Today there’s been a veritable faeces-storm over Steve Bell’s latest cartoon, which depicts Bibi Netanyahu using laughable “peace envoy” Tony Blair and Foreign Secretary William Hague as puppets, with missiles unleashed behind him. One Times hack went so far as to call Bell a Nazi, although that appears to have been a misunderstanding. Bell defends himself thus.
But anyone who is even vaguely familiar with Bell’s work (and I am a fan) knows he loves this kind of imagery. All sorts of people are depicted, largely legitimately, as puppets in his work. All these works are copyright Bell or the Guardian or both – I couldn’t always find them on the Guardian’s site, but if anyone from the Guardian wants me to take them down, just let me know..
Racist about Russians?
Racist about Americans and Iraqis?
It’s a thing Bell likes. It fits with a certain left understanding of the world, especially international relations. So-and-so is really controlling what’s-his-name. Sure, some people who are antisemitic use it too, so should that make it off-limits as a metaphor? How would you illustrate that idea?
And yes, having a menorah on the podium might seem off. But you know, it’s just how the actual podium Netanyahu uses looks. That same pic has the same furled Israeli flags that Bell drew for today, too. Again, it’s just how a Netanyahu press conference looks. I’m as anti-antisemitic as anyone, but criticising Israeli politicians for bombing civilians, and criticising those who support them in doing so, that has to be allowed. This just looks like another attempt to shout down critics by disingenuously conflating their legitimate criticisms with racism.
#1 by conchovor on November 16, 2012 - 5:59 pm
Has Bell ever suggested that any other politician of any other state controls those of a much larger and more powerful state?
His Putin puppeteer pertained to Russian politics. His Mubarak to his Egyptian successor. His Taliban puppeteer to the Afghan president Karzai.
For a smaller, less powerful state controlling the greater, he has only reserved this ‘privilege’ for a Jewish politician of the one Jewish state in the world.
Which does startlingly echo paleo- and classical themes of Jewish control of the world, the lesser the greater, when Jews were only a diaspora, and no Jewish state of Israel existed.
This does, prima facie, look remarkably like what would be a recapitulation of that old theme: the one Jewish state in the world, the Jew of the nation states of the world, controlling the greater, more powerful ones.
#2 by Donald MacDonald on November 16, 2012 - 7:15 pm
Well, it’s fine by me. My only criticism of James’ analysis is that Judaism isn’t a race. And semitic… aah, what’s the use? The Hasbara are in full flight today. Twitter’s awash.
#3 by James on November 17, 2012 - 12:54 pm
Where did I say Judaism was a race?
#4 by Matt on November 17, 2012 - 11:11 am
The Bell cartoon is clearly repeating the Nazi properganda of Jews controlling the world, go and look at images of the old posters.
By all means criticize Israel as much as you like and cartoons can be a great way of satirical point scoring, but draw the line at racist tropes.
#5 by Indy on November 17, 2012 - 12:43 pm
Why do the USA and UK bend over backward to protect Israel, though?
Obviously it is not our old friend the global Zionist conspiracy. We are all (I hope) more or less sane here so let’s leave nutter theories to the nutters.
But the question is valid, as is the suggestion that the Israeli government knows that it has protected status and uses it to its advantage.
There are obviously a range of explanations, strategic, political, cultural. All of which affect both domestic and international audiences.
But I think a lot of folk still scratch their heads and think why? Could it be in part because our respective governments fear a potentially extreme response from Israel if that protection is removed because, in fact, Israel is as much of a rogue state as any of the other bad boys?