People can be opposed to Israel's right to self-defense without being called anti-Semitic. They are merely idiots who take the side of Hamas' propaganda without question. Pat Oliphant is such an idiot. I will explain at the bottom of the post why I think he also might be a moral degenerate like those Muslim pedophiles who rape 9 year-old girls under the guise of Islamic marriage.

Let's be clear here: Pat "the idiot" Oliphant has the right to draw whatever he likes; the media has the right to print whatever it likes; as long as no laws are being broken (libel, incitement to riot, etc.) I am not shocked by the cartoon, indeed I have seen similar cartoons in anti-Semitic websites run by Muslims. But I am happy to see it printed; as I wrote in my article How to Enter the Iranian Holocaust Cartoon Contest: I think most of the world is offensive. I find many things that the right and the left print is offensive. I find most primitive superstitions that interfere with my private life offensive. The whole of Islam is particularly offensive. However, I would never ask them to stop printing offensive cartoons. How else would we find out how they truly feel about Jews and the rest of the world if not for cartoons?

I believe, as Milton did, that if the facts are laid bare, truth will defeat falsehood in open competition (1). Eventually this Muslim apologist will be exposed as an idiot for repeating the Muslim lie that Israel is just like the Nazis.

My readers may recall that Iran a while back ran a Holocaust Cartoon Contest where one can find anti-Israel cartoons indistinguishable from Oliphant's. Now I am not saying that just because his cartoon is no different than those of an openly anti-Zionist, anti-Semitic, anti-Jewish website that he is exactly the same; what I am saying is that his cartoon is trite and highly derivative of the usual nonsense at Muslim cartoon sites.

Of course, if a cartoonist has to pick a side, it's much safer to be anti-Israel than anti-Hamas. Oliphant could live in Tel Aviv without fear of his life for that cartoon. But if he made fun of Hamas, in what Muslim area of the world would he be safe? So when he depicts Israel as being as dangerous as Nazis, he knows that to be a lie; the only people who should fear Israelis are those that attack Israel with force of arms.

If Oliphant wanted to display the truth, then he would have drawn the truth: the real Nazis, the group all of the world should fear is not Israel, but those whose national salute is slightly reminiscent of something, I just can't put my finger on it.

And now to explain why he's probably a moral degenerate. First of all, he's afraid to draw the truth for fear of his life. In that regard, he is a coward. That he repeats Muslim lies makes me think he is just like that so-called prophet Muslims adore, the pedophile Mohammed. Now certainly I would love to print a story with the headline:

Pat Oliphant likes to stick his finger in 9 year-old girls

but that would not be true as far as I know; however if any of my readers have some photos of Pat Oliphant in a Muslim wedding ceremony with an underage girl - I would be happy to publish them.

Am I being fair trying to find out if Pat Oliphant is a child molester? Well, I'd like to think I am being as fair to him as he is to Israel.

A tip of the turban to Tel-Chai Nation for pointing us to Oliphant's previous virulently anti-Israel drawings.

Ed Morrissey had a poll at Hot Air, which closed with 85% saying it stirs up hatred against Jews.

Other blogging on this:

Tsofah, A Coward's Way: Mr. Oliphant's NY Times' Cartoon

Mr. Oliphant apparently left some characters out: like Ahmadinejah and Iran who sponsor Hamas; and Hezbollah to the North of Israel in Lebanon. Iran is MUCH larger than Israel. Israel is surrounded by Islamic countries who call for it's extinction. I guess it's easier and safer to pick on Israel than it is to tell the truth about Ahmadinejad and Islamic extremists. It must be the coward's way.

Israel Matzav thinks it's A blessing in disguise?

Politics and Culture, Pat Oliphant unhinged Israel cartoon

In order for the cartoon above to make any kind of sense, either:

1. After Germany had withdrawn German citizens by force from the Polish Corridor in 1938, Poland would had to have attacked German civilians with rockets and sent suicide bombers to Berlin cabarets, while calling for Germany's destruction; and Germany would had to have reacted with a targeted raid in Warsaw.

or

2. Israel would had to have staged an unprovoked attack on Poland, taken its territories, and captured a percentage of the Polish population for an extermination program.

Yid with Lid, Pat Oliphant Cartoon--->THE PROBLEM IS STUPIDITY, NOT HATRED

Let’s deconstruct the cartoon to show the basic ideas that underlie it and that make it lie.

1. To begin with, it is not a very good cartoon and bears a striking resemblance to anti-Israel propaganda cartoons in its crudity and one-sidedness. Aesthetic decline has accompanied political crudeness. It doesn’t just say: these people are wrong but these people are 100 percent evil and hateful. The next step is, of course, they deserve to die and their state deserves to be wiped off the map. Is that what Oliphant thinks? Who cares? That’s what he said.

2. On the left is a huge figure. On the right is a small figure. The implication that need not be spoken here is that the big figure—the powerful side—must be wrong. Oliphant like many or most Western intellectuals, academics, and policymakers, still don’t understand the concept of asymmetric warfare. In this, a weaker side wages war on a stronger side using techniques it thinks can make it win. What are these techniques? Terrorism, indifference to the sacrifice of its people, indifference to material losses, refusal to compromise, extending the war for ever. This is precisely the technique of Hamas: let’s continue attacking Israel in order to provoke it to hit us, let’s target Israeli civilians, let’s seek a total victory based on genocide, let’s use our own civilians as human shields, and with such methods we will win. One way we will win is to demonize those who defend themselves, to put them in positions where they have a choice between surrender and looking bad. This cartoon is a victory for Hamas. But it is also a victory for all those who would fight the West and other democracies (India, for example) using these methods. Remember September 11?

A Blog for All, Despicable Cartoon of the Day

Gothamist has the cartoon and all the gory details of Pat Oliphant's anti-Semitic offering. It's got the typical anti-Semitic offerings: Nazi symbolism, mindless violence directed at Arabs, and the suggestion that the Jews kill and eat Arabs.

Meryl Yourish, But it’s anti-Zionism, not antisemitism. Just ask Oliphant

Here’s the thing: The line where criticism of Israel crosses into antisemitism is actually pretty clearly drawn in certain instances. Those instances include the use of Nazi imagery to depict the modern Jewish State, which came into being out of the ashes of the Holocaust, and which Holocaust survivors had a major hand in founding. In fact, next to portraying Jews in black hats, curls, and hooked noses, I’d say Nazi imagery is the major sign of anti-Semitic commentary on Israel.

By portraying victims as victimizers, Oliphant is employing the anti-Semitic tactics of a Latuff, who himself uses the same themes that the German propandists used, and who is a vicious anti-Semite only too happy to contribute to Iran’s Holocaust Denial contest.

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ENDNOTES

(1):

John Milton, Areopagitica, 1644, Page 51

"Though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so truth be in the field, we do ingloriously, by licensing and prohibiting, to misdoubt her strength. Let her and falsehood grapple; who ever knew truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter?"