Oliphant – whose work I usually find humdrum in the extreme – has done us a favor. Deliberately or not, he has dropped the oldest of phony Leftist pretenses – that anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism are not the same. The poor, diminutive woman and child of Gaza in his cartoon are being eaten alive by a rapacious Jewish star, not by the flag of Israel. It is the religion or ethnic group (you decide), not the state – Jews, not Israelis – performing this supposedly horrific act.
Well, thank you, Oliphant, you racial primitive you. You let the cat out of the bag we always knew was in there. And you did it in the pages of the Washington Post.
It was always a pretty thin excuse.
[Update a few minutes later]
More thoughts from Ron Radosh:
in his new cartoon, Oliphant echoes the kind of propaganda once favored by the Nazis in their racist paper Der Strumer, edited by one of Hitler’s top journalists, Julius Streicher. What Oliphant does is show a headless Nazi-like soldier- an Israeli- goose-stepping Nazi fashion with his sword ready for action. He is ready to inflict a weaponized Star of David on a mother and child in Gaza. The right side of the religious symbol of Judaism is depicted as a shark coming at the hapless victims.
If you think the comparison to the cartoons in Streicher’s rag is going too far, take a look at this cartoon. Or this one: the Jewish “monster” with his claw-like hands trying to take over the world. One might wonder if Oliphant consulted this Nazi archive for inspiration.
He probably didn’t have to. They have modern equivalents in Middle East media.
That’s reaching. What symbol is centered on the flag of Israel? The “Jewish star” as it appears in the Oliphant cartoon. You will note that with the bar on the bottom and the smoke in the air, it does match rather closely the appearance of the flag of Israel.
FYI, Pat Oliphant is the cartoonist. Tom Oliphant is a columnist.
Thanks, fixed. I’m not a big Tom Oliphant fan, either, but credit where credit (or blame) is due.
Hmmm, on the other hand, the soldier’s uniform (and sword) and the style of the toothy maw on the Star of David does look an awful lot like the old Nazi cartoons and deviates considerably from what I remember of Oliphant’s style. I’d say it’s a deliberate attempt to mimic anti-semitic propaganda of older times. Whether that implies Oliphant is anti-semitic here is a different story. I still think that accusation hasn’t been established. Maybe he is or maybe he’s deliberately invoking that darker time to contrast it with the present. Back then, Jews were a helpless scapegoat. Now they are not and have indeed been involved in things which when one is ignorant of the context appear heinous (eg, bombing houses).
The links to the actual cartoon didn’t work for me. I found it online by googling gaza and oliphant. Here’s a link that did work: http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles_of_faith/2009/03/pointed_or_hate.html
Rand, your previous blog entry asked “What would Henry Ford say?”
With regard to this blog entry, the questions answers itself.