Shades of the past

Do you recall the flap over a British cartoonist's depiction of Ariel Sharon devouring a baby? A truly horrifying echo of the worst of Nazi propaganda, but apparently some (most notably, the cartoonist) still don't get it. Norm Geras, however, nails it:

. . . because Sharon is a Jewish leader and the leader of the Jewish state, and because there is an old anti-Semitic theme of Jews devouring the blood of non-Jewish children, what might have been otherwise acceptable as a cartoon wasn't in the given case. . .

For similar reasons, while it is acceptable to draw George Bush as a monkey, it would not be to draw Robert Mugabe so, dreadful though the latter has become.

Posted by David on February 17, 2004 8:26 PM