https://www.pilotonline.com/opinion/letters/vp-ed-letc-0829-20190829-ahpvdnpogze6jdnj2eb7fbc3pe https://www.pilotonline.com/opinion/letters/vp-ed-letb-0829-20190829-jlnt7rabdfb4ta46xwujkklmna-story.html
Two letters today claiming Mon and Tues editorial cartoons were anti-semitic
I looked at both of these closely and this is the take of a Jewish guy.
The one of Bernie coming out of the cornfield does not fall under the category indicated by the letter writer. It is a shot at Bernie, who even some Jews consider to be a “schmo”. Also, seems like the writer never saw Field of Dreams. It is a criticism of Bernie Sanders and his policies. If he didn’t identify as Jewish, the letter never would have been written
The caged representatives is a shot at Trump and Bibi. And while the representatives in question are anti-Israeli government, I do not believe they are anti-semitic. I have said repeatedly that anti-Israeli government does NOT equate to anti-semitism. Many American Jews do not approve of the Netanyahu government and the hard right turn it has taken. Trump’s covert shots about Jews is more damning than what they have said.
All of course, is only MHO.
Tidewater News and Opinion Forum 
Saw these too, but can’t seem to find the cartoons in question. Are they able to be posted for some context?
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Sorry, Russell. No way to link them. I had to go to the digital version of Monday and Tuesday’s papers to look again. I’ll see if I can copy and paste them here.
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https://digital.olivesoftware.com/olive/odn/virginianpilot/get/VirginianPilot-2019-08-26/image.ashx?kind=snippet&href=VirginianPilot%2F2019%2F08%2F26&id=Pc01207&ext=.jpg&pr=Pc0120700&ts=20190826075905 Bernie from Monday
https://digital.olivesoftware.com/olive/odn/virginianpilot/get/VIRGINIANPILOT-2019-08-27/image.ashx?kind=block&href=VIRGINIANPILOT%2F2019%2F08%2F27&id=Pc0100100&ext=.jpg&ts=20190827081512
Bibi and the Donald from Tuesday
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Thanks for posting. These seem pretty innocuous to me (not Jewish).
I’m confused about the letter regarding the cartoon about Reps. Omar and Tlaib.
“It is a rehash of U.S. Reps. Rashida Tlaib’s and Ilhan Omar’s recent distribution of a Holocaust denier’s cartoon which is blatantly anti-Semitic. Tlaib’s and Omar’s anti-Semitism is documented.”
“Well documented, huh?”
I wonder if the offending cartoon in question is one by Eli Valley. He seems particularly adept at drawing
(zing) the ire of Evangelical Zionists.
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Trump has decided to identify the Democratic Party by the “Squad”.
That kind of bumper sticker politicking has seemingly worked for him in the past. “Some (Mexicans) are, I suppose, good people” means that almost all were rapists, etc., although the reverse is most certainly the truth.
As you have noted, there are a lot of Jews, here and abroad, that are not happy with Netanyahu. But anti-Semitism has a lot of traction among White nationalists, supremacists and neo-Nazis. And few of those are Democrats, to state the obvious. And lumping the Squad in with those groups with regards to Judaism is pretty clever. The Democrats are damned if they do or don’t.
American politics has never been clean. But I suspect that this campaign is going to set new standards of low blows.
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Agreed. But I think there was a touch of hypersensitivity to the currently en vogue wave of REAL anti-semitism. If Bernie does get the nod, it will be very interesting to see how the general election campaign plays out wrt to this topic.
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I think the criticism of the Bernie Sanders cartoon is a stretch. The cartoon portrays Bernie Sanders in a baseball uniform emerging from a field of tall corn. The caption reads, “If you tax it, he will come…”
The reference is to the feel-good ghost story movie, “Field of Dreams.” There is nothing overtly Jewish or even Semitic in the portrayal.
Instead, the artist creates thematic tension by coupling two incompatible ideas: baseball (iconically American) and taxes (iconically unamerican; think Boston Tea Party). The result is a lampoon of the notion that presidential candidate Sanders is the father figure (leader) the nation quintessentially dreams about.
As there are two letters today criticizing recent editorial cartoons as anti-Semitic, I don’t wish to discount concerns that the Pilot is feeding bigotry. Rather, I would only caution that witch hunts can be fueled as much by anti-prejudice as by prejudice.
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The complaint in the letter was the word “shmo”, which is yiddish word to refer to someone in a derogatory fashion. As I said in the original post, from THIS Jewish guy’s perspective, the cartoon is NOT in any way anti-semitic. The reaction of the writer was hyperbolic and, as you said: …”witch hunts can be fueled as much by anti-prejudice as by prejudice.”
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RE: “The complaint in the letter was the word ‘shmo'”
That was only one of several specific complaints.
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True, but that was the easiest one to dispel. As I have said several times on this thread: I don’t see it the same way as the writers of the letters do.
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Just as a note in passing: Representative Tlaib could only be anti-Semitic unless she were also self-loathing.
Jews are not the only Semitic peoples. It includes Palestinians, Syrians, Lebanese, Jordanians, any number of nomadic peoples from the area.
I always chuckle when Trump calls Tlaib anti-Semitic.
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Here is another view:
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-arabs-are-semites-too-fallacy/
Words and phrases evolve over time. I would tend to agree with the article from the Times of Israel that anti-Semitic refers only to Jews today.
Of course the perplexing and never ending question, to me at least, is why three of the world’s major religions have the same Patriarchs, as in Abraham, et.al., but can’t get along so well.
Of course those conflicts are much more matters of power and politics than nuances of God’s will. And, of course, fueled by the more extreme adherents to each religious group.
Insulting another’s’ God is like Americans insulting the Queen in a British pub after a soccer match.
IMHO
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To steal an oft misquoted line from Shakespeare… “a pox on both your houses.”
Or, as friend of mine used to say (stand away from the tree), “Moses, Christ, Mohamed, and only one got what they all deserved.”
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“Words and phrases evolve over time. I would tend to agree with the article from the Times of Israel that anti-Semitic refers only to Jews today.”
Had to check and see what the article you linked said. As he referred to standard dictionary definitions (3 of them) of the word anti-semitism, he has made it pretty clear that the word today is specifically a hatred of the Jewish peoples. Pretty much dispels the idea that non-Jewish semitic peoples are included as targets.
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Aye, but now that is a bitter irony, ain’t it?
The same Semitic peoples, who are killing one another over a patch of dusty desert, are arguing over who gets to be the victim of the term anti-Semitic. If it weren’t so sad, it’d be hysterical.
The greater irony is the term “anti-Semitic” is English, not Hebrew, not Arabic, Hell, it’s not even German, and they really did hate both equally.
No, more often than not, the people described in English as anti-Semitic (in that they hate Jews) wouldn’t be thrilled if their daughter married an Arab either.
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The political cartoons are not included in the digital version of the VP — at least I can’t find them. I’m guessing that this is because the contract would mean that they would have to pay twice for running them (paper and digital).
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Did you attempt to click on the links in my post above?
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Your link is to digital.olivesoftware.com, not the VP. I saw them in WaPo.
I have yet to find the political cartoons on the VP site itself. They used to be on the Opinion page. Now that link on the VP is just LTE’s and commentary. A search of the VP site for the title of the cartoons failed to find them except as mentioned in the LTE.
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