This cartoon could have come straight out of Julius Streicher’s Nazi propaganda rag, Der Sturmer. All you’d have to do would be to switch “Hamas” for a Star of David and put a Swastika on the soldier’s helmet. Whatever you may think of Hamas, the satirical depiction of Palestinians as vermin is unacceptable and harks back to Nazi Germany when political cartoons of the Third Reich typically portrayed Jews as vermin unworthy of life. The experiences of the Holocaust have taught us (or have we learned anything after all?) that before genocide can occur, a process of dehumanization of the victim group must take place. Casting the victims as subhuman like this is a part of the process and is intended to make the public more accepting of the violence being inflicted. “Sieg Heil!”
This cartoon could have come straight out of Julius Streicher’s Nazi propaganda rag, Der Sturmer. All you’d have to do would be to switch “Hamas” for a Star of David and put a Swastika on the soldier’s helmet. Whatever you may think of Hamas, the satirical depiction of Palestinians as vermin is unacceptable and harks back to Nazi Germany when political cartoons of the Third Reich typically portrayed Jews as vermin unworthy of life. The experiences of the Holocaust have taught us (or have we learned anything after all?) that before genocide can occur, a process of dehumanization of the victim group must take place. Casting the victims as subhuman like this is a part of the process and is intended to make the public more accepting of the violence being inflicted. “Sieg Heil!”