us4israel: ינואר 2013

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Rabbi Sacks, what do you think of the new and shocking anti-Semitic caricature?

Read CAMERA below about a new and shocking anti-Semitic caricature in a leading, mainstream British newspaper!

The British caricature shows Israel's newly elected prime-minister Netanyahu using Palestinian blood for cement, and crushing Palestinians' live bodies, in building activities.

The British newspaper, the Sunday Times, is insisting there is nothing wrong with the caricature.

Do the logical thing: contact the Chief Rabbi of Great Britain, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, and ask:

Dear Rabbi Sacks, As the head of the British Jewish community, what have you done to combat the new and shocking anti-Semitic caricature in a leading, mainstream British newspaper!

Background: Rabbi Sacks is a fairly radical pro-Palestinian himself.

He once even had the audacity to state that Israel's stance towards Palestinians is "incompatible with Judaism": http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/2218571.stm

However, Rabbi Sacks is a public figure, so it is his job to protect Israel whatever his own personal political positions may be.

Please contact him therefore.

Contact information for Rabbi Sacks: info@chiefrabbi.org or telephone info here: http://www.chiefrabbi.org/contact-us/

Please send a copy of your email to Israel's Diaspora Affairs minister, Yuli Edelstein, to show the Government of Israel that you are working for Israel: yedelstein@knesset.gov.il

Thanks for helping Israel.

US4Israel

----- Original Message -----

From: CAMERA Alert

Sent: Monday, January 28, 2013 2:56 PM

Subject: CAMERA Alert: In Sunday Times, Picture Worth a Thousand Anti-Semitic Words


COMMITTEE FOR ACCURACY IN MIDDLE EAST REPORTING IN AMERICA
*In London's Sunday Times, Picture Worth a Thousand Anti-Semitic Words* January 28, 2013	Please click here to support CAMERA's vital work! Click on the icons below to follow CAMERA:
IN BRIEF	to / Top / In Detail / Action Item
Attention CAMERA E-Mail Team: January 27 was International Holocaust Remembrance Day. That same day, The Sunday Times of London published an editorial cartoon showing a hook-nosed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu building a wall on the bodies of Palestinians and using their blood as mortar. Michael A. Salberg, International Affairs Director of the Anti-Defamation League described the cartoon as having "a blatantly anti-Semitic theme and motif which is a modern day evocation of the ancient 'blood libel' charge leveled at Jews." "This cartoon would be offensive at any time of the year, but to publish it on International Holocaust Remembrance Day is sickening and expresses a deeply troubling mindset," said European Jewish Congress President Dr. Moshe Kantor. "This insensitivity demands an immediate apology from both the cartoonist and the paper's editors." In answer to this and other criticism, a spokesperson for The Sunday Times said, "This is a typically robust cartoon by Gerald Scarfe. The Sunday Times firmly believes that it is not anti-Semitic. It is aimed squarely at Mr. Netanyahu and his policies, not at Israel, let alone at Jewish people." In The Commentator, Raheem Kassam described the cartoon as "not simply treading the fine line between criticism and blood libel, but indeed spitting all over it, leaving it for dust, and careering head first into anti-Semitismsville." He continued: I would never have thought the editors of the Sunday Times were in amongst those who would seek, in true Der Sturmer fashion, to use Holocaust Memorial Day to publish a blood libel, and knowingly undermine the memory of one of the worst genocides ever…. I guess I was wrong on that count. Just so. Flowing blood, hook-nosed Jews and their innocent victims feature in both the Sunday Times cartoon and this one from Der Stürmer. It was published in 1934, before the fires of the Holocaust burned their hottest and certainly fueling them. It is perverse that an image like the Scarfe cartoon pollutes the pages of a mainstream news outlet, using the same imagery as Nazi propaganda, on Holocaust Remembrance Day. And it is beneath contempt for editors to deny the hatefulness of this imagery.
ACTION ITEMS	to / Top / In Brief / Action Item
Please use the information in the alert as background for your own letter. Do not copy and paste directly from the alert and do not forward it to the media. Please contact those responsible for this offensive image and express your outrage: • Write to Acting Editor Martin Ivens at martin.ivens@sunday-times.co.uk. • Call the newspaper switchboard. From the U.S. dial 011-44-20-7782-5000, from the U.K. dial 020-7782-5000. Press 5 to be connected to an operator. • Write a Letter to the Editor of The Sunday Times at letters@sunday-times.co.uk. • Contact cartoonist Gerald Scarfe through his Web site contact form. • Send your feedback to the newspaper at feedback@thetimes.co.uk. Please make the following points: • *Demand an apology* for printing a cartoon replete with anti-Semitic imagery. • The cartoon uses the same blood-libel imagery as Nazi propaganda. • Hate-filled imagery helped make the Holocaust possible by dehumanizing Jews. The Sunday Times should not disseminate similar imagery. • Publishing a cartoon depicting Jewish blood lust on Holocaust Remembrance Day is nothing short of perverse. If you are on Twitter, tweet about this issue. Sample tweets include: • In @thesundaytimes, #GeraldScarfe disgusting blood-libel #Jew-hatred cartoon. On #Holocaust Remembrance Day! SHAME. @CAMERAorg #Israel • Why do @thesundaytimes editors think blood-libel #Jew-hatred cartoon OK? On #Holocaust Remembrance Day? SICK! @CAMERAorg #Israel • Apology needed from @thesundaytimes editors for #Jew-hatred blood-libel cartoon! DECENCY PLEASE @CAMERAorg #Israel Please send blind copies (bcc) to letters@camera.org
IN DETAIL	to / Top / In Brief / Action Item
Adam Levick of CiF Watch, an independent project of CAMERA, posted this entry about the cartoon: How one British paper decided to depict living Jews on Holocaust Memorial Day In my 2010 report published by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs about a ntisemitic cartoons, I noted that political cartoons often have more of an immediate impact in reinforcing negative stereotypes than a lengthy essay. They express ideas which are easy to understand, and thus represent an efficient way to transmit hate and prejudices, including antisemitism. While the largest output of antisemitic cartoons nowadays comes from the Arab and Muslim world, some "respectable" European papers have published graphic depictions of Jews evoking classic Judeophobic stereotypes. Some of the core motifs of antisemitic cartoons are Jews as absolute evil; imagery equating Israel with Nazi Germany; Jewish conspiracies; Zionists controlling the world; and variations of the blood libel. While mainstream Western papers avoid explicitly promoting the blood libel, variations of this theme – suggesting in cartoon and in prose that bloodthirsty Israeli Jews intentionally kill innocently Palestinians (often children) – have been published at popular sites. For instance, one of the most popular news sites in the Anglo world, The Huffington Post, posted a cartoon in 2012 by notorious antisemitic cartoonist, Carlos Latuff, which clearly conveyed the idea that the Israeli Prime Minister was murdering Palestinian babies to gain votes in the upcoming election, suggesting that baby killing was supported by the Israeli public. A similar motif of infanticide appeared in a 2003 cartoon by Dave Brown in the progressive British daily The Independent. The cartoon shows Sharon eating the head of a Palestinian baby and saying, "What's wrong? Have you never seen a politician kissing a baby? It won Britain's 2003 Political Cartoon of the Year Award. The following cartoon was published at The Sunday Times (the largest-selling 'serious' British national Sunday newspaper) today, Jan. 27, International Holocaust Memorial Day. In case you didn't notice, the text reads 'Will Cementing Peace Continue?', an apparent allusion to Israeli construction across the green line. However, the Sunday Times cartoonist decided to depict such building as not only injurious to peace, but (as the bloody, mangled bodies being buried over with cement, laid by the bloody trowel of a sinister Israeli Prime Minister) as a sadistic act of violence against innocents in order to gain votes in the Israeli election. In light of the Sunday Times' decision to publish a cartoon on Holocaust Memorial Day depicting a blood-lusting Jewish leader, as well as recent comments by British MP David Ward suggesting that, on Holocaust Memorial Day, Jews should learn to stop "inflicting atrocities on Palestinians", as well as other routine debasements of Holocaust memory, here's a simple, if counter-intuitive request to those who believe that the Holocaust means anything at all: Spare us your Holocaust pieties, your monuments, your memorials, museums and days of remembrance, and consider that, instead of honoring Jews murdered over 65 years ago, you may want to begin, instead, to honor Jews who are still among us. There are many ways to show reverence for a tiny minority which has somehow survived despite the best efforts, past and present, of practitioners of homicidal antisemitism. However, the especially morally righteous among you may wish to gain a basic understanding of the precise manner in which Jews have been caricatured, vilified, demonized and dehumanized prior to pogroms, massacres and genocides, studiously avoid advancing narratives or creating graphic depictions which evoke such antisemitic imagery, and righteously condemn those who do so. You cannot undo the horrors inflicted upon six million souls, but you can live your life with a steely determination to never again allow lethal, racist narratives about living Jews to go unchallenged, and to assiduously fight efforts to reintroduce such toxic calumnies into the "respectable" public discourse.

With thanks, Sarit Catz International Letter-Writing Director CAMERA	To subscribe to CAMERA's E-Mail Team alerts, click here.