Dozens of comics artists signed a letter calling for a boycott against any Israeli entity that does not “promote freedom and justice for Palestinians.”Here is their open letter:
The open letter, cosigned by more than 80 individuals involved in producing comics, was sent out Wednesday to the organizers of an international festival for comics artists scheduled to open next week in France, and which is cosponsored by the Israeli company Sodastream.
In the letter, the authors wrote that they call for the Angoulême International Comics Festival to sever all ties with Sodastream, which has a factory in Ma’aleh Adumim – an Israeli settlement regarded internationally as illegal because it is situated in the West Bank.
Statement of solidarity:Here are Palestinian Arabs in Ramallah and Jerusalem protesting against Charlie Hebdo's freedom of speech:
We want to express our grief and outrage at the slaying of five cartoonists, Wolinski, Cabu, Honoré, Tignous, Charb, among many others, at the Charlie Hebdo offices. These horrific acts of violence compel us to act even more urgently for a world where the dignity, freedom, and equality of all people are respected and promoted. We reaffirm that the Palestinian boycott movement is one important step towards that vision, and we hope that you will continue to join us in this movement.
Palestinian Arab cartoonists also came out against Charlie Hebdo's freedom of speech. So did the Union of Palestinian Clerics in Gaza. So did the Greek Orthodox archibishop in Jerusalem. So did a group of Gazans who proudly screamed outside the French Cultural Center, "Leave Gaza, you French, or we will slaughter you by cutting your throats."
These are the people who the cartoonists want to show solidarity with.
In fact, you will not find a single rally in support of freedom of speech for Charlie Hebdo in all of the Palestinian Arab territories.
So how exactly do these cartoonists think that solidarity with people who are uniformly against freedom of speech is somehow a tribute to the memory of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists who literally died upholding that principle?
Not to mention that the PLO was behind the murder of the most iconic Palestinian cartoonist, for lampooning Arafat's girlfriend!
Logic is not exactly the strong point for these cartoonists. They make it clear that it is Israel - not the "occupation," but Israel - that they are against:
Today, the Sodastream company proudly boasts of its factory’s location in the illegal settlement of Ma’ale Adumim, which makes it complicit in the crime of military occupation. However, even if Sodastream, thanks in part to the pressure campaign launched last year, moved its manufacturing to the Negev (where Palestinian Bedouins are facing eviction from their ancestral lands by Israeli government’s Prawer Plan) it, and other Israeli companies and institutions, are part of a system built on the mass ethnic cleansing of Palestinian communities and sustained through racism and discrimination. It, and other Israeli companies, contribute to the economy of a state which conducted a brutal military assault against a civilian population in Gaza in the summer of 2014, resulting in over 2,100 deaths, including over 500 children.Facts are also not exactly one of these cartoonists' strengths, as this paragraph shows. (Sodastream treats their Arab employees exactly like their Jewish employees; the Prawer plan has never been approved, the Gaza war was not against a"civilian population"....)
But bigotry against Jews, and only Jews, having the right to self-determination is clearly a major part of their agenda, all in the name of being against discrimination!
Their hypocrisy doesn't end there. Some of the cartoonists signing this letter would be jailed or lynched if they tried to publish their works in the Palestinian Arab territories. One of them draws what would be considered lesbian pornography (NSFW).
But their thought processes cannot go beyond the simplistic "We are against murdering cartoonists. We are against the only state in the region who wouldn't murder cartoonists. Therefore, the two positions must be consistent, evidence be damned."
(h/t Yenta and Ian)