Hahahaha the Guardian

[Repat Van]

Oct 16, 2023 15:36:21 GMT perrykneeham said:

Massive racist sees no problem with massive racism shockah!

All those words when you could have just explained it instead.

[perrykneeham]

I'm not sure I can explain your racism.

[Repat Van]

So you can’t explain why it’s anti-Semitic.

Cool. Just say that. I am sure somebody more knowledgeable will be happy to pop in with an explanation.

[perrykneeham]

I expect they just wanted shot of the bloke. It wasn't a bad caricature of Bibi and the political message didn't really speak to me. Don't really see the antisemitism so, perhaps I've missed it, or he's become a victim of the current waves "you're either 100% with us, or you're Osama bin Laden née Schicklgruber".

[Repat Van]

Oct 16, 2023 14:21:06 GMT flatandy said:

I’m not clicking a Mail link. But Bell often does any Jewish person as scrawny and scheming with wrinkled skin and a massive hook nose, something straight out of the Ladybird Book of Dubious Stereotypes

Ok I re clicked and this time sullied myself by actually reading the Daily Heil article. Unsurprisingly (or surprisingly?) they showed themselves to be more knowledgable that the boards resident racists:

“In the picture, the Israeli prime minister wears boxing gloves and holds a scalpel over his exposed belly, readying a cut in the shape of Gaza, with the caption: 'Residents of Gaza, get out now.'

Critics have taken this to be a reference to Shylock, the Jewish moneylender in Shakespeare's play The Merchant of Venice who demands a 'pound of flesh' from someone who cannot pay him back.

Mr Bell has defended the image and decried accusations that he used anti-Semitic tropes – although it is not the first time he has faced these claims. ”

“He has insisted it is a reference to a 1960s cartoon by David Levine, who drew US President Lyndon B. Johnson with a Vietnam shaped scar on his torso at the time of the war in the south-east Asian country. The cartoon Mr Bell submitted last week has the words 'After David Levine' above the artist credit.”

It makes sense now. If it was a one off he could have claimed ignorance and that it was just the Vietnam war similarity he was calling out but a pattern is a pattern.

[perrykneeham]

"Interpretted". Hmmm ... I would have gone with a venting of the spleen and clumsy, rather than surgical, strikes.

[flatandy]

Yeah, I read a little non-Mail background on it, too. The LBJ cartoon reference might be OK, but it feels like if you need people to know about a 60 year old US political cartoon for your picture of a Jew taking a pound of flesh to not look racist, you might be on fairly thin ice. Do you really need to reference a cartoon that old to make a point about Netanyahu being pretty vile?

Also, again, as with many offensive "comedians", "cartoonists" and "commentators", he'd be given a lot more leeway if he'd actually been funny or good in living memory.

[Repat Van]

I am also not sure the images are all that similar….


www.samuel-beckett.net/Levine_LBJ.html

[mids]

I thought it was a reference to Jews stealing organs, itself a reference to the blood libel thing.

[perrykneeham]

Oct 16, 2023 16:29:20 GMT Repat Van said:

I am also not sure the images are all that similar….


www.samuel-beckett.net/Levine_LBJ.html

Oh, they're very similar indeed, except that LBJ looks much more like a cartoon Jew.

[perrykneeham]

I think he's probably been put out to grass for lack of originality, lack of effort, unfunniness and playing to the old in-crown, who are no longer "in".

[mids]

Anyway all that aside, the left hates Jews.

[flatandy]

Right. So you need to know that there's a 60 year old photo of LBJ with a scar. And then that someone made a cartoon version of LBJ with a scar. But then you add a scalpel to show a pound of flesh being taken.

It might have been easier to produce a non-racist cartoon where normal people could understand the references.

[Repat Van]

And what’s with the boxing gloves? Was it a last minute addition to try and hide the trope?

[Repat Van]

Oct 16, 2023 16:29:44 GMT mids said:

I thought it was a reference to Jews stealing organs, itself a reference to the blood libel thing.

But that would mean him stealing his own organs which makes no sense.

(Can you actually be accused of “stealing” your own organs?)

[flatandy]

I think the boxing gloves are to suggest - in the most sympathetic reading of the cartoon - that Israel is trying to excise itself of the Gaza Strip and Palestinians and is going about it in the clumsiest stupidest way and is likely to butcher a lot of their own flesh in the process.

Which would be a fair enough metaphor if the rest of it wasn't so loaded with dodginess.

[perrykneeham]

Oct 16, 2023 16:45:04 GMT Repat Van said:

And what’s with the boxing gloves? Was it a last minute addition to try and hide the trope?

Suggestion of clumsiness. That, or it's a wanking reference (lads caught having a chuck at boarding school).

[mids]

Oct 16, 2023 16:46:15 GMT Repat Van said:

Oct 16, 2023 16:29:44 GMT mids said:

I thought it was a reference to Jews stealing organs, itself a reference to the blood libel thing.

But that would mean him stealing his own organs which makes no sense.

(Can you actually be accused of “stealing” your own organs?)

I didn't look closely enough to realise it was his own body. It's a shit cartoon then.

[Repat Van]

Oct 16, 2023 16:51:06 GMT flatandy said:

I think the boxing gloves are to suggest - in the most sympathetic reading of the cartoon - that Israel is trying to excise itself of the Gaza Strip and Palestinians and is going about it in the clumsiest stupidest way and is likely to butcher a lot of their own flesh in the process.

Which would be a fair enough metaphor if the rest of it wasn't so loaded with dodginess.

Like doing surgery with boxing gloves. Ok that is a better metaphor…but then drawing that would probably look even more anti-Semitic. But I get it. Maybe he could have just painted him as a bull in a china shop.

[marechal]

I've seen the pic of LBJ showing his scar many times. I don't recall ever reading that it was in the shape of Vietnam.