Another "anti-Semitic" cartoon

Recently, renowned cartoonists Gary Trudeau and Pat Oliphant have come under fire from Abe Foxman of the ADL: Trudeau for a cartoon referring to Jesus' irritation at the "moneylenders," and Oliphant for a cartoon critical of Israel's brutal Gaza operation. Foxman hasn't honored me with his knee-jerk invective, but a cartoon I published in the Four Corners Free Press did arouse the usual spurious claims of anti-Semitism. Here's the cartoon, and my editorial published in response:

My recent cartoon, "Lox News: The trumpet of triumphant Zionism" drew some heated phone calls to the editor from a few readers offended by perceived Jewish stereotypes. So I should address the issue of boundaries in satire, comedy, and caricature, which often play off stereotypes.

As the editor pointed out, analogously, would not a cartoon entitled "Watermelon/Fried Chicken News" be offensive to Afro-Americans? I concede that it would be, although comedians like Richard Pryor and Don Rickles have often made comedic hay out of such stereotypes. I guess if it's kept within the family, it's more acceptable. So I'll bring this home: being mainly of Irish descent, would I be offended by a cartoon headlined "Guinness Stout News"? It depends; if it were a play off the name of a reactionary, warmongering news organization, and it satirized the thugs of the Real IRA attempting to sabotage the Good Friday accords that have brought peace to Northern Ireland, I don't think I'd get my dander up, or fret about "anti-Hibernianism."

Is the term "Spaghetti Western" offensive to Italian-Americans? I'm sure there are a few still fuming about this. I hope they eventually find more worthy objects of worry.

Another element of the complaint: the "code words for Jews" line. This was a parody of ADL official Gail Gans' assertion that "New World Order," "international bankers," "Bilderberg," and even "lizards" are invidious code words for "the Jews." I think this is absurd, scattershot fearmongering.

Finally, my caricature of ADL chief Abe Foxman as a Zionist stormtrooper proposing a "Final Solution" to the anti-Semite question may have been a little over the top, but the man is truly an abomination, habitually defaming honorable men like Jimmy Carter, Bill Moyers, Gary Trudeau and Pat Oliphant as "anti-Semites" for justly criticizing Israel's brutal, illegal occupation of Palestinian lands, and the indispensable role of the United States and our Israel lobby in perpetuating these injustices. A scandal in 1993 revealed that the ADL had conducted a 40-year spying operation on over 1000 "subversive" political groups, especially labor, peace, social justice, and human rights organizations, infiltrated police departments, cooperated with the FBI's illegal COINTELPRO program, and was cozy with South Africa's apartheid intelligence service... in another words, behaving very much like a Gestapo outfit. While ostensibly devoted to fighting bigotry on all fronts, the ADL has opposed recognition of the Armenian genocide, and it's recently released software purporting to block "hate sites" in fact only filters out sites defaming Jews, while allowing unblocked access to equally vile sites targeted at Muslims and Arabs.

I do understand the extra sensitivity of Jewish folk—but I also know that that sensitivity has been manipulated and exploited by radical right Zionists in organizations like GIYUS that attempt to stir up resentment and stifle all reasonable debate about our policies in the Middle East. I resisted producing this cartoon for a long time because of these sensitivities, but my disgust with this campaign of censorship, calumny and intimidation finally overrode my reluctance.

Noam Chomsky, Glen Greenwald, Norman Finkelstein, Naomi Klein, Rahm Emanuel, Uri Avnery, J Street, and the 70% of American Jews who support Obama’s push for a peace settlement in concord with dozens of nearly unanimous U.N. resolutions are to be applauded—but they are often drowned out by AIPAC, ADL and torture-loving chauvinists like Alan Dershowitz, probably the Aryan Nation’s top poster boy for recruitment campaigns. We must remember that this unresolved issue is the number one catalyst of the Islamic jihadists that our troops are bogged down fighting on two fronts.

Israel’s military-industrial complex is, if anything, even more deeply entrenched and corrupting than our own—the twin lobbies for perpetual war and occupation.

More voices of moderation were drowned out in Jerusalem recently, as filmed by journalist Max Blumenthal—a crowd of young Jewish Americans, many drunk, cursing Obama as a Nazi and another N-word—and this was not a minority sentiment in Jerusalem, he said. It’s commonly observed that Zionists in America, including Christian evangelicals in the CUFI organization (Christians United For Israel), are the most radical and intolerant of debate on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and have dominated U.S. policy with a hawkish, intransigent stance for 40 years, culminating in our ongoing Neocon debacles.

The Abe Foxmans are determined to stoke fear, close ranks, and keep the central issue of the Middle East wars well fueled: Allow criticism of Netanyahu and his defiance on the settlements issue to get a head of steam, and soon the skinheads will be breaking your windows! Abe has cried wolf so many times, he may soon resort to this final absurdity: “To criticize me is anti-Semitic!”

—Travis Kelly

Choke on your rotten hot dogs

In every decade there is a crowd bemoaning the sorry, tragic state of the republic, usually those whose chosen party is out of power. We are sick, declining, and need strong medicine, they wail.

Increasingly, that wail has become bipartisan—and they all are right. Most of the country, including a plurality of independents and Republicans, recognized the follies of the Bush regime and turned against them, demanding, and thinking to get, a change of course with Obama and the Democratic congress. It’s been breathtaking, alright: we’re sinking another $106 billion into the 8-year Middle East crusade, shifting resources slightly eastward while antagonizing Pakistan and Iran. Terrorists don’t need mountain ranges to plot in—they can plot in an apartment in Hamburg or Florida, as the 9/11 hijackers did (with a lot of inside help). The war is a self-perpetuating feedback loop: we have to fight terrorism, the number-one cause of which is our fight against terrorism—the occupation of nations made dangerous by… our occupation. That’s a sweet racket, if you can keep it going, especially when private contractors fulfill half of military and intelligence functions at enormously inflated costs over former federal control.

The Party of Hope has also shifted boatloads of taxpayer money to service another racket: the bankster gang on Wall Street and its mob enforcer, the Federal Reserve, with a few thin fig leaves of regulatory reform. Nobel-prize economists and most disinterested financial analysts agree that virtually nothing of substance has changed. Wall Street has been given an aspirin and a vacation in the Bahamas, not the kennel and obedience training it deserves. While the rest of the country founders with accelerating unemployment, foreclosures and declining prosperity, Goldman-Sachs just tallied record-breaking profits in its 140-year history. They’re probably investing it in Chinese yen or other currencies, knowing that our own is close to collapse. Like Bruce Ismay, owner of the Titanic, these guys are real admirable survivors.

To cap the hoopla off, we are all about to get the shaft on health care reform. Let me explain to the die-hard market fundamentalists screaming about “socialism!”: whether you choose to participate in a possible public plan, or stay with your private plan, the astronomical costs of health care in this country will go down, if and only if there is a public option, like Medicare, to compete against the private insurance cartel. Multiple studies have shown that we pay more and get less than nearly all of the E.U., Canada, Japan, and many Third World countries, like Cuba, Costa Rica and Argentina. Some have a single-payer system, others have a mix, but the common thread is some form of public plan or strict government regulation of the system.

And now we are told by the Senate, aka the “Millionaire’s Club,” that there are “not enough votes” for any kind of public plan whatsoever. In a recent NY Times/ABC poll, 72% favored a public option, with only 20% opposed. Even half of Republicans (citizens, not politicians) are for it. The Democrats, elected to cure health care among other promises, control the White House and both houses of Congress… and this is not enough of a mandate?

There is an answer to these quandaries: our two-party system has become a charade of shallow differences in the most crucial, basic things (not abortion, gay marriage, gun rights or flag safety), and our government no longer gets its mandate from the will of the majority . This is no longer a democracy, but a plutocracy ruled by a triumvirate of lobbies: the military-industrial complex, Wall Street and the health insurance vampires. They own Washington. They have surrounded it like a besieging army, stifling all attempts at rescue and reform while plundering the national treasury. Why are they successful? Because most of us choose our politicians like a toothpaste—whichever can afford the most and the best lobby-funded TV commercials gets our business. “Bush—a brand name I trust!”

In France, when politicians have grown too complacent, with ears only for the corporate lobbyists who stuff their pockets, workers, professors, lawyers, teachers, doctors, drivers and soldiers swarm in the streets and organize general strikes. I know, many Americans are too obese for such stress, following our fat, fawning lapdogs in the corporate press. It appears that most of us are quite content gorging on mental junk food, or fleeing churchward to dwell on improvements in the afterlife.

The only solution I see, if we are serious about the future of the here and now, for the welfare of both ourselves and our children, is to revive some small measure of our Founders’ spirit—or emulate the French and Iranians. A third party, or several of them, would help.

Enjoy your hot dogs and fireworks.