Recently, a British political cartoon depicted an oversized, naked (save for a loin-cloth that reads "Vote Likud!") Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon eating a baby. The piece was awarded "Political Cartoon of the Year" from the British Political Cartoon Society.
No, you didn't read that wrong: I said he was eating a baby, as in there was a baby's head in Sharon's mouth, and he was tearing at the neck-meat like a piece of Kentucky Fried Chicken.
But the most shocking part of all is that it was British - British cartoonist, British cartoon society, British newspaper in which it first ran. This work of virulent anti-Semitism is the product not of the Jew-hating, fundamentalist strain of Islam, but of modern, liberal, secular Europe.
Dave Brown, the cartoonist responsible for this garbage, has claimed that it's not anti-Semitic at all - because it was inspired by a Goya painting (?!) and because it attacks a man and his administration, not Israel or all Jews.
If Brown genuinely expects anyone to buy that, he's got another thing coming. Throughout history, anti-Semites always have had a funny habit of hiding their prejudice behind concerns about pacifism, communism, capitalism, etc. Israel (or its leaders, if you're feeling clever) is just the newest face to draw on the punching bag.
Now, it's not impossible for columnists or cartoonists to have a legitimate, nonracial beef against Israel/Sharon. But anti-Israel pundits often seem to rely on older-than-dirt religious slurs to lampoon: puppet mastery, greed, hook noses, buying off American politicians and, oh yeah, baby-eating. Extra points if they go for "irony" by comparing Israel to Hitler's Germany or the Israeli security fence to the Berlin Wall.
But back to Britain. Britain, sadly, is not the only sufferer of Europe's anti-Semitism, nor are her symptoms the worst. The Italian paper La Stampa published a cartoon that depicts baby Jesus at the foot of an Israeli tank, crying, "Don't tell me they want to kill me again!"
That one's probably my personal favorite, but honestly, nothing beats France. Anti-Jewish hysteria there has reached the point of insanity - practically every week brings more news of synagogues burned and graveyards desecrated. It's gotten so bad that France's chief rabbi Joseph Sitruk is urging Jews to trade in their yarmulkes for baseball caps while in public. "In the current climate," one of Sitruk's aides said in October, "there is no point waving a red flag in public places."
And a recent EU poll reveals that 59 percent of Europeans think the greatest threat to world peace is Israel. Not North Korea or Iran or any number of vicious totalitarian states - just Israel.
Compared with the vein-popping Jew-hatred that comes from Islamic fundamentalists, the deceptive anti-Semitism of the European Left holds a lot more seductive power. If the unthinkable time comes when a second Holocaust happens, I wonder who will be behind it: the terrorists or our "allies"?
With friends like these...
Eric Spratling is a journalism senior. Reach him at eric.spratling@asu.edu.
