Editorial warning: the images below feature graphic displays of anti-Semitism and violence.

I’ve been living in Israel and writing about it for so long that very little people say or think about it shocks me anymore. Since the second intifada began in 2000, I’ve been both witness to and target of a veritable rainbow of invective from across the political and ideological spectrum. As a result, I’d become convinced that my jaded sensibilities were unlikely to be shaken anytime soon, something that, I must admit, made me vaguely uncomfortable. So, I must thank Pat Oliphant and the Washington Post for reminding me that I am, thankfully, not nearly as desensitized as I imagined.

When I sat down to write about the cartoon reproduced above, I felt the necessity of restraining my first instincts. As Pierre Vidal-Naquet said about writing his response to Noam Chomsky’s defense of Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson, “epithets came to my pen.” So I will simply explain, and hope the reader finds for himself the anger aroused by the imagery and its origins.

There is, unfortunately, nothing particularly original about the cartoon above. It is, in fact, one with a long tradition of antisemitic iconography, stretching back at least to the 1930s. The sword-wielding crusader; the shark-toothed Star of David; the hapless victim of Jewish cannibalism; none of this is new. It is, in fact, a series of reproductions, a collage of tropes drawn from various archetypes first employed by Nazi propaganda. This, in and of itself, is not shocking. The visual language of antisemitism has existed for a long time, and it will continue to do so for a long time to come. What is shocking about this cartoon is the fact that it was drawn by an acclaimed American political cartoonist—perhaps America’s most acclaimed political cartoonist—and published in one of the largest and most influential newspapers in the United States. While one should not labor under illusions about the prevalence of antisemitism in such circles, it is usually expressed esoterically enough to indicate a certain amount of doubt and discomfort on the part of those who engage in it. This cartoon, however, is without doubt or discomfort. Its violence is explicit, its hatred manifest, and its origins beyond doubt.

The most immediately striking image employed by Oliphant, and the most telling in regard to its origins, is, of course, the Star of David as devouring shark which dominates the panel. The use of the Star of David as a signifier when portraying the Jews as a man-eating animal was typical of Nazi-era antisemitism, as the example below, from the notorious Nazi tabloid Der Sturmer shows:

In this case, we have a blood-sucking spider instead of a shark, but the parallel is clear, and in both cases the use of the Star of David signifies that the monster is a symbol of the Jewish people. It should be noted as well that the idea of the Jews as cannibalistic has a very ancient lineage. In fact, it is one of the oldest anti-Jewish tropes in existence, dating back to pre-Christian pagan polemics against Judaism. It appears prominently, for instance, in Josephus’s Against Apion, written in the 1st century AD. Most notoriously, it took the form of the blood libel, which charged the Jews with engaging in the ritual murder of Christians in order to obtain their blood for various nefarious purposes. As mad, and perhaps ridiculous, as this antique slander may appear to modern eyes, it must be remembered that the blood libel was widely believed well into the 19th century, and resulted in not a few incidents of horrendous anti-Jewish violence. Many people died, in other words, because of this ancient and bizarre fiction.

The combination of the Star of David with animal imagery appears in the cartoon below as well, in this case depicting Winston Churchill as a Jewish octopus encircling a globe bleeding from its wounds.

In this case, we see the combination of the Star of David as signifier and the Jews-as-animal imagery employed against a third party, i.e. Britain. Oliphant’s cartoon is somewhat vague on this point, but it is not out of the question to interpret the goose-stepping swordsman as an allusion to the United States as a crusading empire.

The swordsman itself is a fascinating addition, alluding, perhaps, to both the Crusades and to Nazism. However, it also bears a striking resemblance to Der Sturmer’s portrayal of itself, as in the cartoon below:

It seems unlikely that this is a coincidence. Oliphant is a Pulitzer prize-winning political cartoonist, an acknowledged master of the form. Such people must be conversant with the history of their medium in all its forms, including the most nefarious. Even if the use of the Der Sturmer swordsman is, in fact, coincidental, Oliphant clearly employs it to draw an explicit parallel between Israel (or its supporters) and Nazism. The swordsman is, after all, goose-stepping and giving the Nazi salute.

The theme of the Jew as Nazi did not, of course, appear in the antisemitic propaganda employed by the Nazis themselves. Its presence in Oliphant’s cartoon is of immense importance, however, in that it indicates the more recent origins of the artist’s visual invective, namely in the anti-Israel cartoons which are widespread in the Arab and Muslim countries. These cartoons, which do not face any cultural stigma on the use of antisemitism, are much more forthrightly racist than those which tend to appear in the West. As can be seen in the cartoon below, for instance, the Jews are generally portrayed according to the crudest physical stereotypes (e.g., the large nose) and explicitly antisemitic fictions (the soldier is reading The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a 19th century antisemitic forgery). The Star of David is also employed here, as it is in Oliphant’s cartoon, to identify the caricature as a symbol of Israel and the Jewish people, as well as, when taken in tandem with the Nazi uniform, to equate them with Nazism. Note that the bladed weapon is also present, in this case in far more brutally violent fashion.

The Jews and Israel as a carnivorous animal is also a quite common theme in these cartoons; witness the following, in which the animal in question—again, as in Oliphant’s cartoon—literally is the Star of David:

Perhaps the ugliest image I have come across is the cartoon below. As can be seen, it uses the most stereotypical portrayal of the Jew while at the same time equating the Jews with Nazism and the murder of children.

In the following, one finds a combination of all these themes, and one cannot help but notice that it bears a striking resemblance in both format and message to Oliphant’s cartoon. Here we find the themes of the Jew as a carnivorous animal; the Jew as Nazi, with the Star of David employed as the signifier of Judaism; the innocent being murdered; and the malicious third party (in this case, explicitly portrayed as the United States) offering support.

Opponents of Israel in the West have adopted many of these themes for themselves; mostly, until now, in the European media. The cartoon below, for instance, which refers to Austria, draws the parallel between Israel and Nazism in decidedly unsubtle fashion, with the Star of David replacing the Swastika and being replaced, in turn, by the Palestinian kaffiyeh. Of course, the theme of child murder is also present.

Most notoriously, perhaps, the theme of Jewish cannibalism appeared in fairly horrifying form in the cartoon below from Britain’s Independent, which depicts former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon as a baby-eating monster in a pastiche of Goya’s Saturn Devouring His Son.

It must be said, however, that Oliphant’s cartoon is somewhat unique in adopting all of these themes into a single image, reflecting the cumulative influence of antisemitisms both past and present. Combined with its publication in a prestigious American newspaper, it indicates that a convergence of sorts is occurring. It seems that a process which has been underway since the second intifada began has now reached a new peak (or nadir). The phenomenon in question is simply this: As a result of the hatred of Israel prevalent in many circles in the West, classic antisemitic mythology and imagery, especially those employed by Nazism, have been relegitimized, mainly as a result of their widespread use in the Arab and Muslim media, where the taboo against overt antisemitism does not exist.

This is all, in a certain sense, ironic, because the use of these images is justified—implicitly or explicitly—by their creators through equating the Jews to the Nazis. In doing precisely this, however, the artists are employing Nazi imagery of the most obvious kind. In effect, they are accusing the Jews of being Nazis by, in a sense, becoming Nazis themselves. Irony, however, is not particularly comforting, and it is no solution to the very old problem of people who cannot relate to the Jews—and, by extension, Israel—without collapsing into the sleep of reason which, as Goya himself said, brings forth monsters.

Benjamin Kerstein is assistant editor of Azure.

TNL