Holocaust Cartoon Contest: The results are in
In the wake of last year's controversy over the publication of cartoons of the prophet Mohammed, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad decided to launch an international cartoon contest. The objective: invite people from all over the world to question the reality of the Holocaust. The contest drew participants from all over the world and yielded more than 200 Holocaust-related cartoons.
The first prize went to Moroccan cartoonist Abdellah Derkaoui. His caricature features an Israeli crane building a high wall around Jerusalem. In the background, half hidden by the wall, lies the dome of the Al-Aqsa mosque. Painted on the wall is a picture of the entrance to a death camp.
The choice of Derkaoui's cartoon is somewhat surprising. The cartoon does not deny the Holocaust, for it uses the best-known symbol of the Nazi genocide to criticize current Israeli policies toward the Palestinians. This is not denial. The cartoon acknowledges that the Nazi genocide actually took place, that it was wrong, and that it remains an indisputable reality of Middle Eastern politics.
One might have expected much worse from the Iranian government. Since his election, Ahmadinejad has made a number of provocative statements, casting doubt on the awful realities of the genocide and reiterating the old Arab view that if the genocide occurred in Europe, then Europe should have offered the Jews reparation in Europe and not made the Palestinians suffer the consequences of its tragic policies.
However, the Iranian government refrained from choosing one of the rabidly anti-Semitic cartoons that drew on 20th-century European caricatures of Jews. Nor did it choose a cartoon that equated Israeli policies with the Nazis' quest for world domination. Nor did it choose a cartoon depicting Israel and the United States in cahoots to exploit the Palestinians. All these themes were depicted in various entries to the contest. The rejection of these more extreme representations might be a sign of moderation from an Iranian government seeking to change its strategic relationship with the U.S. government.
Of course, Derkaoui's acknowledgement of the Nazis' Holocaust does not represent an ideological epiphany. It is designed to draw a moral equivalence between what happened to the Jews in Europe under Nazi domination and what is happening to the Palestinians at the hands of Israel now....
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The first prize went to Moroccan cartoonist Abdellah Derkaoui. His caricature features an Israeli crane building a high wall around Jerusalem. In the background, half hidden by the wall, lies the dome of the Al-Aqsa mosque. Painted on the wall is a picture of the entrance to a death camp.
The choice of Derkaoui's cartoon is somewhat surprising. The cartoon does not deny the Holocaust, for it uses the best-known symbol of the Nazi genocide to criticize current Israeli policies toward the Palestinians. This is not denial. The cartoon acknowledges that the Nazi genocide actually took place, that it was wrong, and that it remains an indisputable reality of Middle Eastern politics.
One might have expected much worse from the Iranian government. Since his election, Ahmadinejad has made a number of provocative statements, casting doubt on the awful realities of the genocide and reiterating the old Arab view that if the genocide occurred in Europe, then Europe should have offered the Jews reparation in Europe and not made the Palestinians suffer the consequences of its tragic policies.
However, the Iranian government refrained from choosing one of the rabidly anti-Semitic cartoons that drew on 20th-century European caricatures of Jews. Nor did it choose a cartoon that equated Israeli policies with the Nazis' quest for world domination. Nor did it choose a cartoon depicting Israel and the United States in cahoots to exploit the Palestinians. All these themes were depicted in various entries to the contest. The rejection of these more extreme representations might be a sign of moderation from an Iranian government seeking to change its strategic relationship with the U.S. government.
Of course, Derkaoui's acknowledgement of the Nazis' Holocaust does not represent an ideological epiphany. It is designed to draw a moral equivalence between what happened to the Jews in Europe under Nazi domination and what is happening to the Palestinians at the hands of Israel now....