Israeli scholar and author Barry Rubin, in a trenchant analysis of Oliphant's drawing, does not charge the cartoonist with anti-Semitism or even hatred of Israelis. "What is involved here," he writes, "is a lack of understanding," but one that is "so enormous that it will incite hatred; cause violence and death; and block policies needed to help people-including Palestinians who are supposedly the object of [Oliphant's] sympathy but thus doomed to suffer under a repressive regime with a permanent war policy."
Rubin argues, too, that Oliphant's image "represents the mentality that will plague every Western and democratic state in the coming years. Imagine the exact same cartoon but with the Magen David replaced by the Stars and Stripes-the evil America attacking the Taliban or al-Qaida, or Iraq, or Muslims in general."
Which raises this question: Do Oliphant and others like him believe that no people under attack by militant Islamists have the right of self-defense? Or are only Israelis expected to accustom themselves to absorbing punishment indefinitely?
I'm not sure which answer would be the more disturbing.
Clifford D. May is the President of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.
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