[This post has been updated]
The Samaria Settler Council — an organization representing Israeli settlements in northern West Bank — has just uploaded a pretty jaw-dropping piece of propaganda. It’s subtitled in English and really needs to be seen to be believed. But in case you don’t want to do it to yourselves, it shows a wealthy European named Herr Stürmer (get it?) tossing shiny Euro coins to a hook-nosed, vicious character referred to only as “ze Jew.”
“Ze Jew” is paid by his master (whose face is obscured by a newspaper parodying Haaretz headlines on Israeli human rights abuses) to besmirch Israel, its soldiers and its settlers. At the end, when Herr Stürmer has no further use for him, “ze Jew” obligingly hangs himself (got that one?). The depiction of the dissenting and/or diasporic Jew as identical to the anti-Semitic caricature is a sadly familiar trope of Zionist nationalism, dating all the way back to the earliest days of the movement. The punchline is supposed to be that this is the same hooked-nosed, money-grabbing, media-manipulator that European paymasters have always seen in the Jews. But the cartoon was not drawn by Europeans — it was conceived, drawn and paid for by Israelis, for Israelis, about Israelis.
One can only wonder how right wingers, of all people, have the gall to call critics of Israeli policies “self-hating Jews”.
UPDATE: The Samaria Settler Council is a non-profit, but most of its funds comes from the Samaria Regional Council, which is an elected local authority (confusing, I know). As Labor MK Stav Shaffir wrote to her followers on Saturday night, “In case you were wondering who was sponsoring that filth, the answer is: you” – some NIS 1.3 million of taxpayer money in the last year alone, according to Shaffir.
Since going online, the video has been lambasted by just about everyone, including settler leaders. Danny Dayan, one-time chair of Yesha Council and number one advocate for the settlement movement, stressed the Council does not represent him, while Naftali Bennett tried to place some distance between himself and the video, albeit obliquely.
“I think the clip is inappropriate,” Bennet told Army Radio. “The content, incidentally, is very true: Europe funds organizations that harm IDF soldiers, and that’s a fact. I think this should be dealt with through legal means. I’m generally against using Nazi allegories.” Later on Sunday, even the Samaria Regional Council itself professed revulsion with the clip.
Meanwhile, the chairman of the Samaria Settler Council, Benny Katzover, doubled down behind the video, saying the uncut version was even harsher. “It had much stronger imagery because the picture of leftist organizations courting the greatest anti-Semites is an outrageous one,” he said to the same radio station. “But we knew that the Israeli public, which isn’t really aware of what is going on, can’t really take overdoses all at once [sic], so we softened it up.”
Morbid curiosity abounds.
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Solon
Most disturbing part was the music.
Tragic to despoil that beautiful melody.
When are y’all gonna grow up?
pabelmont
Who is it, again, Sheldon somebody, who runs casinos, has accumulated billions USD, runs the USA’s Republican Party (or tries to), and publishes a free newspaper in Israel? Money-grubbing? Media-centered? (I never paid attention to the shape of his nose.)
JDC
Sheldon Adelson is the name you’re looking for.
C.C. DeVille
Peter, stick to Momdoweiss. Your comments are out of context here. Pathetic piece of dog sh!t
Bryan
Another coprophiliac remark from CCDV – what is it with this fixation, or perhaps its not a fixation just an exceedingly restricted vocabulary and inability to engage rationally with those with whom he/she/it disagrees. I think I interpreted one of your earlier posts to imply that you were feminine, but that surely can’t be true – you are not bright enough.
Brian
With this awful product and with the similarly crude Netanyahu ad analyzed by Lisa Goldman I understand better the constant slander and constant fear mongering by the right wing on these comment forums. I watched this hateful, ludicrous video and thought this looks like it might have been written, directed and produced by some of the right wing commenters here (I could name names) and the guy who hangs in the end could be their paranoid, slanderous version of those on the left.
Ari
The receiver of the Euros doth protest too much.
Jaime Gordon
Hi
in my humble view, Israel and probably the Zionist movement too, was anti-Semitic from the start. A state where the main ideology is that a “Galutic Jew” is something “inferior”, for god sake! To make “alya” mean to ascend. It is incredible that Jews in the diaspora with self-respect and esteem accept these premises. Especially when it is so easy to find out that apparently more than 75% of the Israeli citizens are “Lumpen type”. It is also incredible that most of the Israelis think that Jewishness has something to do with Genetics!? How people who knows what happened in WWII by the Nazis against the Jewish people can believe and made propaganda about that Jewishness is Genetically related!? It was always been possible to convert “via Hahalaha” from Gentile to Jew. So how can someone believe that Jewishness is Genetic!? Incredible
C.C. DeVille
You are not very humble at all. You sound like a wicked bitch of a person. My guess is that your mothers birth canal is rat infested.
Maxim Reider
There is something which I still don’t grasp. The saw in the hands of the leftie traitor. What did he intended to do with it? To cut Bibi’s head? Because he hangs himself and we will never know…
Any suggestions?
C.C. DeVille
Oh, that’s easy. Brian met someone dark and swarthy on Grindr. One thing led to another, and part of Brian’s new friends anatomy got stuck in a very weird place. The guy with the saw was only trying to help Brian out.
Philip Farah
How new is this really? Isn’t it at the root of the Zionist concept of the “normalization of the Jewish People?” Isn’t Zionist and Israeli mythology full of effectively antisemitic depictions of the weakling Ghetto Jew contrasted with the muscular (often Aryan looking) young Sabra defiantly blazing a new future with his gun? I thought I saw a lot of this imagery in sculptures in Yad Vashem, arguably Israel’s holiest shrine. Not as blatant, but a similar theme.
gay o'connor
Well I’m gad there was an explanation of what it is supposed to mean, because, for the life of me, I just don’t get it. Leaving aside the anti-Semitic content, it is just plain peurile.
Liz
This is an attack on decent organisations and Jews. I wish it was just a piece of puerile artwork. Sadly it is not.
Behnam Shahariyari,
While the clip is repulsive, you will do anything for money
Brian
Chemi Shalev and Eva Illouz in Haaretz (both well before the Likud ad or the settler’s Herr Stürmer video was released):
Shalev:
“…If the Cossacks cried, “Strike at the Jews and Save Russia,” the right-wing’s slogan is “Smite the leftists and save Israel.” Carrying all the hallmarks of classic anti-Semitic rhetoric, leftist saboteurs are described as a closed clique with an elitist mentality, as Netanyahu said of the Israel Prize judges he summarily disqualified this week. They stick knives in the backs of Israeli soldiers (New Israel Fund), erode America’s support for Netanyahu’s policies (J Street), aid and abet Iran’s nuclear program (Herzog), are funded and managed by hostile foreigners (leftist NGOs) and wield mysterious powers to manipulate the media (Yedioth Ahronoth)….”
Illouz:
“What has gone unnoticed is that Netanyahu has uniquely mixed the invocation of fear [employed in] democracies with that of the fear [employed by] terror regimes: …he constantly refers to external enemies (Iran, Arabs, Hamas, Palestinians, anti-Semites, Europeans, etc.) but nevertheless, and more scandalously, refers to his opponents as the internal enemies of Israel (leftists, secular people, Herzog, Yitzhak Rabin) – as if the latter and the former had the same common objective, the demise of Israel. Netanyahu has, by and large, been unpunished for such scandalous positions.”
Illouz goes on to explain the reasons Netanyahu finds fear so useful:
“For one, fear, far more than anger, justifies the aggressiveness and violence that are at the heart of the Israeli right-wing view of politics. That is, it is easier to justify morally military aggressiveness or domination by invoking fear than by claiming proudly to be the neighborhood bully….
Second, fear overrides not only thinking but, more important, all other emotions….
Finally, fear demands immediate action rather than a vision of the future…it is the emotion of those who lack a vision, of those who actually and actively block the future of their nation but hide it by invoking the immediate present of survivalism. In truth, it is the emotion of those who are only busy with their own survival and not with the well-being of the citizens they represent.”
mike
It’s no secret that many of the illegal settlers are uncivilised, viscious fanatics.
Keith reitman
No thanks. I don’t need cartoons. The rampant spilling of innocent Jewish blood all over the world is being slickly and professionally UTube’d and FB’ed both front and center in the public domain. This likely causes masses of the world population to either ‘look away’ and ignore the peril and hate. Or for sick haters; to revel in it, gratuitously, and wish for more. And create more.
PS- Even “The most anti-Semitic Israeli cartoon ever made” does not kill Jews at the Kosher market.