EJP | News | Israel organises counter-cartoon contest

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Israel organises counter-cartoon contest

Updated: 17/Feb/2006 17:14

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An Israeli cartoonist is organising a cartoon competition inviting Jews all over the world to lampoon themselves to ridicule a rival Iranian contest intended to belittle the Nazi Holocaust.

"Our response to violence, bad taste and mediocrity is self-derision and black humour," said independent cartoonist Amitai Sandarovich, who is organising the competition which opened on Tuesday.

"Day after day, the Iranian and Arab press abound with anti-Semitic drawings," he told Agence France Presse.

"I hate neither Muslims nor Arabs and I believe Jews are best placed to laugh at themselves. No Iranian can compete with us on that."

No backlash expected

Despite a furore in the Muslim world over the publication in European newspapers of cartoons mocking the Prophet Mohammed, Sandarovich brushed aside the possibility of any new backlash.

Unlike the deadly protests that have greeted the prophet cartoons in several Muslim cities in recent weeks, Sandarovich was certain that no unrest would erupt following the release of the Jewish cartoons.

"We are not going to burn any embassies, nor organise burning of flags or bloody demonstrations," the cartoonist said.

"We will publish the most hateful cartoons any Jew has ever seen," he promised.

The competition, for Jewish entrants only, remains open until March 3 on the Internet site www.boomka.org.

The best entries will be exhibited in Tel Aviv and awarded prizes.

Proud Jews

Early submissions have already been applauded by avid fans who are "proud to belong to a people for whom humour is always a haven," Sanarovich says .

"I hope Jews will rule the world by humour," he quoted one Jewish American, whose father was born in Iran, as saying.

The old stereotype of a rabbi with a hooked nose clutching a globe in his hand features among the early entries.

Others are more sarcastic. One shows Moses coming down from Mount Sinai with the 10 commandments. "Eleventh commandment: control the international media," says the caption.

One professional admirer of the competition is the cartoonist of Israel’s liberal daily Haaretz, Amos Biederman.

"It’s a nice idea. Jews are the first to tell Jewish jokes," he said.

Reacting with laughs and in moderation is preferable to whipping up angry crowds denouncing the cartoons, he believes.

Yad Vashem concern

Far more cautious is Estie Yaari, spokeswoman for Jerusalem’s imposing Yad Vashem memorial to the Holocuast.

"It’s not certain that this type of initiative is the best way of
responding to the dangerous positions taken by Tehran," she said.

On February 6, Iran’s largest selling newspaper announced it was holding an international competition for cartoons of the Holocaust in retaliation for the publication in Europe of the Mohammed caricatures.

The Hamshahri newspaper -- published by Tehran’s conservative-led city council -- said it wanted to give the lie to Western claims that the prophet cartoons were merely free expression by highlighting the unacceptability in the West of such arguments when applied to the Holocaust.

Iran’s fiercely anti-Israeli regime supports so-called Holocaust
revisionist historians, who maintain the systematic slaughter by the Nazis of European Jews during World War II has been either invented or exaggerated.

Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last year dismissed the Holocaust as a "myth", a comment he reiterated in a keynote speech earlier this month.