical of Israel. The images can be brutal, and Latuff often uses the Holocaust as a metaphor for the conflict. He also depicts Israel’s leaders as devils and vampires, and Israeli soldiers as baby killers. But let’s be clear: The animus is directed at the State of Israel, its leaders and its army. None of Latuff’s cartoons libels the entire Jewish people, something that would seem to be necessary in order to charge Latuff with antisemitism.
There is little question that Latuff’s cartoons will be upsetting to anyone who even nominally supports Israel. Latuff specifically uses imagery that is meant to provoke and disturb Israel’s supporters. He is, after all, a propagandist for the Palestinian side, and he does his job exceptionally well. Perhaps this is what so upsets Joel Kotek: Latuff’s cartoons manage to viciously attack Israel without resorting to what many of the Arab cartoonists have had to do: caricaturing Jews in the traditional European manner, with grotesquely large noses and hunchbacked bodies, attacking the Jewish people as a whole.
In one odd moment, the author thanks the cartoonists he is exposing as antisemites for their “friendly collaboration” in allowing their work to be published in his book. If he was in contact with these cartoonists, it’s too bad he didn’t bother asking them what their motives were. It also seems like a lost opportunity to discuss the issues involved, especially since he hopes his book will “alert the cartoonists of the Arab-Muslim region to a certain sense of responsibility.” If one of Kotek’s expressed goals is to reduce the anti-Jewish vitriol in Arab cartooning, some attempt at a dialogue with those he perceives as irresponsible would have been a good start.
It’s praiseworthy that one of the goals of “Cartoons and Extremism” is to convince Arab cartoonists to “promote the cause of peace and justice, not that of war and hatred.” But it bears keeping in mind that most of the cartoons in this book are more a form of propaganda than critical editorial cartoon. While Kotek is well-meaning in exposing the wrong-headedness of this type of caustic imagery, he ignores the social context of a mostly dictatorial region where propaganda rules and where an atmosphere of censorship allows conspiracy theories to flourish. Until self-criticism begins to play a larger role and realistic prospects for peace begin to exist, we will continue to see Israel and Jews as the major targets of Arab cartoonists. Without a serious analysis as to why these images continue to appear, and without an attempt at dialogue with their creators, what results is a microcosm of the Arab-Israeli conflict: furious accusations exchanged between two parties that don’t listen to each other, punctuated by terribly ugly images in the media.
For a conversation between Eddy Portnoy and Carlos Latuff click here
Eddy Portnoy is a writer living in New York.
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FYI - The Hitler-Sharon cartoon is based on the post-1989 painting on the Berlin Wall by Dmitry Vrubel that depicts Brezhnev kissing the last East German leader, Honecker. A caption referred to their "deadly love." (See http://www.cambridge2000.com/gallery/html/P31211851e.html)By now it is covered with graffiti.
An excellent and well-balanced review that shows some insight in distinguishing between simple anti-Israel imagery and full anti-Semitism. At the same time, I wonder if the reviewer is entirely right in exonerating Latuff from some form of anti-Semitism. I have recently read Bernard Harrison's cogently argued book, The Resurgence of Anti-Semitism, in which Harrison, a philosopher, argues that much anti-Israelism is thinly-disguised anti-Semitism. Israel-Palestine is only one of Latuff's concerns, but clearly a major (or the major) one. This singling out of the Jewish state is really a mark of underlying anti-Semitism, where the criticism passes beyond all reasonable political comment and becomes obscene. But the reviewer is right in saying that better informed comment would have elevated the visual material into a serious basis for future discussion. An opportunity missed, perhaps; sadly, the material is still out there.
The pro-Palestinian (or anti-Israel) cartoons are not "harshly critical" of Israel. One who thinks that the State of Israel should not exist is not expressing criticism. The purpose of criticism is to point out flaws in the hope that the criticized party shall improve his ways. "You are a poor driver" - that is criticism (we understand that the driver could improve himself and win our approval). "You shouldn't have been born" - that is hatred, not criticism ("whatever you do is improper because you shouldn't be here"). Generally, the pro-Palestinian "critics" of Israel believe that the very existence of the state is illegitimate. So, although, they may sound as if they are "criticizing" this or that policy, in reality they would be criticizing any policy. An "illegitimate state" can never have a legitimate policy.
Thought a Japanese outlook and questions relevant... A Japanese View of the Palestinians? By Yashiko Sagamori If you are so sure that 'Palestine, the country, goes back through most of recorded history,' I expect you to be able to answer a few basic questions about that country of Palestine: 1. When was it founded and by whom? 2. What were its borders? 3. What was its capital? 4. What were its major cities? 5. What constituted the basis of its economy? 6. What was its form of government? 7. Can you name at least one Palestinian leader before Arafat? 8. Was Palestine ever recognized by a country whose existence, at that time or now, leaves no room for interpretation? 9. What was the language of the country of Palestine? 10. What was the prevalent religion of the country of Palestine? 11. What was the name of its currency? Choose any date in history and tell what was the approximate exchange rate of the Palestinian monetary unit against the US dollar, German mark, GB pound, Japanese yen, or Chinese yuan on that date. 12. And, finally, since there is no such country today, what caused its demise and when did it occur? You are lamenting the 'low sinking' of a 'once proud' nation. Please tell me, when exactly was that 'nation' proud and what was it so proud of? And here is the least sarcastic question of all: If the people you mistakenly call 'Palestinians' are anything but generic Arabs collected from all over -- or thrown out of -- the Arab world, if they really have a genuine ethnic identity that gives them right for self-determination, why did they never try to become independent until Arabs suffered their devastating defeat in the Six Day War? I hope you avoid the temptation to trace the modern day 'Palestinians' to the Biblical Philistines: substituting etymology for history won't work here. The truth should be obvious to everyone who wants to know it. Arab countries have never abandoned the dream of destroying Israel; they still cherish it today. Having time and again failed to achieve their evil goal with military means, they decided to fight Israel by proxy. For that purpose, they created a terrorist organization, cynically called it 'the Palestinian people' and installed it in Gaza, Judea, and Samaria. How else can you explain the refusal by Jordan and Egypt to unconditionally accept back the 'West Bank' and Gaza, respectively? The fact is, Arabs populating Gaza, Judea , and Samaria have much less claim to nationhood than that Indian tribe that successfully emerged in Connecticut with the purpose of starting a tax-exempt casino: at least that tribe had a constructive goal that motivated them. The so called 'Palestinians' have only one motivation: the destruction of Israel , and in my book that is not sufficient to consider them a nation' -- or anything else except what they really are: a terrorist organization that will one day be dismantled. In fact, there is only one way to achieve peace in the Middle East. Arab countries must acknowledge and accept their defeat in their war against Israel and, as the losing side should, pay Israel reparations for the more than 50 years of devastation they have visited on it. The most appropriate form of such reparations would be the removal of their terrorist organization from the land of Israel and accepting Israel's ancient sovereignty over Gaza, Judea, and Samaria. That will mark the end of the Palestinian people. What are you saying again was its beginning?
The way to fight the stereotype of Jews as expressed in the Kotek book is to act contrary to the stereotype. When I was young, Japanese goods were stereotyped as “shoddy.” Japanese did not forever complain but worked harder and by the 1980s, Japan-made cars and other goods became a byword of quality. Jews have fought against prejudice and often won. In the 18th century, Ostjuden were considered illiterate and to be living in the Dark Ages. In the 19th century Jews were considered unmanly. In both cases, thanks in part to Zionism, they overcame the stereotype. At any airport an Arab-looking male passenger will be looked at suspiciously, even though the likelihood of his being a terrorist are infinitesimal. But the chances that an average Jew will be violently anti-Arab, pro-war, and against Iran are not small at all. And of course the case of financier Bernard Madoff unfortunately showed that life can indeed imitate anti-Semitism. Sad to say, the stereotyping of Jews is often quite justifiable, and only their behavior change will alter it.
I discuss the exhibit and its origins in "Cartoon summarizes Zionist Christmas Wishes" ( http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2008/12/cartoon-summarizes-zionist-christmas.html ).