The political cartoonist Pat Oliphant's cartoons rely on classic images: Democrat as donkey; Republican as elephant. Recently, however, he evoked a more distrurbing image—one more commonly associated with Nazi propaganda or anti-Semitic rants of extremist Islamist clerics, in his portrayal of Jews as dogs.
"Jews who fled Arab lands now press their cause" by Chronicle Staff Writer Jack Epstein, highlights the much overlooked plight of Jewish refugees from Arab lands. At a time when Palestinian activists are renewing their demand that Palestinian refugees and their descendants "return" to Israel — often a thinly veiled call for dissolution of the Jewish state — articles on the plight of Jewish refugees offer essential context and help provide balance to the media's general Mideast coverage.
Three San Francisco Chronicle staff-writers teamed up to author an impressive piece on the scope and severity of European anti-Semitism. The page-one Dec. 14 article detailed "the phenomenon of extreme criticism of Israel morphing into bigotry against Jews as a people."
The European Union's Monitoring Center on Racism and Xenophobia commissioned a study of European anti-Semitism. When the report concluded that much of the anti-Jewish violence in Europe is perpetrated by Muslim immigrants, the EU shelved the report. Jewish groups protested by publishing the report online, and the EU relented and released the report, but they continue to insist that it is flawed.
On Dec. 8, the San Diego Union-Tribune published James O. Goldsborough's latest inflammatory column, this one entitled "Israel and the rise of anti-Semitism." The piece blames Israel and Jewish groups for causing anti-Jewish violence, while ignoring the role and responsibility of the mainly Arab/Muslim perpetrators.
"Israel, in short, is an anachronism" charges Tony Judt in the Los Angeles Times and the New York Review of Books in arguing for the elimination of the Jewish state in favor of a binational secular state. He falsely singles out Israel as being the only modern, democratic nation based on "ethno-religious criteria."
In recent months, many Americans have been dismayed to see mainstream media outlets publishing cartoons with anti-Israel and anti-Semitic images reminiscent of Nazi-era propaganda. The latest such drawing is one by syndicated cartoonist Tony Auth of United Press Syndicate in which a Star of David fences off Palestinians. Not only is the message about the purpose and impact of the fence completely inaccurate, its use of a Jewish religious symbol to excoriate the Jewish state evokes anti-Semitic cartoons popular in Nazi Germany and in the Arab press.