[WCUSP] Fw: [jvpphillyaa] [Fwd: FW: Holocaust Cartoon Contest]

[Libby or Mort Frank]

> Forwarded from AFSC,  from a friend.  Quite provocative and interesting. 
> Libby
>
> -----Original Message-----
>
> Holocaust Cartoon Contest
>
>
> Pascale Combelles Siegel | January 4, 2007
>
> Editor: John Feffer, IRC
>
> <http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/3868#comment>
> Foreign Policy In Focus www.fpif.org <http://www.fpif.org/>
>
> <http://www.irc-online.org/images/irc/616.jpg>
> Moroccan Abdellah Derkaoui's winning entry in the Iranian Holocaust
> cartoon contest
> In the wake of last year's controversy over the publication of cartoons
> of the prophet Mohammed, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad decided
> to launch an international cartoon contest. The objective: invite people
> from all over the world to question the reality of the Holocaust. The
> contest drew participants from all over the world and yielded more than
> 200 Holocaust-related cartoons.
>
> The first prize went to Moroccan cartoonist Abdellah Derkaoui. His
> caricature features an Israeli crane building a high wall around
> Jerusalem. In the background, half hidden by the wall, lies the dome of
> the Al-Aqsa mosque. Painted on the wall is a picture of the entrance to
> a death camp.
>
> The choice of Derkaoui's cartoon is somewhat surprising. The cartoon
> does not deny the Holocaust, for it uses the best-known symbol of the
> Nazi genocide to criticize current Israeli policies toward the
> Palestinians. This is not denial. The cartoon acknowledges that the Nazi
> genocide actually took place, that it was wrong, and that it remains an
> indisputable reality of Middle Eastern politics.
>
> One might have expected much worse from the Iranian government. Since
> his election, Ahmadinejad has made a number of provocative statements,
> casting doubt on the awful realities of the genocide and reiterating the
> old Arab view that if the genocide occurred in Europe, then Europe
> should have offered the Jews reparation in Europe and not made the
> Palestinians suffer the consequences of its tragic policies.
>
> However, the Iranian government refrained from choosing one of the
> rabidly anti-Semitic cartoons that drew on 20th-century European
> caricatures of Jews. Nor did it choose a cartoon that equated Israeli
> policies with the Nazis' quest for world domination. Nor did it choose a
> cartoon depicting Israel and the United States in cahoots to exploit the
> Palestinians. All these themes were depicted in various entries to the
> contest. The rejection of these more extreme representations might be a
> sign of moderation from an Iranian government seeking to change its
> strategic relationship with the U.S. government.
>
> Of course, Derkaoui's acknowledgement of the Nazis' Holocaust does not
> represent an ideological epiphany. It is designed to draw a moral
> equivalence between what happened to the Jews in Europe under Nazi
> domination and what is happening to the Palestinians at the hands of
> Israel now.
>
> This moral equivalency is very much debatable. Israel is not engaged in
> a Nazi-like policy against the Palestinians. Israel has never called for
> the extermination of Palestinians like the Nazi party toward the Jews in
> the 1930s. It has never engaged in a genocidal policy against the
> Palestinians like Germany did with the Jews in the 1940s. The moral
> equivalency argument also conveniently forgets that Palestinian
> militants have adopted murderous tactics and that some of the
> Palestinian political leadership still does not recognize the right of
> Israel to exist. It also conveniently forgets that the Arab world has
> committed its share of duplicitous acts of treachery against those same
> Palestinians.
>
> In short, there is really no moral equivalency between the two
> situations. But Derkaoui aims not so much to portray history accurately
> but to shock the West into realizing that Israel's heavy-handed tactics
> have, for too long, inflicted undue and immoral suffering on the
> Palestinians. That argument is likely to resonate loud and clear around
> the Middle East where the Palestinian cause has become the rallying cry
> and the symbol of the West's injustice toward the Arab-Muslim world.
>
> The success of the contest is based on a deep-seated feeling in Muslim
> societies that the West practices double standards when it comes to free
> speech: restraint when it comes to discussing Israel but blasphemy when
> it comes to discussing Islam. Indeed, all over the Middle East, many
> feel that issues such as the Holocaust or Israeli policies in the West
> Bank are not legitimate objects of discussion in the West. Such views
> are widespread, including among Arab elites.
>
> As for Western audiences, the moral equivalence argument will not likely
> go over very well. But Derkaoui's cartoon might be an opportunity to
> open a constructive dialogue on the subject. For such flawed moral
> equivalencies to become a relic of the past, however, both the national
> aspirations of the Palestinians and the right of Israel to a secure
> state have to be successfully addressed. But that will take more than
> cartoons and dialogue.
>
> FPIF contributor Pascale Combelles Siegel's research focuses on
> information operations (mainly public affairs, psychological operations,
> military-media relations, and public diplomacy) and civil-military
> relations.
>
>