Cementing Hate on Holocaust Memorial Day
This cartoon published in The Sunday Times (subscription-only) would be offensive at the best of times. That it has appeared on Holocaust Memorial Day is doubly so.Penned by Gerald Scarfe (the cartoonist behind Pink Floyd’s The Wall), the caption reads: “Israeli Elections… Will Cementing Peace Continue?”
A hideous looking PM Benjamin Netanyahu caricature builds a wall cemented with blood, crushing Palestinians including women and children.
Israel’s security barrier (of which the vast majority is a fence and not a wall) is meant to protect Israeli civilians against Palestinian terrorism. In any case, the imagery of this cartoon amounts to a blood libel on a day when the millions of victims of the Holocaust are remembered.
In response, The Commentator’s Raheem Kassam states:
In conversation with a friend of mine
recently, I was asked, “Do you think in 200 years time, people will have
forgotten the Holocaust, or believe that it was a myth?” I naively
responded, “No. I believe there are enough good people in the world to
ensure that doesn’t happen.” At the time, I would never have thought the
editors of the Sunday Times were in amongst those who would seek, in
true Der Sturmer fashion, to use Holocaust Memorial Day to publish a
blood libel, and knowingly undermine the memory of one of the worst
genocides ever.
Holocaust Memorial Day is an
opportunity to remember the most appalling atrocities carried out in
modern history. It should also be a day when the media remembers that
Israel’s actions to defend its citizens bear no relation whatsoever to
the genocidal crimes of the Nazis. On any day, this cartoon’s imagery is
an assault on the real victims of genocide, demeans their suffering and
insults their memory. The Sunday Times should be mindful that what
started as cartoons in the 1930′s ultimately led to violence and
unspeakable tragedy. This is a lesson that The Sunday Times has clearly
not absorbed.
Labels: Anti-Semitism, Britain, Culture, Holocaust, Israel
posted by Pieface @ Sunday, January 27, 2013
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