DarylCagle.comThanks to Jonatan Krovitsky for posting this animation as a comment on my Facebook page. The clever, editorial cartoon video is by longtime animation stalwart, Nina Paley, and since, in the credits, it urges people to copy and post, I’ll do just that.
This Land Is Mine from Nina Paley on Vimeo.
I’ve been occasionally accused of anti-Semitism in my cartoons criticizing Israel, here are a couple of examples. I drew this cartoon below during the last Israel/Hamas battle a few years ago.
My critics claimed that the helmet on the soldier resembled a Nazi soldier’s helmet, because of the jag at the base that covers the top of the soldier’s ear. I did a Google search at the time, to see what Israeli helmets look like, and they had the ear jag – still, Nazi helmets have a strong visual image. I also got complaints about the nose on the soldier being too big.
The second complaint was that I put the Star of David on the Israeli soldier’s helmet, rather than the Israeli flag, which is a rectangle with the Star of David with a blue stripe above and below. Putting the Star on the helmet implied that he was any Jew, rather than an Israeli soldier. I guess I would have done the whole flag on his helmet, if I had it to do over again.
Later, when a bunch of ships tried to break the blockade of Gaza and were attacked by Israel, I drew this related cartoon and didn’t get so much criticism – maybe because I softened the shape of the helmet over the ear (his nose is a little smaller, too).
I recently drew this cartoon about the “Gaza Missile Defense System” which got 3,044 shares on my Facebook page – that’s a lot of shares for one of my cartoons. I guess it struck a nerve.
In general, American cartoons are supportive of the Israeli side and international cartoons are supportive of the Palestinian side in the conflict, with some of the foreign cartoons getting pretty anti-Semitic. The theme of Hamas hiding behind babies has been popular among the American cartoonists, with a grand Yahtzee of babies tied to missiles and babies as suicide belts. Here’s one by Randy Bish.
Here’s one I drew years ago when Israel was fighting Hezbollah in Lebanon …
(My color was pretty lousy in those days, I know.) The baby-belt theme has been big.
I thought this anti-Israel cartoon (right) by Malcolm Evans in New Zealand was powerful – it brings up the “Jews Killing Babies” anti-Semitic theme in cartoons that has a rich history so it is something that I would have stayed away from, that said, the current circumstances are bringing out a lot of classic, anti-semetic cartoon themes with the international cartoonists.
Among the anti-Israel international cartoons, I thought this David and Goliath cartoon by Mexican cartoonist Dario Castillejos, was a nice, fresh take.
The theme of a ruined Gaza declaring victory over Israel is another Yahtzee. Here’s one by my buddy Bruce Plante …
And here’s a stylish match from Arend Van Dam …
I like how the debris is arranged to have little, equi-distant margins around each little piece.
I can see the reader fatigue about Israel vs the Palestinians. Most readers prefer celebrity cartoons. When the news turns to international events, most of the cartoon fans turn off – frustrating for the cartoonists who want to draw about “important issues.” I can tell our traffic will be up with the news is about entertainment or sports. The more turmoil we have in the Middle East, the worse our traffic gets. Oy. But don’t miss our great, and little seen, collection of cartoons about the latest Israel/Palestinian flare-up.
Cartoons about the Israel vs the Palestinians conflict fall into some general categories; the big one being pro-Israel, which constitutes most of the American cartoons, and pro-Palestinians, which are most of the international cartoons. There are the “to hell with both of them” cartoons, which are a larger and larger proportion of the cartoons. And there are the infinity cartoons, that show the conflict going on forever with cartoon symbols like the Energizer Bunny, Mobius strips, M.C. Escher endless staircases and visions of the future with spacey Israelis and Palestinians continuing to fight in a post-apocalypitic far future. My cartoon today is something of an infinity cartoon.
We’ve just added a new cartoonist to our Cagle.msnbc.com site. Â Ramzy Taweel is a freelance, West Bank Palestinian cartoonist, who works as a graphic artist and as a “media officer” for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Â See Ramzy’s cartoon archive here. Â And there’s more on Ramzy in my blog four weeks ago.
