This cartoon is from the respected Spanish daily El Pais. Given the grotesque Jewish caricature above, a translation may be superfluous, but my co-writer Eamonn McDonagh has provided one nonetheless.
“For starters, Palestine belongs to the Palestinians, not the Israelis, the Hebrew myths are false, and abusing the weak is disgusting,” says the earnest figure in a red coat.
“We are the people chosen by the God we invented for ourselves,” answers the Jew.
Clearly, cartoonist Romeu is holding nothing back. His cartoon combines two forms of totalitarian antisemitism: a Nazi visual caricature of the Jew and a Soviet ideological caricature of Zionism and Israel as creatures of a vengeful, racist Jewish theology of chosenness.
The Soviet theme, in particular, has been echoed more recently by European literary figures like Jose Saramago (”We can better understand their biblical god when we know his followers. Jehovah or Yaweh or whatever he is called, is a fierce and spiteful god, whom the Israelis always live up to”) and Jostein Gaarder (”To act as God’s chosen people is not only stupid and arrogant, but a crime against humanity. We call it racism.”)
Still, why use mere words when you can deploy the image of the perfidious, hook-nosed Jew to make that point?
Expect much more of this.
the real irony in Gaarder’s statement is that he and his fellow european “progressives” believe they are the chosen people, the moral “cutting edge” of the world, and they illustrate the folly and racism they accuse the israelis of.
Please write a short letter to the editors at el pais.
cartasdirector@elpais.es
I’ve written one which was something like this:
Estoy en estado de shock a lo que vi el 30 de diciembre. ¡Qué vergüenza para el periodismo! Usted debería avergonzarse poner eso en un periodico “respetable”. Usted le debe una gran disculpa a sus lectores, a los Judios en todo el mundo, y los periodistas verdaderas. Es “el pais” el nuevo Der Stürmer?
I am in shock at what I saw on Dec. 30. What a disgrace to journalism. You should be ashamed to put this in a “respectable” newspaper. You owe an apology to your readers, Jews all over the world, and real journalists. Is “el pais” the new Der Stürmer?