Minor victory for the antisemitism card

There have been many grotesque caricatures of Jews in the past and, of course, more recently.  One recurring theme is the power of Jews to manipulate apparently powerful politicians.  But what do we do when reality resembles these antisemitic caricatures?

Just recently Israel embarked on its equivalent of Super Tuesday.  It slaughtered a batch of Palestinians following the announcement of a general election.  In spite of Israel's clear escalation of the situation, Tony Blair, Israel's envoy to The Quartet, and William Hague, the UK foreign minister, both parroted Netanyahu's excuse which was something about Hamas firing rockets, without any mention of why Hamas might be firing those rockets.  As I posted earlier, Steve Bell, of the Guardian, ran a cartoon depicting Blair and Hague as glove puppets of Netanyahu.  Now this resembled an antisemitic cartoon of yore.

There were predictable complaints from the usual sources, here and here and of course not just there and there.  And eventually the Guardian readers' editor, Chris Elliott,  got on the case.  It's a strange title, readers' editor, because his job seems to be responded to the complaints of people for whom the Guardian can do nothing right. He set out a few complaints plus a defence of his own position by Steve Bell before concluding thus:

I don't believe that Bell is an antisemite, nor do I think it was his intention to draw an antisemitic cartoon. However, using the image of a puppeteer when drawing a Jewish politician inevitably echoes past antisemitic usage of such imagery, no matter the intent.

The Holocaust and its causes are still within living memory. While journalists and cartoonists should be free to express an opinion that Netanyahu is opportunistic and manipulative, in my view they should not use the language – including the visual language – of antisemitic stereotypes.

 Now how on earth did the subject morph from the sycophancy of western leaders towards the State of Israel to the holocaust?  Never mind.  It just did, that's all.  The Guardian readers' editor has come out in support of the zionists on this one and nowhere in his piece does it mention what gave rise to the cartoon in the first place, ie, the Israeli attack on Gaza and Tony Blair and William Hague's support for it.  It did mention Netanyahu's manipulativeness but not what it was deployed for.  So the last word in the Guardian on Israel's latest attack on Gaza is mention of the holocaust and condemnation of the kind of behaviour by Israel and its allies that resembles an antisemitic caricature.

By the way, I commented on the readers' editor's piece. I wonder if it will stay in place.

Israel's recent attack on Gaza follows a pattern of Israel killing lots of civilians in the run up to an Israeli election. Netanyahu offered a bogus excuse for the attack, as did Tzipi Livni before him, as did Shimon Peres over his attack on Qana. This time, Blair and Hague repeated Netanyahu's excuse as if it was a genuine explanation. That is, they behaved like glove puppets of Netanyahu. And there's the rub. There have been grotesque caricatures of Jews in the past but whose fault is it if an Israeli leader and high profile politicians in the west behave like those caricatures?

It's sad that one of the letters supporting Steve Bell says, "Mark Gardner can't be allowed to get away with the old trick of pretending all criticism of the Israeli government is antisemitic.". Unfortunately, looking at the last couple of paragraphs of the article above, he does seem to have got away with it. Shame.

Comments are still open at the time of writing.

Why bark when you have two dogs?

This is a Steve Bell cartoon from The Guardian. The picture appears to be saying that William Hague and Tony Blair are saying exactly what Netanyahu is saying even though Israel's latest assault on Gaza seems to be a typical Israeli election stunt.  But for Telegraph hasbara blogger, Brendan O'Neill, it is saying that "Jews [are] still running the world".

Elsewhere in the Telegraph there's a report on how the BBC apologised to Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, for catching him on the back foot with a question about Gaza.

Lord Sacks sighed, before replying: “I think it has got to do with Iran, actually.” Mr Davis’s co-presenter, Sarah Montague, was clearly concerned that Lord Sacks did not seem to know his remarks were still being broadcast and could be heard to whisper: “We, we’re live.”

Lord Sacks then swiftly adopted a more formal broadcasting manner and suggested the crisis demanded “a continued prayer for peace, not only in Gaza but for the whole region”.

“No-one gains from violence. Not the Palestinians, not the Israelis. This is an issue here where we must all pray for peace and work for it,” he said.

Mr Davis thanked his guest and announced that the programme would “move on” to the next item.

In a statement the BBC apologised for catching the Chief Rabbi off-guard.

A spokesman said: “The Chief Rabbi hadn’t realised he was still on-air and as soon as this became apparent, we interjected. Evan likes to be spontaneous with guests but he accepts that in this case it was inappropriate and he has apologised to Lord Sacks. The BBC would reiterate that apology.”

Hard to see what there was to apologise for here except that, when he thought he was off air, the Chief Rabbi responded like a politician and when he knew he was on air he returned to religion mode. Anyway, perhaps I should change the headline above to "why bark when you have three dogs?"

UPDATE at 5:20 am 9/12/2012: I just had an interesting chat with a chap called Dave Zeglen on the Fat Man on a Keyboard blog where he (Dave Zeglen) says why he thinks the Steve Bell cartoon is antisemitic:

Levi9909,

I don't think criticism of Israel is a priori anti-Semitic, and I also accept that there are certainly some people who respond to legitimate criticism of Israel with the charge that the accuser is being anti-Semitic. However, in this particular case of Steve Bell's cartoon, it is an anti-Semitic cartoon because it invokes an anti-Semitic stereotype for a man who is Jewish. Even if Steve Bell did not intend the cartoon to be racist, the symbolism is clearly racist given how the trope of the Jewish puppet master has been historically used to marginalize Jewish people. Netanyahu should rightly be criticized, but this was not the way to do it. Bell defended his cartoon with the same argument you put forward, that because it depicts a specific individual at a specific moment, it isn't anti-Semitic, but how can you ignore the fact that the person depicted is also a Jew? It's not the same when you invoke a puppeteer trope for a leader who isn't Jewish because there may not be that historical association with a non-Jewish leader. As a corollary, it might be acceptable to draw George W. Bush as a monkey to mock his incompetence, but it would surely be racist to do the same with Obama because of the historical use of such imagery regarding black people, right?

I did respond but I don't want to be ungracious by giving myself the last word here. If you want to see my response, go there. Ta.