Gideon Polya & Shahram Vahdany, “What was eating Dailykos? There is something wrong with this picture”, .MWC News, 9 April 2007.
What was eating Dailykos? There is something wrong with this picture
Freedom of expression, in a democratic country is not just a right. It is a philosophy, which should be nurtured, encouraged and embraced by all. It is about tolerance of opposing ideas and views.
An article and two cartoons by Ben Heines a cartoonist and an artist from Brussels (graphic artist at MWC) published in a "progressive" American blog "Dailykos" has caused some controversy.
The reaction was swift. The site managers deleted the article due to copyright violation, but left the pictures intact for a couple of days, then deleted one picture and left the other one with a note that they do not endorse it.
However, this did not stop more than 500 comments from readers on the deleted article and photos, condemning the artist.
Dailykos readers reacted very differently to the controversial cartoons of Prophet Mohammad.
Ben writes about his experience in his blog
"The DK diary, titled "Zionism was and remains a racist ideology" proposed a brilliant article by Ahlam Akram with 2 of my cartoons (the 2 images exhibited at the top of this post). The diary had a very strong impact on the Daily Kos community and I got in a few hours hundreds of hateful comments by enraged Zionists.
To make things clear I chose to use the striking portrait of Avigdor Lieberman to illustrate this precise part of Ahlam Akram's article: "When Avigdor Lieberman publicly calls for "Transfer", which means total expulsion of all non Jewish people including Israeli citizens with non Jewish origins; what does that means if not ethnic cleansing?"
Steve Amsel a Israeli blogger and peace activist in his take " IN DEFENSE OF BENJAMIN HEINE" responds to a comment left in Dailykos asking "How could you put a Nazi face on a Jew?" asks "Can a Jew Act like Nazi?"
Tinoire a Peace worker based in San Francisco and founder of Progressive Independent also writes "What a chorus of imbeciles. As if being Jewish is some sort of a talisman against being a dangerous fascist politician with aims and ideas sharply aligned with Hitler's."
The right wing Israeli politician has made the most awful genocidal statements about killing Palestinians and expelling Palestinian Arabs - the cartoon was thoroughly justified. The censorship as a result of Zionist hysteria is thoroughly obnoxious.
In our view Political Zionism is racism in theory and in horrendous practice.
In theory it involved colonization of Palestine to form a Jewish State at the expense of the Indigenous Inhabitants. Zionism was proposed and then put into effect at a time when European racism and colonialism was the norm and when Britain had "an Empire on which the Sun never set". Indeed Sven Lindqvist's classic analysis of racism and colonialism, "Exterminate All the Brutes", links European racism, colonialism and genocide in non-European lands with Nazi lebensraum conquests, and genocide of Jews, Roma and Slavs.
The post-1967 occupation of the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) has been violent, abusive and traumatizing and constitutes a Palestinian Genocide as defined by the UN Genocide Convention - albeit not of the horrendous proportions of the Nazi Holocaust. The post-invasion excess deaths in the OPT now total 0.3 million; the post-invasion OPT under-5 infant deaths total 0.2 million; there are 6 million Palestinian refugees (4 million registered with the UN); 80,000 Palestinians flee their Homeland each year; 85% of Palestinian Christians have fled the West Bank; 80% Bethlehem Christians have fled; there is horrendous deprivation in the OPT and especially in Gaza which is in effect a Concentration Camp; the "annual under-5 infant death rate" is about 0.5% in the OPT as compared to 0.1% in the Occupier Israel (evidence of gross Israeli violation of the Geneva Convention which insists that the Occupier must provide life-sustaining requisites to its Conquered Subjects).
Half the Palestinians are Children and three quarters are Women and Children. Any Jew, any American - ANY person - who denies, ignores, excuses, minimizes, obfuscates, supports, advocates or is otherwise complicit in gross human rights abuses of Women and Children (as in the Occupied Palestinian Territory) - or indeed of ANY people - have crossed the line separating decent humanity from proto-Nazi barbarism.
and rightly so because of the utter awfulness of the Jewish Holocaust. However racists - whatever their origins - belong to the "set of racists" that includes the Ku Klux Klan, the South African Apartheiders, the Israeli Apartheiders, the Bush-ite warmongers and the Nazis. Of these racists the Nazis had the technology and opportunity that enabled them to murder tens of millions. ANY people - whether Jewish or non-Jewish - who spout extreme racist views INVITE comparison with other historical racists.
The views of outstanding Jewish American scholar Professor Bertell Ollman (New York University) are acutely relevant: “Along with the growing number of Jews who openly defend Israel's inhuman behavior, these often well meaning Jews also feed the anti-Semitic stereotype that all Jews are complicit in the crimes of Zionism, and so deserve the hatred that these crimes evoke. Isn't this what most Jews thought about the passivity of the so-called "good" Germans during the Nazi period? How much did their passivity—at a time when taking any action was far more dangerous than it is for us now—contribute to the hostility so many Jews felt toward all Germans? An all out struggle against Zionism by Jews, therefore, is also the most effective way to fight against real anti-Semitism.
Furthermore, if Zionism is indeed a particularly virulent form of nationalism and, increasingly, of racism and if Israel is acting toward its captive minority in ways that resemble more and more how the Nazis treated their Jews, then we must also say so. For obvious reasons, the Zionists are very sensitive about being compared to the Nazis (not so sensitive that it has restrained them in their actions but enough to bellow "unfair" and to charge "anti-Semitism" when it happens). Yet, the facts on the ground, when not obscured by one or another Zionist rationalization, show that the Zionists are the worst anti-Semites in the world today, oppressing a Semitic people as no nation has done since the Nazis. No, the Zionists are not yet quite as bad as the Nazis, not yet, but isn't the world witnessing a creeping ethnic cleansing against the Palestinians at this very moment? If Zionists (and their supporters) find this comparison unduly insulting and unjust, they have only to stop what they are doing (and supporting), but I fear that the logic of their position will only drive them to committing (and supporting) even greater atrocities in the future, including genocide—another Nazi specialty, than they have up to now. What, if anything, has such Zionism got to do with traditional Jewish values?”.
In conclusion
Does not matter if Avigdor Lieberman belongs to far right party in Israel and he strongly opposed an Israelis-Arab joining the cabinet. It does not also matter if the description of the photo fits someone who openly advocates ethnic cleansing.
The question is can Dailykos claim to be a part of the progressive movement yet not only deny the fundamental right of an artist to express his/her views but also to outcast, ban and attack the artist?
There is something wrong when DailyKos, Little Green football, and Israel national news, find a common ground.
Yes there is something profoundly wrong with this picture but it is not Ben's artwork.