MORE CARTOON BUFFOONS

A week ago, I wrote of an anti-Semitic cartoon that was published in the Sydney Morning Herald. Now, my attention has been drawn to a number of cartoons by NZ cartoonist Malcolm Evans, including the following:







(taken from Daryl Cagle's Pro Cartoonists Index Home Page)

The good news is that Evans has been fired from the New Zealand Herald because of these cartoons.

In a letter to Daryl Cagle, Evans explains his position:

Dear Daryl,

Thanks so much for taking the time to drop me a line. The response to my situation has been overwhelming and so, while on the one hand I have never felt so alone, at the same time so surrounded by friends.

I am by nature, as I think many of our fraternity are, a relatively solitary person and so didn't go looking for this fight. However, as you correctly report, it came looking for me in the form of an ultimatum, that I must desist from supplying anti-Israel cartoons to the paper, if I wished to remain employed. That was subsequently watered down to the assertion of an Editor's general right, but I believe that's only window dressing.

As you also report, I have always acknowledged the Editor's absolute right of refusal to run a cartoon, but this edict went an ominous step further and I had no choice but to resist.

I believe that the public not only regard our work as a reflection of the cartoonist's opinion on any given day, but judge it as part of a continuum - part of a bigger picture - and a certain trust is established - the viewer can see where the cartoonist is coming from. So, in my view, it's a fraud on the reader to allow someone else to genetically engineer a detail of that bigger picture.

And as more and more media is controlled by fewer and fewer people, the cartoonist must be ever more vigilant that his opinions are not hi-jacked in the way that so much of our news appears to be.

However the saddest thing for me throughout this whole affair (and it's been going on for a year or more) has been the Pro-Israeli faction's attempt to paint me as an anti-semitic Nazi. While I realise that such a smear campaign is part of their stock in trade, it still hurts.

For the record, I happen to believe that our society and civilization owes a debt of gratitude to centuries of Jewish initiative in every field of human endeavour. Out of all proportion to their number among us, we have been blessed with the efforts, both singly and as communities, of Jewish scholars, artists, authors, composers, craftsmen, social scientists , philanthropists you name it - the list goes on.

But Zionism is something else!

I also believe that the Holocaust is without doubt the greatest crime in recorded history and together with all the pogroms and persecutions of Jews that preceeded it, is Europe's greatest shame. But if it's Europe's greatest crime, how can it be fair that it be used to justify the establishment of a safe haven, for which Palestinian peasants must pay the price.

Kind regards - Malcolm Evans.

I think there is hardly any doubt that Malcolm Evans is a bigot. And I am not the sort of person who calls people bigots just because they express opposing views to mine. I think he is a bigot because he seems to be insinuating that Jews run the media and is against the state of Israel. In my opinion, his bigotry is not mitigated by his pronouncements on Jewish contribution to modern society and the holocaust. He is siding with the palestinians who see the Jews presence in Israel (post 1948, not post 1967) as an abomination. I wonder if he has drawn any cartoons lambasting palestinian suicide bombers.

Daryl Cagle himself does not seem much better. This is a cartoon found on his site, which equates Israel's actions with those of the palestinians, and seems to be demonizing Israeli settlers:



I guess this all goes to show that those who can draw don't necessarily draw the right conclusions.