This post arises not from what I read in the newspaper today, yesterday or last week, but from another post I saw on our site. It contains a political cartoon by the controversial Bay area-based Khalil Bendib. The cartoon is cleverly drawn and conveys a meaning that is as simple as it is powerful.

The cartoon, titled “Deadline to Bomb Iran,” finds, from left to right, a choir of two—a Sen. McCain-like male wearing black with “GOP” written on his jacket and a Sen. Clinton (Hillary, that is)-like female donning a light-colored jacket with “DEMS” on it. She stands to the viewer’s right and to the other candidate’s left. Both carry music, and he sings “Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran!” while she contrapuntally joins him with “Obliterate Iran!”

The two choristers sing to the tune a bloated conductor, with a large Star of David emblazoned on the back of his tailcoat, fiercely commands them to sing while he vigorously waves a baton in each hand. Next to the musicians lies a large hourglass with the sand clearly tending downwards. The central portion of the glass says “7 months left,” and a naked, emaciated President Bush sits on the flat top part of the glass, poised to detonate a bomb labeled “Iran” Vice-President Cheney (clad in lab coat) is wheeling in. A tiny stork looks on from the base of the glass as a moon-like ticking clock, almost at midnight, looms over the scene.

I had a visceral reaction to this piece: a cold knot that grew from the base of my stomach and spread upward. But I both needed to unpack this feeling, putting it into words, and I needed to try to check righteous anger with reason.

“Ok,” I thought, “It’s a political cartoon. It’s meant to be inflammatory, Bendib has a right to his opinion and a forum by which to express it.”

And I still think that.

But I also can’t help being upset by a patently offensive cartoon. I shy away from using the loaded “a-s” word (i.e. anti-semitic), but this drawing resonates with me as such.

It’s deeply reminiscent of other cartoons showing menacing, overfed Jews violently pulling strings, commanding marionettes and puppets…or conducting automaton-like singers to express only what Jews would permit them to express, complete with batons that look far more aggressive, like whips or police-weaponry, than musical tools should.

And I find that similarity very disturbing.

-Deborah Stokol