To promote a recent Royal Albert Hall concert featuring Tchaikovsky’s Concerto in D Major, the BBC commissioned a caricature of famed violinist Leopold Auer for the show playbill. Auer was such a master of the instrument in his day that composers, including Tchaikovsky himself, wrote music specifically to highlight his mastery of the instrument. So, of course, leave it to “the Beeb” to honor such virtuosity thusly:
Local violin teacher Nigel Goldberg had no doubts about the poor choice of artwork and how it was presented in the booklet. “It is an anti-Semitic cartoon and it is completely out of context,” he said. “There is no explanation of the image at all. Anyone I’ve shown it to, Jewish or not, has been stunned.”
Sadly, in this day and age, this image is tame by comparison to the way Jews and Israel are portrayed in the media all over the world, and not just in Arab and Muslim countries where this sort of thing has been a staple. Take for instance this cartoon from 2013, printed in a Norwegian newspaper supporting Germany’s unsuccessful attempt to ban circumcision:
Or this one from the Facebook page of Occupy Wall Street:
Recall that Zucotti Park was rife with anti-Semitic posters, banners and people spewing the most vile Jew-hatred over loudspeakers. Along with the rapes, robberies, assaults and public defecation, this too was ignored by the media. And yet, this alleged “grassroots movement” was officially embraced by the Democrat Party.
But far too often, anti-Semitism is presented a lot less crudely and even with a veneer of respectability. For example, this from a 2002 edition of the British magazine The New Statesman. The word “conspiracy” connotes criminality, ergo an organized pro-Israel group is criminal, corrupt or otherwise underhanded. Definitely front page “news.”
But this is relatively harmless compared to the twin infamies of Mearshimer & Walt’s The Israel Lobby…
On every issue, the authors start with unproven, anti-Israel assumptions and then look for isolated examples to justify these assumptions. One does not have to take a pro-Israel position to recognize that the authors, despite their reputations, have no interest in producing a serious, balanced work. The result is a sloppy diatribe.
…and in the wake of Israel’s war of self defense in Gaza the hideous Goldstone Report, commissioned by the UN to investigate Israel’s actions in that operation. To say that Richard Goldstone portrayed the IDF as heinous, bloodthirsty monsters even more evil than Hitler’s SS is putting it mildly. Ironically, Goldstone himself recanted his entire report, but the damage was done:
The namesake of the infamous U.N. Goldstone Report, Richard Goldstone, suddenly confessed this past weekend in an article published by The Washington Post, that he had made a mistake. In September 2009, he and his U.N.-sponsored team made the wild accusation that Israel set out to murder civilians in the Gaza war rather than protect its own citizens from an unremitting genocidal campaign prosecuted for years by Palestinian terrorists.
Despite Richard Goldstone’s thirteenth hour confession, his diabolical legacy demonizing the state of Israel lives on at the United Nations. The body that created the Goldstone inquiry in 2009, the Human Rights Council, and the various entities that the Council has directed to implement his blood libel, have no intention of backing down. The facts be damned.
As an aside, I find it interesting that the UN is simultaneously depicted as an ally of Israel (see above) while in actual fact is the epicenter of the global campaign to delegitimize it.
Unfortunately, these images and propaganda are not the problem; they’re merely a symptom. As radical Islam continues its unchecked rise, as the leftist professoriate indoctrinates students with the lies of Israel’s illegitimacy (if not as an outright evil entity) and as young people absorb this hatred in the classroom and even in pop culture, these images and stereotypes, as old as Judaism itself, emerge from over seven decades of relative dormancy even more virulently than ever.
Propaganda like Fritz Hippler’s so-called “documentary” The Eternal Jew reinforced the already pre-existing anti-Jewish prejudices of Germans and others across Europe and made the roundups and extermination of millions an acceptable action, if not cheered outright. But this is also a warning about the left in general and their propensity not to debate in the arena of ideas but to clear the field of all opposition entirely. By force if necessary.
Only three short years ago, at the 2012 Demcorat National Convention, the motion to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel was greeted with a chorus of loud boos and catcalls. The increasingly totalitarian mindset of the Democrats and the Left in general, and their apparent alliance of convenience with fundamentalist Islam does not bode well for Israel or the Jews, both here and abroad.
It always amazed me that Lucas got away with that grotesque caricature without being called on it but, hey, Hollywood is chock-full of self-loathing Jews, more’s the pity.
I’m going to ask a question that will sound either stupid or dishonest — WHY all the Jew-hatred?
I understand why they did it in Nazi Germany, they needed a target to dehumanize. And I know that traditionally, Jews were considered synonymous with bankers.
But why hate so much NOW? They aren’t practicing barbarism a la Islam. They don’t preach hatred. They don’t ban certain ethnic groups.
Where does it come from? The “Religion of Peace,” sure, they don’t really need a reason, and it’s just one MORE group they hate, but why do so many other groups hate them?
Again, this isn’t bait, I really, genuinely do not understand where the hate comes from in this day and age.
Aside from the proboscis, Watto’s Yiddish-like intonation and the fact that he is portrayed as a defiler of pure innocent children is just incredible. I don’t know what’s worse; that Lucas did this intentionally or that the stereotypes of Jews were somehow ingrained in him at a young age and he unconsciously created this character with those attributes.
Sad.
It stems from the fact that the Jews refused to accept Jesus as the messiah and be absorbed into the new Catholic church, and so they were damned for eternity as the murderers of Christ. It really all stems from that. Same thing with Mohammed.
Much as I loathe PBS, they had a multi-part series back in the late 90’s called “The Longest Hatred” which really is worth finding and watching (see link)
http://www.amazon.com/Frontline-Longest-Revealing-History-Anti-Semitism/dp/B0002BO0DU
Now that the Left has wrung all it can out of its former Jewish support base, it’s happily throwing them under the bus in favor of what it thinks is its new Muslim constituency. (Which is really just biding its time until they can throw them off of buildings, but hey, they’re delusional like that.) The Muslim world is full of Hitler-style Anti-Jew propaganda, much of it having been brought to the region by the Nazis during the war.
I was never all that comfortable with the Ferengi of Star Trek. It wasn’t the nose. but the ears.
The drawing reminds me of the cover of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Auer had an impressive nose, but not like that.
Space Jews.
Of course, by the time Watto showed up in the movie, I had already been hammered with stereotypical Space Japs and Space Jamaicans, so I was already numb from the lazy, ham-fisted choices he had made.
“Instead of creating unique aliens, I’ll just anthropomorphize cartoon characters with human racial stereotypes.”
Thanks, J.J. Sefton. Well, as a lapsed RC, I still don’t have anything against the Jews personally 🙂
Plenty against the “Religion of Peace,” though!
I will check out the documentary, thanks for the link!
That’s to Amazon to buy it. It might be on line at YouTube or Hulu.
JJ, if you think all that stuff is bad, get a load of this:
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2015/09/epic-media-fail-of-the-year.php
Words fail me. It’s hard to say what is more frighening, that it was done deliberately or out of massive ignorance and stupidity.
I saw that and was just gobsmacked at the stupidity. This makes the jerks in San Francisco who read “Ho Lee Fook,” “Sum Ting Wong” and “Wei Tu Lo” look like geniuses by comparison. Again, I don’t think it was malicious but it was hideously stupid.