A recent cartoon by Pat Oliphant is being denounced (once again) by Jewish leaders around the world as anti-Semitic. The drawing in question depicts a huge microcephalic goose-stepping soldier armed with a sharp-toothed Star of David, attacking a tiny defenseless woman cradling a child. The woman is labeled “Gaza.” The drawing of the Israeli echoes the famous cartoon by Robert Minor of  the perfect Nazi soldier, a muscular headless giant.

Oliphant has been no friend of Israel. Over the years he has consistently criticized Israeli policies and its leaders, often in ways that have deeply offended Jews and other defenders of Israel. While he has often criticized Arab leaders, too, his attacks on Israel have been far more frequent and more vigorous than his criticisms of Palestinian terorists. Clearly, he has decided which side he favors in this conflict.

As a Jewish cartoonist, I join many Jews in finding the most recent drawing disturbing, on a number of fronts. First,  any comparison of Israel’s actions to those of the Nazis (an all-too frequent occurance in columns and cartoons) should be beyond the pale. Israel has never attempted to eliminate the Palestinians. In fact, the reverse is true; it is Hamas and Hezbollah that have openly called for the extermination of Israel. Second, as a cartoonist I’ve learned that the use of religious symbols as metaphors invariably results in gratuitously offending practitioners of that religion, at the expense of making my point clearly. Admittedly, this is difficult in the case of Israel, because the Star of David is the symbol both of the Jewish religion and of the secular State of Israel.

That said, I am equally wary of the automatic charge that anyone who criticizes Israel is an anti-Semite. Pat Oliphant, who in my opinion is the finest editorial cartoonist ever to lift a pen, is great precisely because of his willingness to cross lines other cartoonists won’t. Oliphant, in addition to being called an anti-Semite, has been vilified throughout his career as a racist, a sexist, a homophobe, anti-Catholic, anti-Arab, anti-French, anti-English — pretty much anti-anything and anyone. He is an unparalleled equal-opportunity offender, a man who never met an advocacy group he didn’t dislike. He has drawn, with great and hilarious disdain for any sort of political correctness, gangly thick-lipped exploiters of Black victimization, big-breasted operatic sword-wielding feminists, swarthy hook-nosed Arab shieks, effete limp-wristed elitist Frenchmen, predatory pedophile priests robed in gaudy insincerity, and other outrageous images too numerous to recount here.

I honestly don’t know what Pat Oliphant thinks about Jews. It’s the sort of question one normally doesn’t ask a fellow cartoonist. I know from his work what he thinks about Israel, and we’ll have to disagree about that. From what I know of his cartoons in general, though, I won’t join the chorus of those who denounce him as an anti-Semite every time he draws another unfavorable cartoon about Israel. 

His willingness to ignore all the rules of polite society when it comes to the politics of race and ethnicity makes him an easy target for charges of racial and religious bias. It’s also what makes him a great cartoonist.

Topics: anti-Semitism, cartooning, Israel, Jews, Pat Oliphant