The loathsome cartoon
Please take a look and a read, and see what passes for acceptable political cartoons these days.
This quote seems to me to be the most important:
[The mentality this cartoon represents] is part of the merging of much Western fashionable intellectual and cultural thinking with that of extremist Third World, and especially radical Islamist, propaganda.
The cartoonist doesn’t hate Jews; he probably doesn’t even hate Israelis. What is involved here is a lack of understanding so enormous that it will both incite hatred; cause violence and death; and block policies needed to help people””including Palestinians who, are supposedly the object of its sympathy but thus doomed to suffer under a repressive regime with a permanent war policy.
Antisemitism? Ask not for whom the bell tolls because Israel, the canary in the mine””the one who first they came for””can tell you that you are all next.
Rubin’s conclusion is well and moderately put. I’ve seen other discussions where commenters went wild with rage over the cartoon and the cartoonist, but I’m sure Rubin is correct: Oliphant doesn’t hate Jews or Israelis; Oliphant simply misunderstands the Israel-Palestine conflict at a foundational level.
Most of my friends are the same way. They assume there is a moral parity between Israel and Palestine, and so Israel is wrong about Gaza because it is bringing so much more fire power and killing more people.
Oliphant has been spewing forth his liberal opinions in his cartoons for at least forty years for the Washington Rag…er…Post. After that length of time, such a vicious cartoon can hardly be excused on the basis of a “misunderstanding.” The same applies to anyone who sees a moral parity between the Islamic terroists in Gaza and the Israelis. Ignorance and prejudice are more cogent reasons than “misunderstanding” for such beliefs. This cartoon would have been right at home on the editorial page of Der Angriff, the newspaper once published by Josef Goebbels. Disgraceful.
In the Peace Treaty between Israel and Egypt, Gaza was to be returned to Egypt and Egypt wanted no part of it. Gaza will always be a problem so long as Hamas and Fatah exist. The Palestinian people’s only chance at a life is to be rid of them.
Oliphant doesn’t see Hamas or Fatah as the jack booted bully and he never will as long as that is not the official Lib/Left position. Oliphant is knee jerk to the point of being a spastic and the last thing he’d want is to be cured of LLMS – Liberal Left Moral Superiority.
DJ — Misunderstanding works well combined with ignorance.
Anyone who claims “misunderstanding” as an excuse for finding a moral equivalence between those who describe Israel as a “cancerous tumor” which needs to be wiped off the map of the Middle East and actions taken by the Israelis to defend themselves from being wantonly slaughtered is guilty of willful ignorance, not mere failure to “understand” the difference and, therefore, culpable.
I understand your indignation, but I’m just talking about how things look from the viewpoint of a liberal like Oliphant.
I was a liberal like that until I read the Hamas Convenant and the Al-Qaeda fatwa against the United States for myself.
You can call it willful ignorance, if you like, but awareness of the elementary reality between Israel and Islamic nations, is not easy to come to by given the state of the media and the constant distractions and disinformation thrown up by the Islamists and the left.
Huxley: I have no disagreement with your basic points. It’s just that it is very difficult for me to perform the mental gymnastics required to accept the premise that someone like Oliphant, who has been a Washington fixture for several decades, can be excused from his actions on the basis of an inadequate “understanding” of the difference between the Israelis and the terrorists of Hamas. I notice also that the nattering nabobs in the MSM have largely remained silent on this cartoon matter. Let someone change the Star of David in the cartoon to a Crescent and Star and re-label the “Gaza” figure as “Christians” and there will be no “misunderstanding” of the views of those who howl in protest and anger.
Dan is right: Oliphant has been around for too many decades to be allowed the excuse of ignorance. He doesn’t want to know the truth.
Leaving aside Oliphant, surely some editor at the Washington Post or NY Times was aware of the cartoon’s anti-semitic imagery.
Well, we are now in Neo’s territory.
The ability of human beings to delete, distort, and exaggerate information to fit their worldview is limitless IMO.
I can easily imagine that Oliphant and the editors at NYT and WaPo could print that cartoon and feel nothing more than a mildly self-righteous satisfaction.
Call it the reverse of the Stockholm Syndrome.
Israel is too much trouble–you can’t reason the Arabs with or expect the Arabs to stop their aggression–so we’re going to pitch Israel overboard.
Figure that will fix things.
We rationalize it by allowing or requiring ourselves to believe Israel is the bad guy and so pitching them off the sled is just fine and dandy.
Nobody is so ignorant as to not know the facts.
But the facts are unimportant in the face of fear.
huxley: Your friends that put Israel and Hamas/ Fatah on an equal moral plane are 1) appallingly ignorant or 2) condoning evil. I wouldn’t claim them as friends were I you. You lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas.
Ishaq:208 “When Allah gave permission to his Apostle to fight, the second Aqaba contained conditions involving war which were not in the first act of submission. Now we bound themselves to war against all mankind for Allah and His Apostle. He promised us a reward in Paradise for faithful service. We pledged ourselves to war in complete obedience to Muhammad no matter how evil the circumstances.”
“Antisemitism? Ask not for whom the bell tolls because Israel, the canary in the mine–the one who first they came for–can tell you that you are all next.”
It will only end when either all the world are muslims, or until the doctrine of Islam is abolished.
Qur’an:8:39 “So fight them until there is no more Fitnah (disbelief) and all submit to the religion of Allah alone (in the whole world).”
Ishaq:324 “He said, ‘Fight them so that there is no more rebellion, and religion, all of it, is for Allah only. Allah must have no rivals.'”
huxley: Your friends that put Israel and Hamas/ Fatah on an equal moral plane are 1) appallingly ignorant or 2) condoning evil. I wouldn’t claim them as friends were I you. You lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas.
Tom — You are not I and I don’t come to this blog for personal advice.
I live in one of the bluest communities of America. As such, most of the people I know are a good deal farther to my left. Some of them have chosen not to associate with me any longer.
I don’t choose to wear a conservative hijab and only consort with my own kind.
Say, how is the opium production doing since the U S got deeper in AFGAN…?
Or, how many oil deals were shoved out to China after roses were not handed out since Cheney’s mutterings
…?
I tried to raise questions on Romney, and did I ever get back lashed, and slapped around.
Hitler doled out Military Contracts TOO ?
Well, we are not going to hear get HALLIBURTON off the backs of the U S taxpayers, in some circles, too many big corporations are in UNCLE SAMMY’s nickers