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Pharoah Morsi in Jail
On the occasion of President Obama’s visit to Israel, most Americans think of the dramatic changes happening in the Middle East and the threat Iran poses to Israel. The world is a frightening place for Israel — but American cartoonists have something else on their minds, a Palestinian cartoonist who is jailed in Israel for no apparent reason. Here is a letter I wrote to Israel’s Ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren.
Dear Ambassador Oren,
I am writing to urge Israeli authorities to release a Palestinian political cartoonist, Mohammad Saba’aneh, who was jailed by the Israeli Defense Forces on February 16 at a border crossing between the West Bank and Jordan. He is being held without charge and is denied access to an attorney. Under Israeli law, Muhammad may be held indefinitely without charge. Only Israeli authorities know why he is imprisoned.
Mohammad is a cartoonist for Al-Hayat al-Jadida, the official newspaper of the Palestinian Authority, and he works at the Arab American University in Jenin on the West Bank. He is a respected cartoonist; he is not a terrorist or a criminal. Arab cartoonists often draw ugly, racist, offensive cartoons about Israel, but Mohammad’s cartoons are not among those; his work, although critical, is more balanced and artful.
I met Mohammad in 2010, when the U.S. State Department sent him to our Association of American Editorial Cartoonists convention in Florida, where he got to meet many of his American colleagues. Mohammad told me he was a fan of my work; he is a charming guy, eager to show his own cartoons to all of his new friends. Mohammad is active in the global cartooning community and cartoonists around the world are closely following the story of his plight in Israel.
I run a small business, Cagle Cartoons, Inc., that syndicates the work of cartoonists from around the world to over 850 subscribing newspapers, including half of the daily, paid-circulation newspapers in America. Among the cartoonists we distribute is Yaakov Kirschen, the cartoonist who draws Dry Bones for the Jerusalem Post; Yaakov’s cartoons run in Jewish newspapers throughout the United States. Our American editorial cartoonists are great supporters of Israel, in contrast to cartoonists from the rest of the world who harshly criticize Israel. The contrast is easy to see as editorial cartoons reflect world opinion. American cartoonists are Israel’s most visible supporters, and my own small business is the leader in distributing these views for America and the world to see.
It seems clear that Mohammad has been jailed to chill his cartoons that are critical of Israel. Instead, this ugly incident risks chilling Israel’s most visible supporters in America’s press at a time when Israel needs our support more than ever.
American cartoonists like to see Israel as a champion of democracy and press freedom in a hostile Middle East — Mohammad’s case undermines that perception and seems to be a clumsy attempt to silence the press. This incident makes Israel appear to be no better than its repressive neighbors.
I’m writing to you in the hope that you will urge the authorities in Israel to release Mohammad, return him to his family and allow us to again see Israel as a democracy that respects a free press.
Truly, Daryl Cagle
Daryl Cagle is a cartoonist who runs the CagleCartoons.com newspaper syndicate distributing editorial cartoons to more than 850 newspapers around the world including the paper you are reading now; he is a past president of the National Cartoonists Society. Comments to Daryl may be sent to [email protected]. Read Daryl’s blog at www.cagle.com/daryl.
Please use the cartoon posted with this column. It’s by the jailed Mohammad Saba’aneh. Attribution should be to Mohammed Saba’aneh, Cartoon Movement.
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Those Darn Minority Prisoners
I just got this interesting email from the editorial page editor of the Pocono Record:
Hi Daryl,
Just wanted to pass along a criticism from a very, very angry white male reader.
On Sunday, Aug. 2 I ran an editorial on prison reform noting the U.S. claim to fame-high prison population and advocating that we look more closely at models where electronic monitoring, parole etc. are used.
This afternoon I came back from lunch to find a real lunatic-fringe, more than 5-minute-long diatribe on my voice mail. The guy ran out of time, so he called back and left another few minutes of vituperation.
To accompany the corrections-reform edit, I had used your March 5, 2008 cartoon of the guys in striped jail suits jumping out of the bursting can. I also ran, small, in the editorial, Adam Zyglis’ cartoon of the same date dealing with the same topic.
This caller was outraged because all the prisoners he could see in the cartoons were white. He took off on that big-time.
Adding fuel to the fire was a story we ran on page 1 that day featuring an interview of a local white woman whose son, a Marine, had been killed along with his black wife, while stationed in California. Four black guys, fellow Marines, have been charged. The guy took off on that, too, saying that if it had been four white guys it would be all over the news (It WAS all over the news, but apparently he missed that page-one point somehow · .)
Anyway I just wanted to pass along this guy’s seething, roiling criticism of the liberal media portraying criminals as white and victims as minorities.
So next time you depict jail birds, if you want to make this guy happy make sure they’re all black, okay?
Right.
Best,
Paula Heeschen
Editorial page editor
Pocono Record
Stroudsburg, PA
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Cartoons As A Measure Of Freedom
Cartoons as a Measure of Freedom
We all know that cartoonists can get into big trouble for drawing the Prophet Muhammad, but cartoonists around the world regularly get in big trouble for drawing all kinds of things. One cartoonist in Iran is in prison for drawing a cockroach.
Mana Neyestani drew a child talking to a cockroach; in the cartoon, a boy says the word “cockroach” in different ways, and the cockroach replies, “What?” in the Azeri language of Northern Iran. Mana has a lot of Azeri friends and colleagues, a minority group that constitutes about 25 percent of Iran’s population and which is often the butt of local ethnic jokes.
It would seem that the Azeris have thin skins; when they saw Mana’s cartoon, they rioted. Thousands of Azeris filled the streets to protest the cartoon; they set fire to a newspaper office then pelted government buildings and police with stones, injuring several policemen. Dozens of rioters were arrested. Mana and his editor were abruptly fired from their jobs at “Iran Friday,” the weekend edition of one of Iran’s largest newspapers, which ran a front-page apology for three days following the riots.
Iranian officials blamed America and Israel for the riots fueled by the cartoon, but threw Mana and his editor into Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison where they face trial on charges of “insulting the Azeri minority.” Mana’s cockroach cartoon was published on May 12; the newspaper was closed down on May 23 and is awaiting a court decision on whether it may resume operations.
Tehran’s chief prosecutor, Saeed Mortazavi, is pressing the case against Mana and his editor. Mortazavi is best known for closing about 80 pro-reform newspapers in Iran and is rumored to be in line to become Iran’s next Justice Minister. He is also wanted in Canada in connection with the murder of a Canadian photo-journalist. Mortazavi ordered photographer Zahra Kazemi’s arrest and imprisonment on charges of “photographing a prison;” she died after being beaten and tortured. The Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister also accuses Mortazavi of falsifying documents to cover up his involvement in the case.
The Canadian Press quotes Prime Minister Steven Harper, “We’re appealing to the international community to use all manner of law available to detain this individual (Mortazavi), and have him face justice. I don’t know whether we’ll see a willingness or an ability to do that, but we want to make it absolutely clear that the government of Canada has not dropped this matter.” According the same Canadian Press report, Canada condemned Mortazavi’s appearance at a United Nations human rights conference this week and narrowly missed an opportunity to extradite him when he skipped a scheduled stop in Germany on his trip back to Iran.
My friend, Nik Kowsar, alerted me to Mana’s story. Nik used to be Iran’s top cartoonist; he escaped to Canada after receiving death threats. Back in Iran, Nik was recently tried and sentenced in absentia to four months in prison for insulting government officials and clerics. Nik tells me that Mana’s brother, Touka, who was another of Iran’s top cartoonists, has given up his profession out of fear.
I run a popular political cartoon web site on MSNBC.com (at www.cagle.com) where I feature Nik’s cartoons, and I used to run Touka’s work. The government of Iran recently blocked access to my site and I’ve been getting e-mails from Iranian readers, wondering where the site went and how to find it again.
Cartoons are more powerful than words. A cartoon on the editorial page screams louder than the words that surround it. The response to the Danish Muhammad cartoons shocked the West, but came as little surprise to Third World cartoonists who are used to seeing nutty reactions to their cartoons. Cartooning is a dangerous profession in much of the world where the accepted response to an insult is vengeance. The fact that a murderer is prosecuting a cartoonist should be seen as a measure of Iran’s dysfunctional society.
Most people in the West came away from the Danish Muhammad cartoon imbroglio with the idea that we need to be more tolerant of other religious views, and that drawings of Muhammad should be forbidden out of respect for the sensitivities of Muslims. Nothing could be more wrong as we see crowds riot in response to a drawing of a cockroach. The lesson to be learned from the Muhammad cartoons, from Mana, from Nik and from many other cartoonists who suffer from unreasonable Third World reactions to their cartoons, is that cartoonists are on the front lines in exposing the repression, intolerance and underlying chaos in totalitarian societies.
Daryl Cagle is a political cartoonist and blogger for MSNBC.com. He is a past president of the National Cartoonists Society and his cartoons are syndicated to more than 800 newspapers, including the paper you are reading. His books “The BIG Book of Bush Cartoons” and “The Best Political Cartoons of the Year, 2006 Edition,” are available in bookstores now.
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Bush Broom and Flag
