From my blog.
What sort of country revels in murder and oppression but cries to high heavens about cartoons?
Saudi Arabia? Check. Syria? Check. Libya? Check. Iran? Check.
Israel? Check:
Israel’s ambassador to Norway has complained to press regulators about a cartoon showing Israeli PM Ehud Olmert as a Nazi concentration camp commander.
Miryam Shomrat told the BBC the caricature in Oslo’s Dagbladet newspaper went beyond free speech.
Ms Shomrat said it would be open to prosecution in some European countries.
Dagbladet’s editor said the caricature was “within the bounds of freedom of expression,” according to Norway’s NRK state broadcaster.
Ms Shomrat made the official complaint to the Norwegian Press Trade Committee following the publication of the cartoon on 10 July.
In an interview with the BBC’s Europe Today, she said however that her protest could not be compared to the outcry in the Muslim world over the publication in a Danish newspaper of cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed.
Lars Helle, Dagbladet’s acting editor-in-chief, said the newspaper was taking the complaint seriously.
“But I do not fear that Dagbladet will be found guilty,” Mr Helle told the NRK.
The cartoon shows Mr Olmert standing on a balcony in a prison camp.
He is holding a sniper’s rifle and a dead man is seen lying on the ground.
The drawing clearly alluded to the Hollywood film Schindler’s List, in which a sadistic Nazi commander shoots Jewish prisoners for fun, according to Dagbladet.
Here is the doodle in question, which Brit Hume at FAUXNews cites as proof of “a real strain of anti-Semitism in European opinion”:
The allusion to Schindler’s List is clear. Now here’s another list:
1. Anwar Isma’el Atallah, 12 years old
2. Saleh Sleman Al Jemasi, 16 years old
3. Ruwan Fareed Hajjaj, 5 years old
4. Khalid Nidal Abed Al Karim Wahbeh, 1 year old
5. Mahfouth Farid Nasseer, 15 years old
6. Ahmad Ghaleb Abu Amshah, 16 years old
7. Ahmed Fathi Odah Shabat, 16 years old
8. Waleed Mahmoud Al Zinati, 12 years old
9. Salah Adeen Hammad Abu Maktuma, 17 years old
10. Ibrahim Ali Khatoush, 15 years old
11. Mahmoud Muhammad Al Asar, 15 years old
12. Ibrahim Ali Al Nabaheen, 15 years old
13. Ahmad Abdil Mina’m Abu Hajaj, 16 years old
14. Nasrallah Nabil Abu Selmieh, 5 years old
15. Aya Nabil Abu Selmieh, 7 years old
16. Iman Nabil Abu Selmieh, 11 years old
17. Yahya Nabil Abu Selmieh, 9 years old
18. Huda Nabil Abu Selmieh, 13 years old
19. Basma Nabil Abu Selmieh, 15 years old
20. Sumaia Nabil Abu Selmieh, 16 years old
21. Raji Omar Deif Alla, 16 years old
22. Muhanna Sa’ed Mesleh, 16 years old
23. Ahmad Rawhee Abdo, 13 years old
24. Ali Kamil Al Najar, 13 years old
25. Fadwa Faisel al ‘Urouqi, 13 years old
26. Mohammad Awad Muhra, 17 years old
27. Khitam Muhammad Tayeh, 11 years old
28. Nadee Habib Al Ataar, 11 years old
29. Saleh Ibrahim Nasser, 13 years old
30. Bashir Abdullah Awad Abu Thaher, 12 years old
31. Sabrine Naser Habib, 3 years old
The above are children killed by the IDF in Gaza alone since June 26, according to Defence for Children International.
Two questions come to mind: 1. How far off is the cartoon in light of this list? 2. To the extent that it misses the mark, which is more unacceptable? The cartoon, or the list?
Though the Secretariat of the Norwegian Press Trade Committee has already recommended that the complaint be rejected, Ms. Shomrat continues her campaign to stir up outrage over the cartoon. Here is the ambassador making her case in the New York Sun:
Ms. Shomrat said that while Dagbladet, a “reputable” paper, has allowed pro-Israel opinion pieces, it has been quite critical of Israel…. She also said that if the cartoon were printed 50 years ago, it would have been fit for Der Stürmer, the weekly Nazi newspaper.Is it a crime for a European paper to be critical of Israel? Did Der Stürmer come out in 1956? And lastly, who is now making tasteless comparisons?
Israel’s objection to freedom of expression in another country is nothing like the Muhammed protest because Israel is fighting a war? Since the New York Sun can hardly be suspected of anti-Israel bias, presumably the ambassador is accurately quoted. And it boggles the mind.
Israel used to be adept at propaganda as well as war. What went wrong?
The ambassador’s campaign puts her in some bad company: genuinely anti-semitic cartoons are best found in the Middle Eastern newspapers protesting the Muhammed caricatures.
(The above link also includes a few more drawings by the excellent Finn Graff. One of my favorites was when he drew two copulating elephants, the female with the American flag draped over her head and the male with a crucifix for a penis. Republicans Abroad went batshit crazy over that one.)
you should post the elephant cartoon. We could have a flamewar over it.
Heh. Unfortunately, I don’t have it.
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There is nothing in the cartoon depicting any anti-semitic expression. The ‘security’ wall looks like the Israeli illegal wall on Palestinian land, thereby creating concentration areas of people on the West Bank with no place to go and separated from schools, olive groves, and basic means to survive. Olmert has secured East-Jerusalem for the Jewish population, separating Palestinian families from traveling in or out of the holy city.
That innocent civilians are targeted in Gaza and the West Bank cannot be denied, there are too many incidents. More than once, the unlawful killing is covered-up by the IDF ‘investigation’. Sometimes, a nation won’t accept the result of the white-wash and after years of diplomatic effort there is a conviction. The Israeli attitude doesn’t change however, on the contrary. The next generation of Israeli politicians and military staff, are close to being criminal in their policy, supported by every U.S. administration since Jimmy Carter.
KHARTOUM, Sudan (The Guardian) Jan. 5, 2005 — Mbeke singled out Churchill as a progenitor of vicious prejudice who justified British atrocities by depicting the continent’s inhabitants as inferior races who needed to be subdued, and pointed out that Kitchener and Wolseley had waged ruthless campaigns in Sudan and South Africa.
“To some extent we can say that when these eminent representatives of British colonialism were not in Sudan, they were in South Africa, and vice versa, doing terrible things wherever they went, justifying what they did by defining the native peoples of Africa as savages that had to be civilised, even against their will.”
Mr Mbeki said this attitude conditioned the behaviour of British empire-building in South Africa, including the crushing of the Zulu people and the scorched earth policy and concentration camps of the Anglo-Boer war.
Exclusive interview with opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu
“Israel is subject to restraint, we are a moral country facing immoral savages, having no moral boundaries”.
Click on VIDEO button in article –
The interview will be in English.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
via Kurt Nimmo: