A recent editorial cartoon by Pat Oliphant has the ADL in an uproar. The organization labeled the nationally syndicated cartoon “hideously anti-Semitic.” Abraham Foxman, the national director, issued a statement, “Pat Oliphant’s outlandish and offensive use of the Star of David in combination with Nazi-like imagery is hideously anti-Semitic.”
If he is so outraged by “offensive use of the Star of David in combination with Nazi-like imagery,” perhaps he should condemn the Israeli military, or the Israeli settlers who tag the stars to vandalize Palestinian homes (which Nick pointed out is scarily reminiscent of the ways Nazis graffitized Jewish homes and businesses). The army’s murderous bombardment of a largely refugee population, one it created, necessarily invites these kinds of linkages. That does not make them right.
I think the historical analogy is not a fair one in objective terms. It is fair game in argumentation for one simple reason, however. Israel’s supporters use the Holocaust and anti-Semitism to silence criticism of Israel and to justify its actions. Such bundling makes these kinds of metaphors all too tempting since it powerfully calls up the hypocrisy that has gone on for too long.
The parallel between the Nazi goal of Aryan purity in Germany is not very different in principle from a Jewish state that will use various tactics to main its demographic makeup. The major difference, however, is the use of genocide. And that is why I do not resort to this comparison.
Israel’s crimes should and do stand alone. But I can see the temptation to poke holes in the mythology of a morally justified Israel, a story that rests on the legacy of Jewish victimization of a militarized racialist state.
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I think if you read and understood the official definition of genocide you will find Israel right there. CONVENTION ON THE PREVENTION AND PUNISHMENT OF THE CRIME OF GENOCIDE The United Nation Definition of genocide means any of five acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group. Since it's founding, Israel has committed two of the five acts against the Palestinian. Today, over 5 million Palestinians survive in refugee camps and in exile. — Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group. — Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part. # # # UN: Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide ” target=”_blank”>http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/p_genoci.htm Red Cross: 4th Geneva Convention on Treatment of Civilians ” target=”_blank”>http://www.cicr.org/ihl.nsf/WebART/380-600056?Ope… B'TSELEM: Second Intifada Fatalities ” target=”_blank”>http://www.btselem.org/English/Statistics/Casualt… GR: Israel's Slow-Motion Genocide in Occupied Palestine ” target=”_blank”>http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va… UNRWA: About the 1.5 million registered Palestinian refugees ” target=”_blank”>http://www.un.org/unrwa/refugees/whois.html
Posted by James | March 26, 2009, 4:41 pmI think if you read and understood the official definition of genocide you will find Israel right there. CONVENTION ON THE PREVENTION AND PUNISHMENT OF THE CRIME OF GENOCIDE The United Nation Definition of genocide means any of five acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group. Since it's founding, Israel has committed two of the five acts against the Palestinian. Today, over 5 million Palestinians survive in refugee camps and in exile. — Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group. — Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part. # # # UN: Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide ” target=”_blank”>http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/p_genoci.htm Red Cross: 4th Geneva Convention on Treatment of Civilians ” target=”_blank”>http://www.cicr.org/ihl.nsf/WebART/380-600056?Ope… B'TSELEM: Second Intifada Fatalities ” target=”_blank”>http://www.btselem.org/English/Statistics/Casualt… GR: Israel's Slow-Motion Genocide in Occupied Palestine ” target=”_blank”>http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va… UNRWA: About the 1.5 million registered Palestinian refugees ” target=”_blank”>http://www.un.org/unrwa/refugees/whois.html
Posted by James | March 26, 2009, 4:41 pmI think if you read and understood the official definition of genocide you will find Israel right there. CONVENTION ON THE PREVENTION AND PUNISHMENT OF THE CRIME OF GENOCIDE The United Nation Definition of genocide means any of five acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group. Since it's founding, Israel has committed two of the five acts against the Palestinian. Today, over 5 million Palestinians survive in refugee camps and in exile. — Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group. — Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part. # # # UN: Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide ” target=”_blank”>http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/p_genoci.htm Red Cross: 4th Geneva Convention on Treatment of Civilians ” target=”_blank”>http://www.cicr.org/ihl.nsf/WebART/380-600056?Ope… B'TSELEM: Second Intifada Fatalities ” target=”_blank”>http://www.btselem.org/English/Statistics/Casualt… GR: Israel's Slow-Motion Genocide in Occupied Palestine ” target=”_blank”>http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va… UNRWA: About the 1.5 million registered Palestinian refugees ” target=”_blank”>http://www.un.org/unrwa/refugees/whois.html
Posted by James | March 26, 2009, 4:41 pmI think if you read and understood the official definition of genocide you will find Israel right there. CONVENTION ON THE PREVENTION AND PUNISHMENT OF THE CRIME OF GENOCIDE The United Nation Definition of genocide means any of five acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group. Since it's founding, Israel has committed two of the five acts against the Palestinian. Today, over 5 million Palestinians survive in refugee camps and in exile. — Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group. — Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part. # # # UN: Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide ” target=”_blank”>http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/p_genoci.htm Red Cross: 4th Geneva Convention on Treatment of Civilians ” target=”_blank”>http://www.cicr.org/ihl.nsf/WebART/380-600056?Ope… B'TSELEM: Second Intifada Fatalities ” target=”_blank”>http://www.btselem.org/English/Statistics/Casualt… GR: Israel's Slow-Motion Genocide in Occupied Palestine ” target=”_blank”>http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va… UNRWA: About the 1.5 million registered Palestinian refugees ” target=”_blank”>http://www.un.org/unrwa/refugees/whois.html
Posted by James | March 26, 2009, 4:41 pmI am quite familiar with the international legal definition. I agree the convention applies if you objectively apply the criteria. But in our common use of the term, it is not an actual genocide, which implies the mass murder of a people with the intent to make them extinct. I know this is problematic because it begs the question, how many people have to die. It was an uncomfortable question with the Darfur question. I think Israel is clearly beyond meeting the criteria for Apartheid and many other crimes against humanity, which genocide is one of. If the UN decided to prosecute Israel for Genocide I would not protest, and it should if it wants to uphold international law. I'm just not holding my breath for that day. Until UN conventions are enforced, I will stick to common usage.
Posted by KABOBfestWill | March 26, 2009, 5:48 pmI agree with Will's comments and do support the cartoonist. However, arguing how similar Israel's behavior is to the Nazi's behavior is a waste of time and just distracts from the real issues and problems that need to be addressed. Israel is doing bad things in its own way.
Posted by Light | March 26, 2009, 5:59 pmIt hardly bears repeating, but fuck Abe Foxman. That this despicable man-toad and his libelous, McCarthyite organization are still given any credibility is a blight on the honor of America. I personally feel that there are strong similarities between Nazism and Zionism as ideologies as well as between the conduct of the Nazi state and Israel, and it is important to highlight these similarities, regardless of whether some Jews find them offensive or not. The truth hurts. Deal with it. The critical difference is the issue of genocide, and also the severity of each country's respective crimes. In terms of racist supremacism, the use of torture, mass murder, mass imprisonment of innocents, collective punishment and wars of aggression as fundamental instruments of national policy, and the willingness to engage in the most vicious racist propaganda to demonize the victims of that national policy, there is scarcely a dime's worth of difference in quality between Zionism and Nazism. Ditto for the goal of racial and ethnic purity (Foxman's own organization supports "charities" whose goal is to prevent intermarriage between Jews and non-Jews). Both ideologies have a vision of their nation expanded beyond its current borders which are eerily similar in their appellation: "Greater Germany" vs "Greater Israel." The differences between Nazism and Zionism are primarily ones of quantity, not quality. Although I believe Israel's conduct meets the UN definition of genocide, I would also agree that its conduct does not meet the popular conception of that word, as an organized attempt to eliminate an entire people by any means necessary. Despite its proven propensity for mass murder, Israel has stopped short of killing as many Palestinians as it clearly could if its goals were purely genocidal in nature. But at the same time, Israel is kind of like the vicious neighborhood dog that "never bites"…until it does. Israel has not committed genocide on a mass scale…yet. But then there was a time that Nazi Germany had not committed genocide, either. It isn't officially "genocide" until after the killing is done, and genocide is a label that unfortunately by its nature can only be applied after the fact. Which is why I think it is meaningful and indeed critical to make these comparisons before the fact, before genocide becomes a reality. Looking at modern Israel, we see that there are leading rabbis publicly calling for the "extermination" of the Palestinians, and other rabbis and leading politicians openly advocating ethnic cleansing, or arguing that there is no moral distinction between civilians and combatants in wartime. That these rabbis are not forced to resign nor do they suffer the kind of humiliation and disgrace they would endure if they were drunken American actors making offensive comments about Jews to traffic cops is a fact that speaks volumes about the Israeli psyche. Even the Nazis did not have the gall to publicly call for the extermination of the Jews. That there are leading figures in Israel willing and able to advocate genocide suggests that there is a mindset of genocide among some of Israel's leaders, and that this mindset is not as wholly repugnant in the minds of many Israelis as it ought to be, particularly given their own history. Such a mindset would seem to have been a necessary precondition for what the Nazis did. If we look at the factors that led to the Nazi genocide of the Jews, the mindset of the Nazi leadership, and the mentality and conduct of Israel and its leaders, alarm bells ought to be going off in our heads, and we should at the very least be as equally wary if not hostile to Zionism as an ideology as we were to Nazism, regardless of whether Israel's crimes have risen to the level of those of the Nazis, which clearly they have not. But I don't think we should wait until they have before acting.
Posted by Sean | March 27, 2009, 4:06 amAnd let's not forget Iraq too and the siege that killed over a million and the US invasion which, according to a John Hopkins Study, has also killed over a million Iraqis. I know some people say this is mostly sectarian fighting. But lets' remember none of this happened before the Americans arrived at the scene. To absolve the Americans from the Iraq genocide is to absolv Israelis from Sabra & Shatila and to absolve the Nazis from many massacres their local thugs have committed.
Posted by Nour | March 27, 2009, 8:33 amCan't argue against this well thought out argument.
Posted by Arayus | March 27, 2009, 7:24 pmThe cartoon does look a little Nazi-ish. Do you think the Jews will start rioting and burning embassies and calling for peoples executions?
Posted by eagle007blogger | March 27, 2009, 9:58 pmNah. This cartoon mocks israel and the israelis will just take it out on the Palestinians
Posted by MohammadKF | March 27, 2009, 11:55 pm