Cartoon Rehabilitation Program

Today's cartoon is from Al-Watan (Qatar), from way back in May 13, 2003. The U.S. and Israel are shown eating from two sides of an apple that represents “the Arab states.” According to the middle-east-info.org, where we found it, this cartoon is noteworthy because it was published in Qatar, home to the Al Jazeera TV network. Qatar is considered by many in the U.S. State Department to be a U.S. ally and a relatively moderate state.

This one took the Photoshop equivalent of plastic surgery. The depiction of both the vampire-like Jewish person and the dead child in his arms is so vile, I had to fix every little aspect of the image.

The trick with this nasty but very well drawn cartoon, in which the Jews are depicted as a creature reminiscent of Sigourney Weaver's Alien, speaking to a wise, old Muslim sage, was to remove both religious symbols. Once those were out of the way, it became a cute setup for some sort of vaudeville-style sketch ("Who's on first" comes to mind).

This July 2, 2011 cartoon, by Ad-Dustur, was headlined: "Apple Bows to Israeli Pressure and Removes the Palestinian Intifada Website." The argument against Apple wasn't so outrageous, free speech and all, but the choice to go with a Jew (further identified by the star of David on the hat) was just unnecessarily nasty.

This cartoon, by Syrian artist Tishrin, was published September 22, 2011, and, to be fair, as anti-Israeli cartoons go it is relatively tame. But I was delighted by the opportunity to turn Tishrin's clever (albeit kinda trite) use of the letter T as cross, into the letter T as clothesline.

Welcome to the Jewish Press Online Cartoon Rehabilitation Project (JPOCRP), or, in short (suggested by our colleague Rafi Harkham) Cartoon Rehab. We found this cartoon on the ADL website. They say it was originally published in Oman, April 12, 2012, and the original text, written in blood, says: "We Will Never Surrender."