BADIL, a Palestinian human rights NGO based in Ramallah, is a frequent and respected guest at international humanitarian conferences, and a leader of the campaign to boycott Israel. BADIL is headed by an Austrian and funded by well-meaning government grants from Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands and by donations from church groups including Trócaire and DanChurchAid.
In May 2010 BADIL held a cartoon contest, at which the blatantly anti-Semitic cartoon displayed above was awarded the second place prize. The cartoon was highlighted at displays in Ramallah and in Gaza, and posted on the BADIL website. A campaign for accountability lead by the NGO Monitor group only managed to get enough pressure from BADIL contributors to get the cartoon removed from their website after half a year had passed, and no further action was taken, nor did BADIL ever distance itself from the overtly anti-Semitic message.
The cartoon itself includes a number of very disturbing elements. In the depiction of the Palestinian-Israeli political issue, the Israeli side is presented as a religious Jew, wielding a demonic bloody pitchfork that incorporates the Jewish menorah religious symbol. In this way, the political issue becomes one of religious conflict, indicting all Jews, while the classic demonic beliefs of anti-Semitism are automatically attributed to the Israelis.
Prominent among the age-old anti-Semitic beliefs that we see incorporated here is that Jewish religious law commands Jews to kill non-Jews (and thus places all peoples in an unavoidable conflict with the Jews), a classic of the Nazi movement, and the horrific accusation of Jews killing children for their blood (known as “Blood Libel”), which began in the darkest days of witch-burning Medieval Europe and against all logic has lasted to this day.
The Jew in this cartoon controls the U.S.A. and the U.K., thus representing the "Jewish Conspiracy" aspect of anti-Semitism that arose in modern times - when people began to question the portrayal of the Jewish minority as a powerful threat, the staple anti-Semitic answer became a belief in the hidden Jewish control of others, covered up by a vast conspiracy.
Perhaps the saddest aspect of this cartoon is that the constant anti-Semitic portrayals of Israel add a further and very deep level of mistrust and hatred to an already complex and painful situation, making the prospects of a solution that will gain the approval and support of the two peoples in question even more difficult.
