Skip to content or view screen version

Is this cartoon by Latuff anti-Semitic?

AKdH | 16.02.2002 17:04

Is this cartoon by Latuff, published at indymedia-switzerland, anti-Semitic?
An analysis.

 http://www.akdh.ch/latuff2.htm
in german --->  http://www.akdh.ch/latuff.htm

The cartoon evokes a clear association of a WWII ghetto in Poland. The figure shown is obviously based on the image from the infamous photograph of the little boy who is threatened by an SS-man armed with a gun. Hardly any other picture from any ghetto has the same symbolic and emotional impact.
Further associations are stirred up. A Jewish community, living in Poland for centuries, is brutally violenced and detained to a Ghetto for one single reason: Because they are Jews. There is no political or strategic military goal behind this "ghettoization", only the thorough extermination of the Jewish population. The ghettos in Eastern Europe are part of the holocaust; they are the waiting room for the extermination camps.
The caption in the bubble "I am Palestinian" picks up the figure of the devastated Jewish child and transforms it into a different one. Now the Palestinians are the ghetto-child whose fate is in the hands of oppressors who clearly intend his extinction. But the oppressors, too, are in the picture. Through the sentence "I am Palestinian" it is made clear that the ghetto wardens of today are not the Nazis anymore, but the Israelis. The picture conveys the clear association that the Jews themselves do nowexactly the same what the Nazis did to them in the Thirties and Forties of the last century. From a psychological point of view this means that the Jews suffer from an obsessive-compulsive urge to re-stage the ghetto trauma again and again to be able to face it at all and thus may have the trace of a chance to free themselves from it. For this purpose all means seem justifiable to the Jews = Israelis. The "Jews" are the "Germans" of the Middle East, the murderous invaders who attack as well - and foremost - children. Their only goal is the total extermination of the Palestinian people.
Enough said about the heavy symbolism of the picture's antagonism between the "people", symbolized by a child, and the "black wall" (execution wall at Auschwitz?). It is part of the above explanation.
Jews are reduced to a symbol here and the holocaust thus intrumentalized as a clever catchphrase to insinuate that the holocaust a) was not a singular experience and b) that the Israelis do exactly the same, i.e. follow a comprehensive genocidal agenda. Jews are "allotted" just victim-status, which they have to live by. If they don't, they are automatically labelled with the "global conspiracy" stereotype, which portrays them as aspiring tyrant rulers of the world.
The emblematic set-up of the Israelis = Nazis symbol has become a much-used topos within the Arab world since the foundation of Israel 1948. It is published regularly in Arab newspapers, although in a much more direct way (Moshe Dayan meets Hitler and gets a compliment as his (Hitler's) "best disciple"). In the picture we are discussing here this is done much more subtly, but not any less anti-Semitic.

The icon of the "global Jewish plotter" who poses as a victim, yet is a perpetrator, is a figure frequently used in the 19th and early 20th century. Depending on the point of view of the critic, Jews were either revolutionaries threatening law and order or cannibal exploitative abusers. Both of those images imply that "the Jews" are following an agenda of taking over global power.
The relativation of the holocaust and the denial of its singularity is a further anti-Semitic symbol, which allows to intrumentalize the extremely emotional topic of the holocaust in a populist and polemic fashion for other purposes and which implies invariably elements of excuse for German society as well.
The cartoon abuses, polemically, sensationally and luridly, the suffering of the Jewish people in the holocaust to cast the Jews as the evil incarnated in the Middle East. This is no cartoonist, legitimate larger-than-life illustration to make a point, this puts an end to any dialogue between Palestinians and Israelis. No communication is possible between the mutely murderous black wall and the helpless child. The only solution is a demolition of the wall and as the wall stands for Israel = Jewry, when all is said and done, the cartoon stands for the extermination of the Jewish people and the state of Israel.

AKdH
- Homepage: http://www.akdh.net

Comments

Hide the following 6 comments

Ridiculous

16.02.2002 18:37

This fallacious argument is just so absurd that it beggars belief. The fact is that Israel is subjecting the Palestinian people to the policies of ethnic cleansing and extermination similar to those suffered by Jews under the Nazis. The West Bank and the Gaza Strip are effectively ghettoes and Arabs in Israel and the occupied territories are denied human rights and freedom. That's what the cartoon is trying to portray.

It is not anti-semitic to suggest that Palestinians are experiencing the same kind of racism their oppressors once suffered. It is not anti-semitic to point out that Israel is a Jewish state with a deeply entrenched policy of racial apartheid and genocide. It is not anti-semitic to claim that the holocaust is not a unique event. There is nothing in this cartoon that explicitly or implicitly states that the Jewish race must be exterminated, unless the observer is deeply paranoid.

This legal action is a political stunt to shut Indymedia down. As such, AKDH is essentially a fascist organisation, intent on silencing those it disagrees with.

My Jewish relatives were chased out of Italy by the fascists, so I guess I am a 'child of the holocaust'. The AKDH's use of suffering in a campaign of censorship and oppression in the Swiss courts is a betrayal of those who suffered in the Holocaust. Unlike Latuff, this disgusting organisation is deeply offence and akin to Nazi skinhead groups, only more rich and more insidious.

Dan Brett
mail e-mail: dan@danielbrett.co.uk


FALSE!

16.02.2002 19:08

>There is no political or strategic military goal behind this "ghettoization", only the
>thorough extermination of the Jewish population.

There is always a political reason in genocideS and holocaustS which can be explained on many
levels. Jewish were chosen by nazis because they were historically exploitable as scapegoats for
the terrible economic situation.
There is no trascendece in jewish extermination because there is no relation between god and
history. The idea of god, of any god, is unuseful and dangerous to rationally explain history
and has brought to the worst events of human history.
Unluckly making genocides and holocausts is a possibility of human nature present in past
and future history. This is why we have to fight Sharon as well as we fought (and fight) nazis.

These days there's an evident plan, shared by many politicians and militars in the state of
Israel, to kill all the palestinians. This is a plan of genocide similar to that carried out by
the US against the american indians.

The equation anti-semitism = anti-zionism = anti-Israel is totally false. There are atheist
citizen of Israel as there are anti-nationalist zionists. There are racist zionist and
non-racist zionist (even if a minority these days). Semitis do not exist and are an ideological
invention of bilogical racists like Adolf Hitler.
Israel is recognized by the international community as a laic state, not as a theocracy.


>Jews are reduced to a symbol here and the holocaust thus intrumentalized as a clever
>catchphrase to insinuate that the holocaust a) was not a singular experience and b) that the
>Israelis do exactly the same, i.e. follow a comprehensive genocidal agenda.


Every historic event is singular and every historic event isn't monopoly of anyone except of
human race. Holocausts are no one's property!
The Holocaust regards jewish as gipsy as homosexuals as communists and is an offence to humanity in its entirety.

Singularity doesn' imply trascendece of any kind.
Not Israelis, but israelian government and militar establishment are willing to do something
very similar to the palestinians.


>The relativation of the holocaust and the denial of its singularity is a further anti-Semitic
>symbol, which allows to intrumentalize the extremely emotional topic of the holocaust in a
>populist and polemic fashion for other purposes and which implies invariably elements of
>excuse for German society as well.


Each historical event is relative to others and, at the same time, is singular.
This hasn't nothing to do with with populism or excuses for German society.
You can't forbid historical analysys of any historical event!

rum


proof

16.02.2002 19:17

proof of israelian government genocidial tendencies:

 http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2002/2905israel_warsaw.html

bea


Not the peace demonstrators

17.02.2002 14:47

To say the Latuff cartoon is anti-semitic would be like calling the 20,000 Tel Aviv Jewish peace demonstrators, and the 250 Jewish reserve officers refusing service in the Occupied Territories anti-semitic.Obfuscation of distinction between Zionist and jew. A lot of it about.

dh


ridiculous

18.02.2002 03:28

I would like to state that those who oppose also attempt to demonise. It happens anywhere there exists conflict.
Latuff's artwork provides a very valuable outlet to enhance the awareness and support for the people of Palestine.

To label it anti-semetic is an infantile response. In the context of the series of pieces "I am palestinian" they illustrated the oppression, murder and degradation inflicted against the Palestinian people - this event clearly mirrors other events in history whereby genocide is clearly the agenda not just the holocoust, which generally is accepted for the tradegy it was not just for the jewish population but also for catholics, disabled people, homosexuals, and others that died at the hands of Hitlers insanity.
The worst possible situation as depicted by Paulo Friere is when the oppressed become the opressors. The tactics of Israeli government's inhumane machine is truly reflective of that of their own historical oppressors. (as defined by themselves)

Àine


why do I need a title ?

18.02.2002 04:07

genocide is genocide. On the other hand israel is just a symptom, palestinians get all the attention because you are lazy pseudo-activists. Israel's rotten but all those hired muscle puppet regimes are equally bad most probably

hal