Foreign Policy In Focus

The Sunday Times of London's controversial Netanyahu cartoon highlighted the difficulty many experience differentiating between a political comment and a religious insult.

Britain’s The Sunday Times featured a controversial cartoon this past Sunday depicting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu building a bloody brick wall on the bodies of trapped, screaming Palestinians with the caption: “Israel elections. Will cementing the peace continue?”

The cartoon—drawn by veteran cartoonist Gerald Scarfe, who often utilizes blood in his work—has garnered the attention of Israeli officials and international Jewish groups who have declared the cartoon “sickening,” “anti-Semitic,” and “grotesque.”  

Israel’s ambassador to Britain, Daniel Taub, demanded an apology from the newspaper, stating that “We’re not going to let this stand as it is…We genuinely think that a red line has been crossed and the obligation on the newspaper is to correct that.” Other Israeli officials have also spoken out against the cartoon, such as Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin, who wrote, “For me and for other Israelis, this cartoon was reminiscent of the vicious journalism during one of the darkest periods in human history,” and that he was “shocked that such cartoons can be published in such a respectable newspaper in the Great Britain of today.”

Much of the outrage has been in response to the fact that Scarfe’s cartoon was printed on Britain’s Holocaust Memorial Day, which coincides with the International Holocaust Remembrance Day marking the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1945. Scarfe himself has stated he was unaware of the timing and publicly apologized in a statement on his website:

First of all I am not, and never have been, anti-Semitic. The Sunday Times has given me the freedom of speech over the last 46 years to criticise world leaders for what I see as their wrong-doings. This drawing was a criticism of Netanyahu, and not of the Jewish people: there was no slight whatsoever intended against them. I was, however, stupidly completely unaware that it would be printed on Holocaust Day, and I apologise for the very unfortunate timing.

Rupert Murdoch, the conservative media mogul whose company owns the Sunday Times, also publicly tweeted an apology, labeling the cartoon “grotesque” and “offensive,” adding that it “has never reflected the opinions of the Sunday Times.”

Some members of the Jewish community have come to Scarfe’s defense, however, such as Anshel Pfeffer from Haaretz, who listed four reasons why the cartoon “isn’t anti-Semitic in any way: ”first, that it is not directed at Jews; second, that it does not use Holocaust imagery; third, there was no discrimination; and lastly, that “this is not what a blood libel looks like.”

Simon Kelner of The Independent also came to Scarfe’s defense, replying to Murdoch’s tweet:

Of course it's grotesque. Has he never seen a Scarfe cartoon before? But offensive? I can't find any impulse, emotionally or intellectually, that causes me to be offended. Does this make me a bad Jew? Maybe it does, but I do think the world would be a better place if people were able to tell the difference between a political comment and a religious insult.

Yet for all the controversy one cannot help but wonder whose decision it actually was to print Scarfe’s cartoon on such a date, especially since it would seem that such a cartoon would have been much more timely—and a lot less offensive—had it been featured the Sunday before Israel’s elections. 

Leslie Garvey is an intern at Foreign Policy in Focus.

A new resolution casts such a wide net over anti-Semitism that it includes legitimate opposition to Israeli policies.

The California State Assembly has just passed a bipartisan resolution (HR 35) by voice vote which constitutes a serious attack on academic freedom and the rights of students and faculty to raise awareness about human rights abuses by U.S.-backed governments.  While purporting to put the legislature on record in opposition of anti-Semitism on state university campuses, it defines anti-Semitism so widely as to include legitimate political activities in opposition to Israeli government policies. 

The resolution was opposed by a wide variety of groups, including the Center for Constitutional Rights, the Asian Law Center, Jewish Voice for Peace, and the Council on American-Islamic Relations, yet the Republican-sponsored measure received wide bipartisan support in the Democratic-controlled legislature.

The non-binding resolution – which was sponsored by 66 of the 80 members of the lower house – demands that what it calls “anti-Semitic activity” should “not be tolerated in the classroom or on campus, and that no public resources be allowed to be used for anti-Semitic or intolerant agitation.”

The resolution lists a number of examples of genuine anti-Semitic activities, such as painting swastikas outside Hillel offices. However, much of the text is focused upon criticism of the state of Israel. Among the examples given of “anti-Semitic activities” included in the resolution are:

• accusations that the Israeli government is guilty of “crimes against humanity”

This would mean that a speaker from Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and other reputable human rights groups which have documented such violations of international humanitarian law by the Israeli Defense Forces could not be provided space or honoraria to talk about their research.

• accusations that Israel has engaged in “ethnic cleansing”

This would mean that Israeli scholars who have studied and published documents from Israeli archives pertaining to the 1947-49 conflict in Israel/Palestine which demonstrate that there was a calculated policy of ethnic cleansing against the Palestinian population in some regions would similarly be barred.

• “student and faculty-sponsored boycott, divestment and sanctions campaigns against Israel”

This would prohibit efforts to boycott goods made in illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank, support international sanctions on Israel over its ongoing violations of a series of UN Security Council resolutions, or have the university divest from its endowment stock in companies supporting the Israeli occupation.

The resolution also declares a number of other political activities that, while clearly objectionable – such as disrupting a speech by a supporter of the Israeli government – as “anti-Semitic,” based on the assumption that hostility toward such a speaker is not based on opposition to policies of Israel’s right-wing government, but because the country is Jewish. 

Indeed, throughout the resolution, opposition to Israeli government policies is equated with bigotry towards Jews. There’s no question that some pro-Palestinian activists do sometimes cross the line into what could reasonably be called anti-Semitism, which should indeed be categorically condemned, as should all manifestations of prejudice. Unfortunately, this resolution makes no distinction between this tiny bigoted minority and the majority of activists who oppose the Israeli occupation and other policies of that country’s right-wing government on legitimate human rights grounds.

Not only does this constitute an attack on academic freedom, it compromises legitimate efforts against the scourge of anti-Semitism which – while not as widespread a phenomenon on California campuses as the resolution implies – is still very real.

College campuses, particularly those in California’s large public university systems, have long been a center of agitation for human rights and in opposition to U.S. policies which support violations of human rights, whether it be the war in Vietnam, investment in apartheid South Africa, intervention in Central America, or support for Israel’s wars and occupation.

This bipartisan effort appears to be an attempt to stifle this tradition. Indeed, if the California state legislature succeeds in shutting down debate regarding U.S. policy toward Israel and its neighbors, it will only be a matter of time before debate on other aspects of U.S. foreign policy will be suppressed as well. 

(Pictured: Fathers of Tunisian independence Mohammed Masmoudi, Mongi Slim, and Albert Bessis.)

1.
Writing in his journal on June 7, 1967, in the aftermath of anti-Jewish vandalism in Tunis following the outbreak of the Arab-Israeli Middle East War, Albert Bessis, a Jewish community leader and collaborator with Habib Bourguiba in Tunisia's anti-colonial pro-independence movement, wondered, "What is the future of Tunisia's Jewish Community? The old ones are dying off, our youth is leaving."^{1, 2}

When Bessis was writing in his diary, the Jewish population of Tunisia had already plummeted from perhaps 120,000 on the eve of independence in 1956 to a modest 5,000.³ Today it has shrunk  to 1,500, among an overall population of 10.5 million. Despite the drop in Jewish numbers, the historically relaxed nature of Jewish-Muslim- relations that has characterized Tunisian society before the outbreak of the 1967 war comes through vividly in Ferid Boughedir's film A Summer In La Goulette.

That spirit of tolerance, of a Jewish place in Tunisia's past and present, never died. It remains alive and well in the post Ben Ali era that has just begun to unfold. The youth-led revolution that is sweeping through the Arab world is not driven by Islamic fundamentalist themes. Its referred to by some as 'the third wave' (the first the anti-colonial movement; the second the Islamic wave beginning in the 1980s).

Although not anti-religious, this revolution rejects the ideological approaches of the first wave and the narrow religious fundamentalism of the second. The movement instead is profoundly democratic, recognizing the legitimate place of the country's minorities which make up a small percentage of the overall population.

Therefore, it should come as no surprise that manifestations of anti-Jewish prejudice are not taken lightly. This past February 11, two months ago, 40 demonstrators,  posing as Islamic fundamentalists, chanted anti-Jewish slogans  in front of the main synagogue in Tunis. They were immediately condemned by the Tunisian government transition Interior Ministry as extremists inciting racial violence.  In the United States, Los Angeles based 'Free Tunisia' joined in the criticism:

What occurred outside the Jewish synagogue in central Tunis last Friday should never happen again. The Quran defends the right of religious expressions and defends religious institutions.(Quran, 5, 69) There should be no tolerance for hatred in the new Tunisian State. The oppression of religious minorities and the language of hatred towards the Jewish community must not be tolerated. It's the Tunisian pride that one of the oldest Jewish Synagogues in the world is located in Tunisia.

Suspicions abounded among Tunisian social activists that this anti-Jewish outburst, so untypical of Tunisia's uprising, was orchestrated by deposed President Ben Ali's security apparatus to sow confusion and discredit the Tunisia revolt as Islamic-fundamentalist driven. There are indications that the crowd included members of 'Tahrir', a small splinter Islamic movement still banned in Tunisia that has barely a few hundred members. Tahrir's goal is the establishment of an Islamic caliphate that unites all Moslem countries. Anti-Jewish and anti-Christian – indeed anti-everything that is not Islamic, it is also  banned in most Arab countries. Movements like 'Tahrir' are often heavily infiltrated by security forces.

While such actions sent a temporary chill through the country's tiny  Jewish community, its message fell flat. As elsewhere throughout the Arab World, the Tunisian protests are youth, labor movement and student driven with a generally secular and democratic orientation. Islamic fundamentalists have played a limited role, if any. Established Islamic groups in Tunisia let it be known that they were not behind the synagogue protest. No public Islamic figure took part, and underneath their traditional Arab garb, protesters wore modern European garb typical of the security personnel.

2.
It appears that through its contacts – Israelis who previously lived in Tunisia – Israel has exerted pressure on Tunisian Jews to emigrate. Given that Tunisia's Jewish population is so small, one would think it is not worthwhile for Israel to engage in such a misguided 'public relations', or more precisely, 'disinformation' campaign.

At least one major American based Jewish organization, the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, also participated in its own way,  embellishing the situation all out of proportion, suggesting Tunisia's Jewish Community is in danger. Without the myth of radical Islamic threat to guide them, the Center seems at sea. Ideological blinders prevent them from appreciating the obvious: that there is very little – no – there is no place in Tunisia's great democratic upsurge for the kind of anti-semitism that the Center argues is lurking  in every Tunisian olive grove.

In Tunisia itself, it turns out, the situation is viewed quite differently. One month into the revolutionary upsurge in Tunisia, one of the country's Jewish leaders, Roger Bismuth, a prosperous developer, was interviewed by JTA (the Jewish Telegraphic Agency is an influential U.S. Jewish source of news and opinion) about the situation. Although a long time advisor to deposed President Zine Ben Ali, Bismuth's comments were not what the Israelis wanted to hear:

"The community is fine," Bismuth told JTA by phone from Tunis. "Up until now we've had no problems. This is not really a matter of religion; it's a popular revolution. The Jewish community is very well taken care of." "He was behaving like a crook," Bismuth commented about his former boss. He went on to reinforce what is now common knowledge.   "He (Ben Ali) and his family stole property from people and the state, and they destroyed everything they could put their hands on."

Tunisian Jewish sources in contact with the author take Bismuth's comments further. They note that to date, Tunisian rabbis have resisted the pressure to discredit the changes unfolding by crying wolf about anti-semitism and setting the stage for a Jewish stampede to Tel Aviv. Precious few have responded to Tel Aviv's siren call. According to press reports only 10 Tunisian Jews – one family – have moved to Israel since the protest movement started on December 17, 2010 when Mohammed Bouazizi immolated himself in Sidi Bou Zid. Reports of vandalism against Jewish property (beyond the Tunis synagogue demonstration cited above) have proven either exaggerated or fabricated. For example:

• There was a report that circulated widely in the Israeli press that a synagogue in the southern Tunisian city of Gabes was burnt down. Not mentioned is that Gabes' small Jewish Community had sold the synagogue to a private party more than 25 years ago.
• Another rumor which proved less than accurate concerned an alleged  burning of a Torah in a synagogue in El Hamma, a conservative Muslim community further south of Gabes. Minor detail: El Hamma hasn't had a synagogue for nine centuries. El Hamma does have a 'Jewish cemetery' consisting of a one room mausoleum which was not vandalized and in any case did not contain a Torah.

3.
It was with surprise and some anger that Tunisians learned that Israel is urging Tunisian Jews to emigrate. Recently the Israeli government approved a funding package to help Tunisian Jews move to Israel citing 'the worsening of the Tunisian authorities' and society's attitude toward the Jewish community; it its offer, Israel also noted the difficult situation that has been created in the country since the revolution. Despite an absence of proof, the Israelis are suspicious that Islamists are somehow driving the Tunisian revolution.

The Tunisian government did not take Israel's call to gather Tunisian Jews lightly.

Tunisia's post Ben Ali foreign ministry condemned Israel's interference in the country's internal affairs by offering Jews financial incentives to emigrate. The ministry "expressed great regret", labeling the Israeli offer "a malicious call to Tunisian citizens to immigrate to Israel in an attempt to damage the image of Tunisia after the revolution and to create suspicion about its security, its economy and its stability." In unusually strong language it continued:

Tunisia is outraged by the statements…(from) a country which still denies the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homeland, shamefully defying international law.

Interestingly enough, spokespeople for Tunisia's Jewish Community have publicly rejected Israel's offer, suggesting that as a community, they too are upset with this pressure. A spokesperson for the Jews of Djerba (where half of Tunisia's Jewish population resides) echoed the foreign ministry's comments:

We are Tunisians above all, and we do not have any problems. We live like everyone else and no Jew is going to leave the country. 

Do Tunisian Jews face problems? Of course, the short-term economic woes that Tunisia is unlikely to avoid will impact Tunisia's Jews as well as the rest of the country, especially on Djerba where tourism to the oldest synagogue in North Africa has been an important source of income. Tunisia's Jews, like the rest of its citizens, are likely in for economic hard times. But it appears those remaining will stick it out – as they have for 2000 years – with their Muslim brothers and sisters.

Footnotes

1. Juliette Bessis. Magreb: La Traversée du Siècle. Harmattan:Paris: 1997. p 361

2. A Peace Corps volunteer in Tunis at the time, I witnessed this disturbing spectacle. Several days prior, the Jewish Community was warned by the Bourguiba government itself to stay away from the synagogue and Jewish owned businesses. The vandalism was well organized. A man with a list was directing his rag-tag mob. I still remember his voice: 'not, that shop, no! no!, the next one .' Juliette Bessis suggests that the vandalism was organized from the Algerian and Iraq embassies at the time. I thought differently, concluding that the Tunisian government itself had orchestrated the disruption as a diversion, to take the attention off of the mounting criticisms of the Bourguiba presidency itself. The vandals themselves were mostly lumpen elements, poor, many homeless, recruited by Tunisia's security forces, trucked to the town's center, paid a few dinars and directed to do property damage. Later some were arrested, tried and given prison sentences. The government reimbursed  the damaged shop owners and the synagogue. But a psychological barrier had been breached and a sense of malaise, already present among Tunisia's Jews, grew deeper.

3. Bessis, p. 283

Rob Prince is the publisher of the Colorado Progressive Jewish News.

A prominent Israeli rabbi whose party shares power in the Netanyahu government called for the extermination of Arabs in a recent sermon.

The 89-year-old Ovadia Yosef urged God to strike “these Ishmaelites and Palestinians with a plague; these evil haters of Israel.” He then singled out the Palestinian leader of Fatah, exclaiming that “Abu Mazen and all these evil people should perish from this earth.” Yosef is the spiritual leader of the Shas Party, an ultra-Orthodox right-wing outfit that governs in concert with other parties, including Likud.

In religious terminology, the Ishmaelites are the descendants of Ishmael, who was Abraham’s elder son. As the rabbi doubtless knows, the Arabs are considered the descendants of the Ishmaelites in Islamic tradition.

In response to the genocidal exhortation, Netanyahu issued a mild non-rebuke; his office meekly offered that the rabbi’s ravings “do not reflect” the views of the prime minister or the government. The lukewarm criticism is not surprising, since Netanyahu may harbor genocidal views of his own.

In May, a Netanyahu advisor told the American-Israeli “journalist” Jeffrey Goldberg that Netanyahu is serious about striking Iran and considers the Islamic Republic the modern-day equivalent of Amalek.

For those unfamiliar with the Old Testament narrative, the Amalekites didn’t make out too well. God commands the Jews to utterly exterminate them—“Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.”

But returning to Rabbi Yosef: what elicited his angry declamation? It seems that the approaching peace talks are the culprit. Yosef and the rest of the far-right, who now loom large in Israeli society, loathe the prospect of “conceding” any lands they have stolen from the Palestinians, including the vast swath of Jewish-only settlements.

Of course, the far-right doesn’t see the land as stolen. For one thing, what’s commonly called the “far-right” in Israel-polite media parlance is best described as proto-fascist. This is, after all, the crowd that wants to impose state loyalty oaths on Israel’s Arab citizens—or even better, purge them from Israel altogether, lest the precious racial purity of the “democratic” Jewish state be further diluted. This is also the same crowd that seeks to erase history by making banning references to refer to Israel’s creation as “Al-Naqba”, or “The Disaster.” That’s the term used by Palestinians—and rightly so: even Israel’s own historians have conceded that their state was established through mass terror and ethnic cleansing.

But that doesn’t matter to Rabbi Yosef and friends. For them, the Palestinians are an annoyance, inserted by the irritating hand of history into lands that were ordained as Jewish by a divine real estate agent. Hence the favored Zionist slogan of “redeeming” the land.

What all this confirms is the hardening of hatred in Israeli society. Israelis have grown increasingly indifferent to the fate they mete out to their victims. The public did not question the obscene one-sided massacre in Gaza in 2008 (euphemistically called a “war”), in which Israel slaughtered 1,000 Palestinians, half of them women and children, putatively in “response” to unguided rocket fire that had all but ended.

Nor did the public quiver over the 2006 assault on Lebanon, during which Israel shattered Lebanese civilian infrastructure because Hezbollah kidnapped two soldiers. All told, 1,000 Lebanese were killed and entire neighborhoods were flattened; compare that with the Israeli death toll of 43 civilians and 117 soldiers.

Even the recent flotilla massacre elicited scant moral outrage in Israel. The national media merely indulged in the tired victimhood narrative, peddling the awesome claim that the Israeli soldiers were defending themselves from the crew. Never mind that the soldiers boarded an aid vessel in international waters and shot people in the face; pirates with public relations, you see, are completely different from regular pirates.

And what public relations it is. As Netanyahu smugly observed to a settler audience some years ago, “I know what America is. America is a thing you can move very easily, move it in the right direction.”

Yes, the “right direction”—as determined by Israeli fanatics who openly clamor for genocide and Israel-first lobbies who suppress criticism with hysterical charges of “anti-Semitism.”

And so long as Americans adhere to the fiction of Israeli victimhood, Netanyahu’s boasts will remain well-grounded.

M. Junaid Levesque-Alam also posts at Crossing the Crescent.