Calling All Anti-Semitic Cartoonists!

Al Jazeera reports on a contest being held by Iran's largest selling newspaper, Hamshahri.

The paper is asking for Holocaust cartoon contributions.
"It will be an international cartoon contest about the Holocaust," Farid Mortazavi, the graphics editor for Hamshahri newspaper, which is published by Tehran's conservative-run municipality, said on Monday.

He said the plan was to turn the tables on the assertion that newspapers can print offensive material in the name of freedom of expression.

"The Western papers printed these sacrilegious cartoons on the pretext of freedom of expression, so let's see if they mean what they say and also print these Holocaust cartoons," he asserted.

Are we to believe that Farid Mortazavi, a graphics editor, is completely unaware of the plethora of anti-Semitic cartoons that already fill Arab publications?

Actually, I think it would be great for Western papers to print the trash coming out of the Arab World.

Let everyone see their venom. Sounds like a terrific idea to me.
Iran's fiercely anti-Israeli regime is supportive of so-called Holocaust revisionist historians, who maintain the systematic slaughter by the Nazis of mainland Europe's Jews as well as other groups during World War II has been either invented or exaggerated.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's hardline president, prompted international anger when he dismissed the systematic slaughter by the Nazis of mainland Europe's Jews as a "myth" used to justify the creation of Israel.

Ahmadinejad is a danger to all free people.

This guy wallows in pushing the Free World's buttons.

The people who buy into his propaganda are sure to regret it some day, probably sooner than later.
Mortazavi said Tuesday's edition of the paper will invite cartoonists to enter the competition, with "private individuals" offering gold coins to the best 12 artists - the same number of cartoons that appeared in the conservative Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten.

Ooh, gold coins!

That's a nice prize, but it doesn't compare to seventy-two virgins.

Can't the "private individuals" do a little better than gold coins?

Nonethless, I would imagine that there are plenty of budding artists that would gladly present their anti-Semitic artwork to Hamshahri without any incentive.
Last week the Iranian Foreign Ministry also invited Tony Blair, the British prime minister, to Tehran to take part in a planned conference on the Holocaust, even though the idea has been branded by Blair as "shocking, ridiculous, stupid".

Blair also said Ahmadinejad "should come and see the evidence of the Holocaust himself in the countries of Europe", to which Iran responded by saying it was willing to send a team of "independent investigators".

I like Blair when he's not in CYA mode and trying to appease. When he wants to be, he's very tough.

"Independent investigators" from Iran sent to Europe to research the Holocaust -- how disgusting!

One can guess what the findings of these investigators would be. In fact, I could write out their report right now.

The summary: It didn't happen.
I hope the judges in the cartoon contest are very careful when awarding the gold coins. There are so many Holocaust cartoons already out there, they have to guard against plagiarists.

Browse through these instance of free speech.Tom Gross Media.com
Palestinian Media Watch

I can't be certain, but I don't think any Arab embassies were torched as a result of these cartoons -- no massive protests, no riots, no deaths, no burning of flags.

In another development in the Cartoon War, European Jewish Press reports:
A Dutch Jewish organization has filed charges with the public prosecutor after a Belgian-Dutch Muslim political organization, the Arab European League, posted several anti-Semitic cartoons on its website last Saturday.

The Arab European League has claimed that it posted these images to test the West’s reaction.

While the cartoons depicting prophet Mohammed wearing a turban-shaped bomb have enflamed Muslims from Indonesia to Lebanon, the Muslim organization in Europe wants to show that it is not only Muslims who can be offended and has attempted to exact revenge.

The cartoons published on the AEL’s website feature anti-Semitic and inflammatory images including a scene where Anne Frank is in bed with Adolf Hitler. In the cartoon Hitler is pictured saying to Anne Frank "Write this one in your diary, Anne."

Another has Steven Spielberg and Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson discussing making a film on the Holocaust with Jackson quoted as saying "I don’t think I have that much imagination."

Lebanese born Dyab Abou Jahjah, the AEL’s founder, defended the group’s actions on the Dutch television program Nova Saturday. "Europe has its sacred cows, even if they’re not religious sacred cows," Jahjah told the program.

The internet site did issue a disclaimer to accompany the cartoons saying that the cartoons were part of an exercise in freedom of speech.

How thoughtful!

That shows great sensitivity.

The internet site regularly posts articles skeptical of the Holocaust or that six million Jews died and articles supporting the view of the Iran’s President that Israel should be destroyed.



I bet the creator of this cartoon, posted on the Arab European League's website last Saturday, regrets not saving it to enter in Iran's contest.

Bad timing.