The Anti-Semitic Cartoon Contest / Amitai Sandy
Possibilities of Conflict Resolution through Alternative Media
By Amitai Sandy, producer of The Israeli anti-Semitic Cartoon Contest
“A Danish paper publishes a cartoon that mocks Muslims.
An Iranian paper then responds with a Holocaust cartoon contest - Now a group of Israelis announces their own anti-Semitic cartoon contest!
That’s how Eyal Zusman (32), copywriter and playwrite, and I (31), graphic artist and publisher of Dimona Comix Publishing from Tel-Aviv, Israel, issued our press release advertising our new shtick, back around the 13th of March 2006.
We followed the unfolding of the “Muhammad cartoon-gate” events in amazement, until finally we came up with the right response to all this insanity – so we announced the launching of a new anti-Semitic cartoon contest – this time drawn up by Jews themselves!
“We’ll show the world we can the best, sharpest, most offensive Jew- hating cartoons ever published!” “No Iranian will beat us on our home turf!”
(from the original press release, 13.2.2006)
The contest was announced on the www.boomka.org website, which was based on a WordPress blog platform which my friend Uri Ashi helped me set up. Within a month’s time, we received over 150 submissions from Jews all over the world. There was also supposed to be an Exhibition in Tel-Aviv, but that was canceled in the end. It wasn’t important as we had reached our goals.
Getting to the smart people
When my father heard about the contest, he said: “Amitai, you think the entire world is as intelligent and educated as you are, but the fact is, 95% of them are stupid, they will not understand your joke and they will take it the wrong way.” I have also always been pessimistic about how many people will understand the joke, but time and again I’ve been surprised for the better – so many more people understood my joke than what I expected.
Before the internet, smart kids and people were spread out and separated, one smart kid in every village or in every classroom, looking around at his classmates, and usually also his teachers, thinking either they are mad or he is, and since he’s in the minority, maybe it really is him that’s in the wrong.
Now with the internet, we’re able to reach each of those kids:
Not only Jews around the world wrote to me that this answer to the Muslim madness “made them proud to be Jews”, but we also received bloggers’ praise from Egypt, Jordan, Indonesia, and of course the unforgettable American of Iranian origin who wrote: “I’ve heard that the Jews are planning to take over the world. I hope it happens soon.”
Used against US?
The most common opinion against our contest was that the cartoons we published will be used out of context by real anti-Semites to spread further hate against us Jews.
To this I say:
I don’t deny the danger of these cartoons being used against Jews, but anti Semites will always find excuses for hatred, with or without our help. We’ve been accused of everything from 9/11 to hurricane Katrina, the killing of Jesus and original sin. Anti-Semites have been using and reusing the old cartoons from Der Strummer and the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, and Arabic newspapers have produced dozens of them on a daily basis for years on years. I don’t think a few more cartoons, many of them so obviously satiric, will make much of a difference.
The Problems
I’m going to summarize some of the problems we talked about yesterday, and to suggest one way of dealing with them.
Yesterday we talked about the dangers of using stereotypes in mainstream media, and how many times journalists are unaware of the fact that they are making use of misleading or simply wrong and discriminating stereotypes.
We came to the conclusion that we can’t avoid them completely, but that we must become much more aware and cautious as to what stereotypes we are using and how and by whom. I believe that to fight, we need good education. This education can also be information or media, which should also be provided by alternative initiatives, once the dominant discourses are entangled with stereotypes.
The solution I’m suggesting isn’t new, but I feel that sadly, it’s not being sufficiently used.
We talked yesterday about how hard it is to infiltrate the mainstream media with different kinds of news, those that don’t fall easily into the regular thought patterns of the editors, or are just not sexy enough, like Israelis and Arabs helping each other without any blood spilled. I say, instead of trying to suppress your use of stereotypes, and then failing miserably all the time, why not exaggerate them?
In order to make people aware of their regular patterns of thinking, and making them doubt them, we need to take things to the absurd.
One good way of making people think twice and making them doubt their views is by using humor.
Humor is a great tool which we have to do a quick check-up, because humor is built on the absurd. It takes a well-known situation and turns it on its head.
Using humor to exaggerate stereotypes can be provocative, but if done right, it means it can also be thought-provoking, which is what we’re after.
And what do you know – on the internet, provocation is good for your ratings! Using the fast- spreading blog network, my contest got to the world-wide mainstream media in just 2 or 3 days, and circulated there for more than a month.
The writer K. Zetnik said the atrocities which people performed in the Holocaust were so unthinkable and inhumane it’s as if the Holocaust happened on another planet.
I don’t subscribe to that point of view, because I think it’s important to remember that these were people doing stuff to other people, and this means the Holocaust could happen again.
And you know what – IT HAS HAPPENED AGAIN, more than once in the past 60 years.
Want an example? 1994, in Rwanda, a country in Africa, The majority, the Hutus, massacred the Tutsis, the minority. They killed an unknown number of people; take your pick, somewhere between 800,000-1,200,000 people.
So what if they had no gas chambers, it doesn’t matter. What matters is this was a racially- based genocide. Just like the Holocaust.
The world watched. Nobody did much. A couple of aid agencies and stuff.
Who cares? They were just some poor black people in the third world.
So, you think we’ve learned anything by making the Holocaust a unique, never-before, never- again thing?
I think not.
Conclusion
This is why we should be able to joke about everything. The holiness of terms like the “Holocaust” only shows how they make people stop thinking and being aware of their surroundings. It is a boundary of speech and a boundary of thinking. If views become holy, they are very hard to change. Only if you break this boundary, for instance by joking about it, new dimensions come up. If something is holy, it means we can’t joke about it. If we can’t joke about it, how will we see it has become wrong?
Just as much as stereotypes between different cultures have to be joked about and broken, we should always question our own views and frames of mind: is this a fair picture or is this already causing an injustice to someone?
And after all, there is no excuse. Today we all can do something against stereotypes or the holiness of terms. The internet is a realm for self-initiative, a place where you can act, react and interact against the mainstream’s shaping of symbols.
The Israeli anti-Semitic Cartoon Contest gallery of cartoons on flickr
