Yes, The Jews Will Leave The Med Schools, And Law Schools, and MIT
...and take a few hours out to set some embassies on fire. Can anyone really picture this? Not that all Jews are doctors, scientists, and inventors. Some are handbag designers, some are Congress-buying lobbyists, and some are unemployed. But now, an Iranian newspaper has called for cartoons on the "myth" of the Holocaust. Are they suggesting the Jews will all rush out of cardiology class to try to find cartoonists to behead or be-hand? It didn't happen after the Web Site of the Arab European League ran this cartoon February 2, 2006:
Here's the CNN story on the dumbass Iranians and their idea of tit for tat (and, by the way, there have already been plenty of "Holocaust didn't happen" or "evil Jews" cartoons in Arab newspapers, and you don't see Jews throwing objects on some flaming pyre outside Arab embassies):
An Iranian newspaper says it is going to hold a competition for cartoons on the Holocaust to test whether the West will apply the same principles of freedom of expression to the Nazi genocide against Jews as it did to the caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed, The Associated Press reports.The newspaper, called Hamshahri, said the contest would be launched on February 13 and would be co-convened by itself and the House of Caricatures, a Tehran exhibition center for cartoons.
The competition is in response to the publication, mainly in European newspapers, of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, something which is forbidden under Muslim belief.
Both the paper and the cartoon center are owned by the Tehran Municipality, which is dominated by allies of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is well known for his opposition to Israel, AP reports.
Last year Ahmadinejad provoked outcries when he said on separate occasions that Israel should be "wiped out" and the Holocaust was a "myth."
Hamshahri invited foreign cartoonists to enter the competition and said it wanted to see how open the West was to caricatures of the Holocaust.
"Does the West extend freedom of expression to the crimes committed by the United States and Israel, or an event such as the Holocaust? Or is its freedom only for insulting religious sanctities?" Hamshahri wrote, referring to the Prophet Mohammed cartoons, in a short article on its back page.
The Iranian newspaper's plans come as violence sparked by the cartoons shows little sign of abating, with Afghan police killing four protesters on Tuesday.
Tuesday's protests -- from Asia to the Middle East, Africa and Europe -- came as political leaders urged restraint and struggled to contain the backlash, some of which has turned from peaceful to volatile and deadly.
In Iran, which is locked in a nuclear stand-off with the West and has cut trade ties with Denmark where the cartoons were first published, crowds pelted the Danish Embassy in Tehran with petrol bombs and stones for a second day.
Also in Tehran, protesters threw Molotov cocktails at the Norwegian Embassy, breaking several windows, a witness told CNN.
Ole Kristian Holthe, the Norwegian ambassador to Iran, said he had gotten word that about 100 demonstrators had gathered in front of the embassy, as were 100 police officers.
"At least one petrol bomb was thrown against the embassy," he told CNN in a phone interview from Tehran.
The embassy was closed Tuesday due to the protests all over the Middle East, a spokeswoman for the Norwegian foreign ministry said, and all embassy personnel are safe.
Meanwhile, the United Nations evacuated staff and NATO peacekeepers rushed reinforcements to a northwest Afghan town after deadly fighting erupted during a protest against the cartoons, The Associated Press reported.
Where's Woody Allen? And what about Larry David? If they're not too terrified of burning their fingers to light matches, maybe they could get a few Molotov cocktails going!
Posted by aalkon at February 8, 2006 11:07 AM
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Comments
It may distress you to learn that Jonah Goldberg had the same thought.
Posted by: Jim Treacher at February 8, 2006 6:02 AM
Heh. Thanks, Amy. Tremendously enjoying the mental image of ANY of my Jewish friends throwing Molotov cocktails. Over a CARTOON.
If only the whole situation weren't so ridiculously fucking sad.
Posted by: Kimberly at February 8, 2006 6:19 AM
While not exactly a mature, thoughtful response to the Mohammed cartoon, this contest is a step in the right direction, isn't it? Unlike rioting, there's no direct risk of losing life, limb, or property. The next positive step in the evolution of this cultural exchange would be to stop drawing pictures and start discussing the concept of "hate speech."
Posted by: Lena at February 8, 2006 8:16 AM
You're right, Lena. I have no problem with people speaking out -- although it's best they speak the truth instead of the lies (ie, the Holocaust "myth"). So where did all those Jews, gypsies, disabled people and gays go if there was no holocaust? Santa picked them up and took them off on the backs of his millions of reindeer?
Posted by: Amy Alkon at February 8, 2006 8:36 AM
Treach reads NR! Treach reads NR!
Posted by: Crid at February 8, 2006 9:18 AM
The cartoon contest isn't about the "Holocaust myth" debate. It's about balancing the scales of offensiveness. This contest will make some Muslims feel better, because they know that many Jews will now be as offended by the Hitler cartoons as they were by the Mohammed cartoon.
Personally, what I'm taking away from all of this infantilism is an even deeper doubt about the tenability of religious beliefs in the modern world. We need to pull our collective head out of the ass of the 14th century already!
Posted by: Lena doesn't do astrology either at February 8, 2006 9:22 AM
> what I'm taking away from
> all of this infantilism...
Jace, jace, jace. I think the ones who are being manipulated to riot etc are probably living in deep poverty and ignorance. These people are humanty's children. They don't know much about trading information, otherwise they'd be better at making money. They don't read newspapers, or they'd know better than to get pissed off at cartoons. What they do know is that there's this one neighborhood bully who'll come around and beat up their little brothers if they don't go to prayers five times a day. (That bully --who doubles as a riot coordinator-- is probably not so impoverished, not so illiterate, and not so sincerely devout.) Anti-semitism is a great echo of the pouting envy a kid feels for older siblings who have money, and stay out late, and connect easily with REALLY cool people.
The metaphor only goes so far. We'll give them a chance to get their behavior in order. But when the time for patience is over, we'll forgo the application of discipline to immediately pursue responses which defend our interests. If ya catch my drift.
> even deeper doubt about the
> tenability of religious
> beliefs in the modern world.
Here's the best-ever religious belief... It comports itself to cosmic practicality while wearing the cologne of supernatural insight: "What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. (Eccl 1:9)
When people say "the modern world," what they really mean is nukes. But nukes are just the latest economic effiency that technology's brought to killing. (After the clerks in Germany turned murder into an up-to-date industrial process, it was time for the boys in the lab to strut their stuff. And they really rocked the marketplace!) Weapons have always been updated and refined, just like farming and medicine.
And while claiming no expertise, I don't think all humanity could ever be killed in a clusterfuck exchange. There are too many sane people to ever have ALL the shots go off. After 9/11, Lileks had a casual daydream about how we'd respond to a terrorist who nuked an American city... We'd probably NOT respond in kind. And even if we did, people are adaptable and clever. Some fuckers would scratch out a life on some corner of the planet. Nukes are a problem, and will cause much needless misery before they go away, but so have flintlocks.
And so anyway, it's not simply religious faith that's giving us these problems. It's a deep intersection of religion, poverty, ignorance, isolation, sexism, racism and hillbilly-hood. Blaming religion is like blaming pneumonia for the death of your great-grandfather last week. Sure, that's what's on the death certificate, but actually the guy was too old to cough.
Posted by: Crid at February 8, 2006 10:28 AM
I agree with everything you said, Crid. I might have said the same thing, if I had the patience and time to write as much. You are prolific!!!
Posted by: Lena at February 8, 2006 11:03 AM
Treach reads Instapundit. Which is probably just as bad?
Posted by: Jim Treacher at February 8, 2006 11:09 AM
The term you're reaching for is here:
Posted by: Crid at February 8, 2006 11:13 AM
"The operation timed out when attempting to contact tinyurl.com."
Posted by: Jim Treacher at February 8, 2006 11:17 AM
The link was fer Lena...
JT, it's just that if we'd been told twenty or even ten years ago that gifted comedians would be hanging out over William F. Buckley's place, we'd not have believed it.
Posted by: Crid at February 8, 2006 11:21 AM
That word doesn't describe you at all, Crid. But thanks for the chuckle.
Posted by: Lena "Wild is the Wind" Cuisina at February 8, 2006 12:51 PM
unmitigated gall is divided into three parts: greed, stupidity and cruelty.
see: www.coolstretchofhighway.com
Posted by: stingo at February 8, 2006 2:28 PM
>The cartoon contest isn't about the "Holocaust myth" debate. It's about balancing the scales of offensiveness.
So let 'em be balanced. Let these cartoons run on the front page of every paper in the free world. Especially those who bent over backwards to not offend their oh-so-sensitive Muslim readership last week. Let 'em run, and let 'em see that most of the world does not burn down buildings over this sort of thing.
Posted by: Gary at February 8, 2006 8:23 PM
I agree Gary. In fact, I have a new hobby: Doodling Mohammed's image on all of my correspondences. Hopefully soon we'll see a postage stamp!
Posted by: Lena at February 8, 2006 9:51 PM
> Last year Ahmadinejad provoked outcries when
> he said on separate occasions that Israel
> should be "wiped out" and the Holocaust was
> a "myth."
Why is it that people who claim that the Holocaust never happened are always so eager to have another one, preferably in Israel?
According to the Wikipedia, "H. L. Mencken, an
American critic, defined a demagogue as 'one who
preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men
he knows to be idiots.'"
Mr. Ahmadinejad, try to improve on your skills as a demagogue and find out how idiotic your domestic audience really is: Deny the Holocaust and demand Israel to be wiped out in the same speech. There is also an additional benefit for the rest of the world, as the audience's reaction would tell us quickly whether Iran in 2006 is on a fast trip to becoming a carbon copy of Germany in 1933.
Hopefully not.
Posted by: Rainer at February 10, 2006 9:53 AM
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