UNESCO has reprimanded Haaretz newspaper over a cartoon showing the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu telling pilots to bomb the UN agency after bombing Iran.

The protest note says that the cartoon “endangers the lives of unarmed diplomats”.

True, UNESCO lacks a sense of humour.

We should also wonder whether the UNESCO chief or its spokesman have ever said anything about anti-Semitic cartoons which daily appear not only in the Islamic world, where Israelis are compared to the Nazis, but also in the most prominent Western newspapers.

It’s not only Iran’s Ahmadinejad, who organized in Teheran an International Holocaust Cartoons Competition. A repulsive wave of anti-Semitism is dirtying the world of mainstream media with images of Jews portrayed as hairy apes, bloodsucking spiders and greedy merchants.

Two weeks ago, a drawing was published by Norway’s largest newspaper, Dagbladet. Cartoonist Finn Graff depicted Palestinian prisoners being released for Gilad Shalit into another “prison” - Gaza, and inserted the Buchenwald KZ lager insignia: “Jedem das Seine” (to each what he deserves).

Just a few days later, Jonathan Shapiro in South Africa’s daily Cape Times referred to the incident involving U.S. President Barack Obama and French President Nicholas Sarkozy, in which the latter called Netanyahu a “liar”. In the cartoon we see a group of downtrodden Palestinians being led away from their homes at gunpoint by Israeli soldiers - marked as such by the Jewish Star of David on their helmets. 

Shapiro, who is himself Jewish, chooses to portray Netanyahu not as an Israeli, but as the stylized Jew of Yiddish folklore, as portrayed in the musical “Fiddler on the Roof”.

Jonathan Shapiro, S. African who is himself Jewish, chooses to portray Netanyahu not as an Israeli, but as the stylized Jew of Yiddish folklore, as portrayed in the musical “Fiddler on the Roof”.
Richard Falk, the UN’s special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, has come under fire for posting a cartoon on his blog. It shows a dog with “USA” written on his midriff and wearing a kippa, urinating on a depiction of justice while devouring the bones of a skeleton.

During the summer, the San Diego Union-Tribune printed a cartoon showing a murder victim on the ground with a large Jewish Star protruding from his back. Blood seemed to be flowing from the point where the Jewish Star was embedded in the victim’s back.

The cartoonized demonization of Israelis include accusations of deicide, infanticide and Nazi-like behavior. Hateful cartoons are appearing in mainstream papers in all European countries.

The Italian quality daily La Stampa published a cartoon about the IDF’s siege on the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem when terrorists were using it as a hiding place. Ignoring the terrorist sacrilege, it showed an Israeli tank turning on the infant Jesus, who asks: “Surely they don’t want to kill me again?”.

The Greek daily Ethnos, close to the Socialist Party, depicted two Israeli soldiers (with stars of David on their helmets) dressed as Nazis stabbing helpless Arabs. The caption says: “Do not feel guilty, my brother. We were not in Auschwitz and Dachau to suffer, but to learn”.

The Independent printed a Dave Brown cartoon showing Ariel Sharon as a child-eater (the cartoon won the Political Cartoon Society’s award for best drawing for 2003!). This fits neatly into the anti-Semitic libel that Jewish ritual required the use of the blood of non Jewish children.

Invoking a scene from the movie Schindler’s List, Dagbladet daily published a cartoon comparing then Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to an infamous commander of a Nazi death camp. Even the Daily Telegraph showed a knife-wielding Olmert, replete with star of David on his t-shirt, staring across a street at a dejected Ahmadinejad, looking in the other direction with his knife down at his side.

This is the same anti-Semitic imagery that can be found in the Middle Ages, 19th century Europe, Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union and contemporary Islamist media. Cartoons that would have been right at home in Der Sturmer are now prominently displayed in the frontpages of the Western newspapers.

Global journalism is sick and wants to cannibalize the Jews.