Israel Matzav

Iran's Holocaust Cartoon Contest is Propaganda Worthy of the Third Reich

At World Politics Watch, Bridget Johnson tells us some things we may not have known about Iran's Holocaust cartoon contest - and takes the whole thing a lot more seriously than I have:

The poster advertising the contest, which was administered by the government-controlled Hamshahri newspapers in conjunction with Iran Cartoon, featured a photo of two Nazi helmets stacked under an army helmet bearing a Star of David. "Actually, we will continue (the contest) until the destruction of Israel," exhibit curator Masoud Shojai was quoted as saying by wire agencies.

What's especially notable is not so much that Iran encourages anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial, but that so many cartoonists around the world jumped on the bandwagon, including self-designated American progressives Mike Flugennock, an editor of DC Indymedia, and David Baldinger, cartoonist for the communist publication People's Weekly World. More than 1,100 entries from 62 countries were received, and 204 finalists were put on display. Large numbers of entrants were seen from Brazil, China, Cuba, India and Russia, in addition to the entrants from traditional Muslim countries.

One of the second-place cartoons -- by a French artist identified only as A-Chard -- shows a cutout of a gas chamber tipped to the ground, with "myth of the gas chambers" written on the bottom. "Who put it on the ground?" asks a Hasidic Jew. "Faurisson," responds a rabbi, apparently referring to Robert Faurisson, a literature professor at the University of Lyon and Holocaust denier.

The third-place cartoon by Iranian Shahram Rezai shows Israeli soldiers grinning as they lay blood-stained paper dolls in an open grave. An honorable mention by Maziyar Bizhani of Iran shows a swastika-shaped building with an entrance at the end of one arm reading "Holocaust museum." Another honored cartoon by Omar-Adnan-Salem-Al-Abdallat of Jordan showed chickens burned because of bird flu concerns and the surviving ones demanding a country of their own like Israel.

Among other entrants, Sriramoju Ganesh of India showed a Star of David-headed beast with huge fangs eating people. Yasin Alkhalil of Syria depicted a wickedly grinning rabbi with a butcher knife looking in the mirror and seeing a reflection of Hitler. Galym Boranbayev of Kasakhstan drew two Arabs hanging by the neck from a Hasidic Jew's locks. Mehmet Kahramav of Turkey drew an Arab impaled by a Star of David. A cartoon of an ax by Alireza Nosrati of Iran showed a tiny area on the back bloodied, bearing a swastika, while the large blade in the front was dripping with tons of blood and bore a Star of David. Slobodan Trifkovic of Serbia showed the swastika being reformed into a Star of David.

A spokesman at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Paris said that a member of the center submitted two cartoons depicting Ahmadinejad as Hitler, but the entries were sent back. But one entry from American cartoonists Cox and Forkum, using the pseudonym "Hugh Bradley," was actually meant to dupe the judges: their portrayal of Hitler in front of a sea of skulls actually became an image of Ahmadinejad when turned upside down. It was accepted into the contest, but didn't make it into the finals.

"Would it be able to compete with out-and-out anti-Semitism, Holocaust denial and moral equivalence?" wrote Allen Forkum on their Web site. "We could only hope the camouflage cartoon would act as a Trojan Horse for the Ahmadinejad/Hitler caricature."

"Thank you for a chance to speak the truth," he said they wrote in the e-mail that accompanied their entry.

Apparently Ahmadinejad's lies make for better -- and more newsworthy -- art than the truth.

Read the whole thing. For more on the Cox and Forkum cartoon and many others go here.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:55 AM