Egyptian Paper Criticized For Carlos Latuff Cartoon Using Nazi Imagery To Criticize Israeli Policy



According to an article posted to Jewish Chronicle On-Line, the Egyptian daily Al-Watani al-Youm ran the above Carlos Latuff cartoon featuring an aid ship being accosted by an octopus wearing a nation of Israel flag as a rocker-style bandanna, albeit transformed from the standard design to prominently feature a swastika. A complaint from the Israeli embassy in Cairo quickly followed its June 15 publication. Editor Mohammad el-Alfy and Latuff both defended the cartoon, while the political analysis in the article seems to be focused on its publication as a gateway to understand the latest round of regional tensions brought on by the aid blockade. I don't know if the paper's use of the cartoon can be seen as provocative or not -- well, I mean it's obviously provocative to depict someone as a homicidal Nazi octopus, but I couldn't tell you if this was an explicit and specific choice made by the editors to piss off Israeli officials or if they just ran a bluntly severe cartoon. The Brazilian cartoonist Latuff is a well known maker of cartoons like this, and hiring him you're pretty much know what you're going to get. He's also about as subtle as a lap dance, so I guess we're all lucky the Octopus wasn't sporting a Hitler mustache and reading passages from Mein Kampf in Hebrew while goosestepping around the ocean floor to Klezmer music. Where exactly the intentions of the editor and publisher lie, that's slightly more difficult to discern.
 
posted 9:00 am PST | Permalink
 

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