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the star of david is the central element of the israeli flag.  enough of this incessant whining that any criticism of israel is “anti-semitic”.  no one is going to take you seriously when it really does matter if you keep this up, ADL.

Comment by Proton Soup on 3/26/09 at 4:08 pm

wait…. the monkey is supposed to be Obama?

Comment by t on 3/26/09 at 4:58 pm

The Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, the policy and advocacy branch of the Reform Jewish Movement, also put a statement out on this, nothing that ““Published during a tenuous cease-fire in Gaza, this cartoon will only add fuel to the proverbial political fire and stroke the flames of anti-Semitism.” You can check it out at http://rac.org/Articles/index.cfm?id=3366&pge_prg_id=10987.

Comment by Kate B. on 3/26/09 at 6:50 pm

Your brain fog is noted, “Proton Soup”. It’s as simple as this: If you lie, you are a liar. If you lie about Jews, you’re an anti-Semitic liar. Oliphant’s use of Nazi symbolism equating Israel’s action in Gaza to that of the Third Reich is tendentiously false. Get it?

Comment by Alice Rage on 3/26/09 at 11:16 pm

far from foggy, i’m feeling “froggy” today!

your simpleton logic is noted “Alice Rage”.  you might be surprised to learn that i support israel pushing the palestinians out of gaza.  but that doesn’t change the fact that they will look like a bully when they do it, while the palestinians look like the underdog.  it won’t change the fact that it will look like you are ethnically cleansing the nation.  it won’t change the fact that israel has made this religious symbol fair game by co-opting it for a secular state.  it won’t change the fact that the settlers moving into the region are doing it for religious as well as nationalistic reasons, bringing religion right to the forefront of a battle for land that God gave the jews.

it is not anti-semitism.  it is legitimate political commentary.  likewise, ADL and RAC’s comments here are little more than propaganda that cheapens real racial complaints in the same way that Al Sharpton does.

Comment by Proton Soup on 3/27/09 at 1:10 am

Not “froggy”, but fraudy!

If your inclinations were truly in the best interests of Jews, you wouldn’t even bandy around the word “Palestinians” and echo anti-Jew slogans like “ethnically cleansing” and anti-Jew terms like “settlers”.  In short, because I don’t want to spend too much time on you, I equate your “legitimate political commentary” to that of a semi-literate Roger Cohen.

Comment by Alice Rage on 3/27/09 at 2:37 am

good grief, do you realize you sound like some Stormfront poster scolding race traitors?

Comment by Proton Soup on 3/27/09 at 2:50 am

Yor’re funny. You “support israel pushing the palestinians out of gaza” and then compare me to a Nazi? You have to be on some potent medication. Listen, get some rest and I’ll see you around.

Comment by Alice Rage on 3/27/09 at 3:17 am

you seem to have a fixation with nazis.  take care, Alice.

Comment by Proton Soup on 3/27/09 at 3:28 am

All of this discussion is about the right of people to comment and in what style. As happens so often in these things. The story here is about the success of the Jew haters in installing themselves into the popular consciousness to the point that mainstream sources think it is no big deal. This is no isolated example, just a mob mentality, and a dumbing down of the public to the point where they are willing to let specialists do the thinking for them.

The people that built the gas chambers were not all Jew haters, just amoral. Like those architects and engineers and technicians and skilled laborers and project managers and administrators, Oliphant just wakes up one morning and goes for the strongest image he can that day. I doubt he really cares about the truth of the issue, it’s good enough for him if they print it.

We don’t have to go back to the Sturmer for cartoons like that, we can look at thee from the Arabs world in 1967, for those many of us who have forgotten what that war was about.
http://www.jewsandothers.com/Jews_and_Others/Cartoons.html

And why go back so far again, how about these contemporary ones? (“One picture can sometimes be deadlier than a thousand words”).
http://www.tomgrossmedia.com/ArabCartoons.htm

Same guy Summer ‘06
http://www.tomgrossmedia.com/Anti-IsraelCartoons2006.html
Or these
http://honestreporting.com/articles/45884734/critiques/Offensive_Cartoons.asp

Jew-Hatred in Contemporary Norwegian Caricatures
“•Over the past thirty years, Norwegian media caricatures have sustained a high level of demonization of Jews and the state of Israel. These include portraying Jews as heartless, peace-hating, enemies of humanity, Nazi, bloodthirsty, child-killers, and controllers of the world. This trend has been rapidly increasing over the past years. “
http://www.jcpa.org/JCPA/Templates/ShowPage.asp?DRIT=3&DBID=1&LNGID=1&TMID=111&FID=624&PID=0&IID=1256&TTL=Jew-Hatred_in_Contemporary_Norwegian_Caricatures

Major Anti-Semitic Motifs in Arab Cartoons

http://www.jcpa.org/JCPA/Templates/ShowPage.asp?DRIT=3&DBID=1&LNGID=1&TMID=111&FID=253&PID=0&IID=644&TTL=Major_Anti-Semitic_Motifs_in_Arab_Cartoons

From ADL
http://www.adl.org/Anti_semitism/arab/cartoon_arab_press_061802.asp

There are thousands more worldwide. Cartoonists are now vying with each other for witty putdowns of Israel. Unlike Imus, they won’t be fired or suspended.

Now to feel a little batter
http://www.jr.co.il/humorpic/politics.htm

This guy is great
http://www.womeningreen.org/olegindex.htm
http://www.gamla.org.il/english/oleg/index.htm

Basta.

Comment by Ben Plonie on 3/27/09 at 8:26 am

careful now, you might turn into a gentile beast!

http://assets.jewcy.com/stories/valley/hulk/hulk-lg.jpg

Comment by Proton Soup on 3/27/09 at 4:10 pm

Interesting letter from the NY Times.

Dear Valued New York Times Reader,

The offending cartoon by Oliphant was not and will not be published in The New York Times.  It did not appear on our Web site either.  What did appear there,  by a long-standing contractual arrangement with a company called uclick.com, is an “Oliphant” button.  This button on the cartoons page took people who clicked on it on March 25 to that cartoon, which is now relegated to the Oliphant archive. 

Nobody at The Times, therefore, made any decision to “publish” the cartoon.  But, though the click gets you to a uclick.com page, regrettably in this case, the banner on the page says “The New York Times .....Cartoons.”

We are currently reviewing that arrangement.

Thank you for contacting The New York Times.  We appreciate your readership—and your taking the time to write.

Regards,

Kerry Scott
NYTimes.com
Customer Service

Comment by pa on 3/27/09 at 4:39 pm

Haha, I have seen that cartoon. But You are the problem, Soupy, not Alice Rage. My post was on-topic, neutral and factual, but it is easier to blow it off by implying I am in an irrational rage than actually firing up a couple of brain cells to discuss it.

Comment by Ben Plonie on 3/27/09 at 6:08 pm

“problem”?  actually, i’ve spent a bit of time here trying to explain why i think this is overblown, but i can spend some more.  one thing i find troubling is the need to interpret the (let’s call him a jack-booted thug) as a Nazi.  i can see why you want to go there, but it’s also easy to see it as symbolic of militant nationalism.  and with the star, religious militant nationalism.  i guess the assumption here is that religious militant nationalism is a bad thing.  is it a bad thing?  i’m not so sure.  it can be, of course.  depends a lot on how it’s applied, i guess.  but Ben, what i think you, Alice, and others are really objecting to here is the portrayal of religious militant nationalism, not on the basis that the idea is false, but because it’s bad public relations.

Comment by Proton Soup on 3/27/09 at 6:55 pm

“one thing i find troubling”

Proton, you are troubled because you sense the cartoon is indeed anti-semitic, and uses the recurring trope of Jews as Nazis, the old Soviet anti-semitic line still salient in the West.

Look into yourself.  If you are not anti-semitic, you would feel no need to rationalize the cartoon, and would give Israel context, like the irony that the openly genocidal Hamas is at issue here.  A characteristic of anti-semitism is its need to blame Israel/jews for everything.  No leeway, no context.  It’s hardwired into certain strains of Christian culture, absorbed into some leftish fads today.  Indeed, I think you have never given thought to the fact your reflexivity has ideology outside what you consider your own free-thinking.  Such as why you distinguish Israel’s nationalism from others—

Comment by Jason on 3/27/09 at 8:44 pm

Soup:

On the off chance that you are amenable to reason, I want to relate two connected ideas. First, I will repeat part of a previous post: “Oliphant’s use of Nazi symbolism equating Israel’s action in Gaza to that of the Third Reich is tendentiously false.”

Second, I want to try make you understand what Israel is dealing with on a daily basis and exactly how false Oliphant’s cartoon is. The following is an excerpt from an interview at:

http://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm/frm/28165/sec_id/28165

——————————

Gordon: There was an incident at a Beersheba Hospital involving a Palestinian woman terrorist who had received skin transplant treatments authorized by you. Could you describe that incident and what it illustrates about Israeli humanitarianism versus fanatic Islamic Jihadism?
Eldad: I was instrumental in establishing the Israeli National Skin Bank, which is the largest in the world. The National Skin Bank stores skin for every day needs as well as for war time or mass casualty situations. This skin bank is hosted at the Hadassah Ein Kerem University hospital in Jerusalem where I was the chairman of plastic surgery. This is how I was asked to supply skin for an Arab woman from Gaza, who was hospitalized in Soroka Hospital in Beersheba after her family burned her. Usually, such atrocities happen among Arab families when the women are suspected of having an affair. We supplied all the needed Homografts for her treatment. She was successfully treated by my friend and colleague Prof. Lior Rosenberg, and discharged to return to Gaza. She was invited for regular follow up visits to the outpatient clinic in Beersheba. One day she was caught at a border crossing wearing a suicide belt. She meant to explode herself in the outpatient clinic of the hospital where they saved her life. It seems that her family promised her that if she did that, they would forgive her.
This is only one example of the war between Jews and Muslims in the Land of Israel. It is not a territorial conflict. This is a civilizational conflict.

——————————

The second is a YouTube video describing the same incident.  One thing that I want you to notice is that it was her family that originally burned her. Watch at the end of the video as they (her mother who helped burned her and she) wail and cry about her fate.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-xK6FDdkzg

This is not as the doctor says “a civilizational conflict”, it is a conflict between civilization and barbarism and Oliphant sides with the barbarians.

Comment by Alice Rage on 3/27/09 at 8:56 pm

Jason, i suspect your doc-in-the-box attempt at psychoanalyzing me is clouded by your own racism and paranoia.

Alice, your example is indeed sad, but a bit of a non-sequitur.

and like i said, i’m with you on removing these people.  personally, i believe much of the reason they stay is simply to fight a proxy war on the behalf of egypt, et al. there will never be any peace as long as they are there.  and i really couldn’t care less if you object to the sort of language i use to describe the people involved or the actions being taken to compel them to move.

now, as for oliphant’s cartoon, i’m not completely in agreement with it.  i certainly don’t believe that the palestinians are caught between a rock and a hard place.  i think they could have left long ago and been repatriated somewhere else, but they simply want to stay and fight.  and i think if you are honest about it, you’d admit the israelis are making it hard for them to stay.

Comment by Proton Soup on 3/27/09 at 9:49 pm

“Jason, i suspect your doc-in-the-box attempt at psychoanalyzing me is clouded by your own racism and paranoia.”

Actually, it is informed by reading your evolving posts.

Comment by Jason on 3/28/09 at 6:03 pm

*sigh*  i don’t know what else to say.  i think Eli Valley is correct.

Comment by Proton Soup on 3/28/09 at 6:18 pm

No matter where one stands on the question of Israel and Palestine, the message conveyed in the cartoon is offensive and inexcusable. Images of Nazism or allusions to Nazism (and the jack-booted goose-stepping thug is a definite Nazi meme) are offensive to any person with a conscience, and deeply triggering to Jewish people. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that one out.

To then take the offense further and equate Israeli war crimes with Nazi Germany and the Holocaust is nothing more than rank anti-Semitism. Israeli military abuses, even war crimes, do not excuse anti-Semitism.

It is totally possible to both speak out against Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and reject anti-Semitic attacks on Jews. Israel the government deserves and needs valid criticism, since it makes military and policy decisions that affect people’s lives. Governments should always bear full responsibility for their actions. But that fact never justifies demonization of Jewish people as a whole.

Comment by YC on 3/28/09 at 6:42 pm

Just throw in “anti-semite” any time someone has a complaint against Israel. It works every time! Take THAT Jimmy Carter!

Comment by Tom on 3/28/09 at 8:20 pm

Tom:

Naming Carter an anti-Semite, which he most certainly is, will not influence him one iota; because, the man is, like most leftists, functionally delusional. As a measure of proof, I offer the first four paragraphs from an editorial (about his new book) titled “Jimmy Carter’s crazy slavery theory: He thinks the Civil War was un-Christian” at:

http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2009/03/23/2009-03-23_jimmy_carters_crazy_slavery_theory_he_th.html

—————
Here’s the latest outrage from Jimmy Carter, the ex-President so many Americans love to hate: He claims the Civil War - which he calls, Southern-style, “The War Between the States” - was un-Christian and could have been avoided.

The comments come in a new book, “In Lincoln’s Hand: His Original Manuscripts With Commentary By Distinguished Americans.” Carter comments on a passage by Lincoln in which Lincoln writes: “I am almost ready to say this is probably true - that God wills this contest, and wills that it shall not end yet.”

Carter writes that he finds the Lincoln writing “very troubling.” Continues Carter: “He ignores the fact that the tragic combat might have been avoided altogether, and that the leaders of both sides, overwhelmingly Christian, were violating a basic premise of their belief as followers of the Prince of Peace.” He concludes: “A legitimate question for historians is how soon the blight of slavery would have been terminated peacefully in America, as in Great Britain and other civilized societies.”

Carter’s comments are so stunning that at a recent discussion about the new book at the New-York Historical Society, both the book’s co-editor, Joshua Wolf Shenk, and another “distinguished American” who contributed to the book, Cynthia Ozick, distanced themselves from them. Shenk said he disagreed, and Ozick mocked the idea of negotiating with slave masters.
—————

Note Carter’s formulation of “both sides” which is the favorite cliché of his and other anti-Jews who use it to make a moral equivalence between Israel and the Arab barbarians. You see, Tom, for the left, Indiscriminateness is a moral imperative - (pause to think) not discriminating is the pinnacle of their morality - that’s why to them success is an injustice and failure necessarily indicates victimhood; and, to extend the logic one step further that’s why leftists hate Jews: They are successful to a miraculous degree (especially in Israel) thus the poor, poor ancient Palestinians must be their victims. What is so outrageously stupid about Carter and his fellow travelers is that they invariably end upon the same side as the Islamists who are the ultimate discriminators, who de facto, as Muslims, hate Jews. They are natural allies.

The important thing, Tom, about insisting that anti-Semites are anti-Semites is that those who remain with the capacity to legitimately discriminate are not left without support.

Comment by Alice Rage on 3/29/09 at 12:25 am

Why is this so difficult? Oliphant is acknowledged to be a very good cartoonist. As such he characterizes or personifies his subjects and frames them in a clear visual setting to make a point. His point is not ambiguous in the slightest. What is at issue is that it is wrong, slanted and evil, in the same way as Nazi and Arab propaganda is.

Comment by Ben Plonie on 3/30/09 at 12:57 am

Suggested reading:

The ethnic cleansing of Palestine / ‡c Ilan Pappe.
Oxford : ‡b Oneworld, ‡c 2006.

Comment by choupique on 3/30/09 at 1:00 pm

It is a shame that “free speech” and art is being stifled because you do not like the messgae. That is what USA is all about.

To use “antisemitism” as a response to all things that negatively reflect upon Judaism is cowardly and wrong.

Israel is an “apartheid” state. The US media has kept this under wraps from the “Joe Plumbers” of the USA but Israel by it’s actions in Gaza can no longer hide the true personality of the dysfunctional state of Israel.

Hamas? C’mon guys, Israel started them to offset the PLO…. “Chickens coming home to Roost”. I beleive the saying goes….

Comment by Gold OF Cortez on 3/30/09 at 2:27 pm

Looks like this thread is atsrting to attract cockroaches and termites.

We say that to use antisemitism (no quotes) as a response to all things that positively reflect upon Judaism is cowardly and wrong.

Ilan Pappe is widely acknowledged as insane and evil. And Gaza is a Jewish land under enemy occupation. And anyone in Israel who ever helped Hamas should be shot as a traitor, unless they have already been hung for supporting the PLO at Oslo.

Comment by Ben Plonie on 3/31/09 at 10:53 pm

Ben:

It would be helpful if you were more forthright.

Comment by Alice Rage on 4/01/09 at 12:58 am

I agree with Robert Fisk, leave WWII out of the discussion of Israel/Palestine. But I do wonder how it is that apologists for Israeli policies of exclusion over inclusion, of supremacy over equality, of militarism over serious efforts at a just peace suddenly raise the flag of anti-Semitism. Having grown up in a city where anti-Semitism was the norm, I saw my fellow Jews put their money in the little blue boxes as a way to invoke Jewish solidarity while refusing to publicly confront the vandalism of the temple, the exclusion of Jews from “city-wide” community organizations, the endless harassment, etc. I experienced the rise of Zionist support as assimilation, of turning away from the fight for inclusion, equality and rights—exactly what Israel represents—a turning away from justice. I too am concerned about anti-Semitic responses because of Israeli claims to represent Jews complicated by Jews around the world having failed to fight anti-semitism and to distinguish between anti-semitism and criticism of Israel. Now that there is a growing voice of Jewish criticism of Israel, a growing voice for justice for Palestinians as linked to the Jewish tradition against oppression and injustice, the apologists have a formidable opponent from within Jewish communities, that will not disappear because of dismissals with labels of “self-hating” or traitor. My fight against anti-Semitism brought me to see how problematic Zionism is for Jewish freedom and justice.

My suggestion to those who suffer knee-jerk support for Israel: go to the Palestinian territories, meet the people, experience their life under occupation—experience as I did the reversal of prejudice, the privileging of Jews everywhere—the degradation and trauma of daily life for the Palestinians. Non-violent resistance, education, and history keep people human in the face of an occupying power that does not recognize them as people who count How else could the Israeli military have leveled the industrial capacity of Gaza, destroyed the agricultural lands, destroyed the infrastructure, and massacred civilians if prior to the invasion the Gazans hadn’t been already moved out of the category of human?

Comment by Marla on 4/01/09 at 12:50 pm

Marla:

When Ethan Bronner, the leftist New York Times “reporter” states that “Mr. Fisk is most passionate and least informed about Israel”, whatever else followed your stated appreciation for Fisk was immediately suspect. Reading your comment thoroughly did not diminish my expectations. The only comment that I will make is that your sense of justice and injustice is horribly awry and suggest that you view the following two clips:

http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/2042.htm

http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/2058.htm

This is what you have chosen to support.

Comment by Alice Rage on 4/01/09 at 1:53 pm

More anti-jew rhetoric what is the world coming to ?
Reality

Comment by Dallas on 4/01/09 at 2:26 pm

Hateful comments are on all sides. If only Alice Rage would look at the anti-Arab bigotry along with the anti-Jewish bigotry. There are plenty of comments to go around. Where does it get us to use such quotes on whatever side to show the bigotry—not closer to peace or justice. How about suggestions of getting people to cross the exclusionary boundaries, to encounter each other with mutual respect. Using hateful quotes on either side simply functions to say human connection is impossible. It isn’t. Ok, what is your sense of justice—do you want to embrace massacres of civilians? In an interview with Benny Morris before his book on The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, he states:
“The revised book is a double-edged sword. It is based on many documents that were not available to me when I wrote the original book, most of them from the Israel Defense Forces Archives. What the new material shows is that there were far more Israeli acts of massacre than I had previously thought. To my surprise, there were also many cases of rape. In the months of April-May 1948, units of the Haganah [the pre-state defense force that was the precursor of the IDF] were given operational orders that stated explicitly that they were to uproot the villagers, expel them and destroy the villages themselves.” That is to Morris an amoral recitation of events. It was for him what needed to be done to create a Jewish state.
Are these acts by the Haganah the embodiment of Justice? What does international human rights law have to say about that or is human rights not a viable concept?

Comment by Marla on 4/01/09 at 4:19 pm

Marla:

Benny Morris has changed his mind and so should you.

“...if he was already engaged in expulsion, maybe he should have done a complete job. I know that this stuns the Arabs and the liberals and the politically correct types. But my feeling is that this place would be quieter and know less suffering if the matter had been resolved once and for all. If Ben-Gurion had carried out a large expulsion and cleansed the whole country - the whole Land of Israel, as far as the Jordan River. It may yet turn out that this was his fatal mistake. If he had carried out a full expulsion - rather than a partial one - he would have stabilized the State of Israel for generations.”

http://www.counterpunch.org/shavit01162004.html

Comment by Alice Rage on 4/01/09 at 5:23 pm

Marla:

I was just re-reading the Morris interview at the URL in the above post.  Here is another snippet:

“...Zionism was not a mistake. The desire to establish a Jewish state here was a legitimate one, a positive one. But given the character of Islam and given the character of the Arab nation, it was a mistake to think that it would be possible to establish a tranquil state here that lives in harmony with its surroundings.”

You should read the entire interview.

Comment by Alice Rage on 4/01/09 at 5:38 pm

Benny Morris, in his personal views, had already changed in his book on the refugees. But the facts, can we agree, are the facts. Massacres then and now of civilians, expulsions and destruction of Palestinian villages, rape, etc. You can support that or not. Most Jews support Human rights in every context except Israel. For many it is hard to reconcile as evidence by the growing numbers who are aghast by Gaza and the election of Netanyahu and Lieberman. Give me international human rights law—created in ‘48 as a response to the horrors of WWII—not only the holocaust, but the saturation bombing of Dresden, etc. Israel signed the Geneva conventions and yet continue to break them.

Zionism had different meanings—some were nationalists, others not. You and Morris support the Nationalist Zionism that won. But others like Martin Buber had a different take and Buber was quite prescient here about what the future would be:

In 1949, Buber warned, in this post-war year, that “peace, when it comes, will not be peace, a real peace which is constructive, creative [but] a stunted peace, no more than non-belligerence, which at any moment, when any new constellation of forces arises, is liable to turn into war.

“And when this hollow peace is achieved, how then do you think you’ll be able to combat ‘the spirit of militarism’ when the leaders of the extreme nationalism will find it easy to convince the young that this kind of spirit is essential for the survival of the country? The battles will cease, but will suspicions cease? Will there be an end to the thirst for vengeance? Won’t we be compelled, and I mean really compelled, to maintain a posture of vigilance forever, without being able to breathe? Won’t this unceasing effort occupy the most talented members of our society?” Buber is prophetic about the path of Jewish nationalism—that it was not even in the interests of Jews if finding safety and home was their goal. Rather, he proposed a way of Jews and Arab Palestinians coming to terms with each other:

“We considered and still consider it our duty to understand and to honor the claim which is opposed to ours and to endeavor to reconcile both claims… We have been and still are convinced that it must be possible to find some form or agreement between this claim and the other; for we love this land and believe in its future; and seeing that such love and faith are surely present also on the other side, a union in the common service of the land must be within the range of the possible.”

Comment by Marla on 4/01/09 at 6:24 pm

Marla:

Yours is the typical fantasy ideology of the left replete with their standard moral equivalences such as “...not only the holocaust, but the saturation bombing of Dresden…” (I’m surprised that you didn’t include the atomic bombing of Japan for these are the common shibboleths of the left); and, its concomitant lack of comprehension of cause and effect. I used Morris in an attempt to demonstrate that it is possible for the most devoted leftist to mature. The old saw that the only difference between a liberal and conservative is a mugging was true for Morris. For him it was “The bombing of the buses and restaurants”. For Ron Silver it was 9/11, etc., etc.  The other difference between leftists and for lack of a better term, realists, is, as I mentioned above, the typical leftist’s flouting of chronology or appreciation of cause and effect. It was the Arab’s unrelenting aggression fueled by the very real fear of annihilation of a five army invasion that set off the events that Morris describes.  Many of the events represented by Morris are vastly overblown, some are true and regrettable, but all are the foreseeable result of a war thrust on highly motivated but largely untrained men and women fighting for their very survival.  Likewise, it was the constant bombardment of Sderot and environs (over 10,000 missiles in the past 8 years) that caused the regrettably incomplete operation in Gaza. And, Marla, it is precisely your indulgence in chimera that is the basis for your inability to distinguish between good and evil and cause and effect. For example the canard that “...such love and faith are surely present also on the other side…” is another stunning signal of a deluded mind. The clips that I asked you to view explicated in excruciating detail that the Arab is incapable of co-existence with the Jew, yet you persist in your fantasy ideology.  Now, I have already outlined the value system of the left in a previous post. I’ll restate it here:

For the left, indiscriminateness is a moral imperative - that is, not discriminating is the pinnacle of their morality - that’s why to them success is an injustice and failure necessarily indicates victimhood; and, to extend the logic that’s why leftists persecute Jews: They are successful to a miraculous degree (especially in Israel) thus the poor, poor ancient Palestinians must be their victims. What is so outrageously stupid about leftists and their fellow travelers is that they invariably end up on the same side as the Islamists who are the ultimate discriminators, who de facto, as Muslims, hate Jews. They become natural allies.

If you put your “faith” in institutions like the UN or the illusion of “international human rights law” you’ll find yourself slaughtered like so many Daniel Pearls or Nicholas Bergs. After all the League of Nations did such wonderful work protecting the Jews of Europe, didn’t they? And, please don’t bet the farm on Buber’s “synthetic thesis of dialogical existence”; dialectical materialism did such wonderful things for the proletariat, didn’t it?

Marla, in closing, I would simply encourage you to return to the faith of your fathers and rejoice in Zion.

PS Please excuse any typos it’s late for me.

Comment by Alice Rage on 4/01/09 at 8:16 pm

Foxman ‘hideously’ misinterpreted the cartoon when he said: “It employs Nazi imagery by portraying Israel as a jack-booted, goose-stepping headless apparition.”

The jackbooted, headless sword wielding figure is not Israel - it is meant to be America.  Israel is clearly represented by the sharp-fanged Star of David.

It is the USA is represented by the headless/brainless (stupid yet brawny) jackbooted thug, being led by the wobbly yet dangerous Jewish state.  Though the USA is being led by the Jewish state (represented by the star), it is also steering it as well. 

Also notice that all three (Gaza, Israel, America) are headed off the cliff.  Seems accurate to me.

Comment by Attacking Iran will start WWIII on 4/02/09 at 1:33 am

Interesting. That is the first time I have heard that take on the Oliphant cartoon. It seems like it could be a very accurate insight into his intended message. Now, let’s write opposing 8-page pages about this like we did in college film class ...

Comment by Brad A. Greenberg on 4/02/09 at 1:41 am

so america is propping up israel.  nice analysis.

Comment by Proton Soup on 4/02/09 at 2:06 am

No need for eight page analysis. If the robotic Terminator figure does represent the USA, it changes nothing about the intent of the cartoon (except to make it stupider and more pandering and propagandistic), or about the reaction to it.

Comment by Ben Plonie on 4/02/09 at 2:31 am

I, too, attempted to “deconstruct” Oliphant’s symbology and here is the best that I conjure up.

These are the elements of the cartoon from right to left:

The cliff.

The tiny (by comparison to the other symbols) figure of a covered (Islamic?) woman protecting an infant.

The voracious Magen David supported by a tiny wheel.

The headless, sword-wielding, goose-stepping muscular giant of a figure pushing the previous symbol.

Now the cliff is obvious as is the tiny figure to the left of it. It is the sole labeled object, “Gaza”. The next is also relatively easy. It is the rapacious State of Israel about to force Gaza over the cliff. The single tiny wheel can only represent the unsteadiness (or lack of stability or political precariousness or perhaps impermanence) of Israel. The last is the apparition pushing Israel. This is, of course, the most difficult to ascertain; but, I believe that the key is to be found here:

http://www.marxists.org/subject/art/visual_arts/satire/minor/minor2.htm

This cartoon by the American Communist, Robert Minor, is captioned as an Army Medical Examiner exclaiming “At last a perfect soldier!” (The Masses 8 (July 1916), back cover.)

A brief biography of Minor can be found here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Minor

I will hazard a guess that Oliphant is not only familiar with this cartoon, but to at least some degree associates with Minor.

So, we have the “perfect soldier”, the IDF, pushing the unsteady but voracious State of Israel into destroying the helpless Gaza.  A proper exegesis would demand knowing Oliphant much better, but frankly, my dears, I don’t give that much of a damn - for any satire to work, it must be based on truth, and there’s the rub.

“Well, I ain’t got a witness, and I can’t prove it,
but that’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it.”

Comment by Alice Rage on 4/02/09 at 4:22 am

Excellent. In the cartooning community, it is probably as obvious as a jazz player quoting a riff. But as stated, it does not actually matter who the golem is. It is whoever one considers the brainless amoral enemy pursuers of the helpless (little woman) and innocent (baby) inhabitants (Arab clothed) of Gaza. In any case, the personifications and characterizations are unambiguous, slanted and distorted.

Comment by Ben Plonie on 4/02/09 at 7:53 am

http://www.islamicfascism.net/cs/photos/cartoons/images/51/original.aspx

Comment by Alice Rage on 4/02/09 at 3:50 pm

What? No roaches in the room? Too bad! After Calvin was finished baptizing ALLAH in the name of the Red, White and Blue, he was going to transmogrify his followers into apes and pigs.  Well, we’ll do it next time.

Comment by Alice Rage on 4/03/09 at 6:11 am

As if rational people needed additional support:

http://www.hizbollah.tv/caricature.php

Comment by Alice Rage on 4/13/09 at 10:16 pm

Maybe Oliphant is looking to get royalties from a whole new propaganda market. If Carter could do it, why not Oliphant?

Comment by Ben Plonie on 4/14/09 at 12:17 am

Ben:

They’re in their element aren’t they?

Comment by Alice Rage on 4/14/09 at 12:28 am

Is it the whole Oliphant cartoon? It seems to me you’ve cut the right part of the original frame. Don’t you think it would be fair to show readers the critical part of the message? But…even the whole cartoon isn’t a good way to criticize the Israel policy, it really offends “chosen people”.

Comment by dildo on 9/22/09 at 8:42 am

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