HOLO argument, CAUSTic
reminder By Pascale Combelles
Siegel
In the wake of last year's
controversy over the publication of cartoons of
the Prophet Mohammed, Iranian President Mahmud
Ahmadinejad decided to launch an international
cartoon contest. The objective: invite people from
all over the world to question the reality of the
Holocaust. The contest yielded more than 200
Holocaust-related cartoons.
The first
prize went to Moroccan cartoonist Abdellah
Derkaoui. His caricature features an Israeli crane
building a high wall around
Jerusalem. In the background,
half-hidden by the wall, lies the Dome of the
Rock. Painted on the wall is a picture of the
entrance to a death camp.
The
choice of Derkaoui's cartoon is somewhat
surprising. The cartoon does not deny the
Holocaust, for it uses the best-known symbol of
the Nazi genocide to criticize current Israeli
policies toward the Palestinians. This is not
denial. The cartoon acknowledges that the Nazi
genocide actually took place, that it
was wrong, and that it remains an
indisputable reality of Middle Eastern politics.
One might have expected much worse from
the Iranian government. Since his election,
Ahmadinejad has made a number of provocative
statements, casting doubt on the awful realities
of the genocide and reiterating the old Arab view
that if the genocide occurred in Europe, then
Europe should have offered the Jews reparation in
Europe and not made the Palestinians suffer the
consequences of its tragic policies.
However, the Iranian government refrained
from choosing one of the rabidly anti-Semitic
cartoons that drew on 20th-century European
caricatures of Jews. Nor did it choose a cartoon
that equated Israeli policies with the Nazis'
quest for world domination. Nor did it choose a
cartoon depicting Israel and the United States in
cahoots to exploit the Palestinians. All these
themes were depicted in various entries to the
contest. The rejection of these more extreme
representations might be a sign of moderation from
an Iranian government seeking to change its
strategic relationship with the US government.
Of course, Derkaoui's acknowledgement of
the Holocaust does not represent an ideological
epiphany. It is designed to draw a moral
equivalence between what happened to the Jews in
Europe under Nazi domination and what is happening
to the Palestinians at the hands of Israel now.
This moral equivalency is very much
debatable. Israel is not engaged in a Nazi-like
policy against the Palestinians. Israel has never
called for the extermination of Palestinians. It
has never engaged in a genocidal policy against
the Palestinians as Germany did against the Jews
in the 1940s. The moral-equivalency argument also
conveniently forgets that Palestinian militants
have adopted murderous tactics and that some of
the Palestinian political leadership still does
not recognize the right of Israel to exist. It
also conveniently forgets that the Arab world has
committed its share of duplicitous acts of
treachery against those same Palestinians.
In short, there is really no moral
equivalency between the two situations. But
Derkaoui aims not so much to portray history
accurately but to shock the West into realizing
that Israel's heavy-handed tactics have, for too
long, inflicted undue and immoral suffering on the
Palestinians. That argument is likely to resonate
loud and clear around the Middle East, where the
Palestinian cause has become the rallying cry and
the symbol of the West's injustice toward the
Arab-Muslim world.
The success of the
contest is based on a deep-seated feeling in
Muslim societies that the West practices double
standards when it comes to free speech: restraint
when it comes to discussing Israel but blasphemy
when it comes to discussing Islam. Indeed, all
over the Middle East, many feel that issues such
as the Holocaust or Israeli policies in the West
Bank are not legitimate objects of discussion in
the West. Such views are widespread, including
among Arab elites.
As for Western
audiences, the moral-equivalence argument will not
likely go over very well. But Derkaoui's cartoon
might be an opportunity to open a constructive
dialogue on the subject. For such flawed moral
equivalencies to become a relic of the past,
however, both the national aspirations of the
Palestinians and the right of Israel to a secure
state have to be successfully addressed. But that
will take more than cartoons and dialogue.
FPIF contributor Pascale Combelles
Siegel's research focuses on information
operations (mainly public affairs, psychological
operations, military-media relations, and public
diplomacy) and civil-military relations.
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was wrong, and that it remains an
indisputable reality of Middle Eastern politics.
