As long as the Brazilian cartoonist Carlos Latuff
focused on bashing Israel, his fans could see nothing wrong with his participation
in the “International
Holocaust Cartoon Competition” organized by an Iranian newspaper in 2006.
Latuff won the second
prize with one of the countless images he produced on the antisemitic theme
presenting Israel as today’s Nazi Germany, while the Palestinians appear as
victims suffering like the Jews under the Nazis.
But the down-with-Israel camp that never had a problem with
antisemitism masquerading as anti-Zionism is no longer one big happy family united
in hate for the world’s only Jewish state. The horrors committed in Syria by
Assad and his allies Iran and Russia have convinced some people that Assad’s ardent
hatred of Israel isn’t quite enough to embrace him – though there are still
many veteran Israel-haters like Max Blumenthal and his ilk who remain ardent
defenders of Assad’s regime.
I wrote already in fall 2016 about the backlash
against Blumenthal’s determined efforts to make butcher Assad and his allies
look good; at around the same time, Blumenthal’s good friend and
fellow-Israel-hater Rania Khalek also lost
some of her erstwhile fans over her eagerness to embark on a career as an Assad
apologist.
Now it seems that Holocaust cartoon competition winner
Carlos Latuff has managed to alienate a
few of his fans with a cartoon that smears
Syria’s famous White
Helmets – a volunteer rescue group that tries to help civilian war victims
– as Islamist terrorists.
And just like with Max Blumenthal, erstwhile fans of Latuff are
now disappointed
that he “even glorified the Russian invasion and bombing of Syrian civilians as
some fight against terrorism and imperialism.”
It’s welcome news that more people seem to realize that
“Carlos Latuff is a fascist and a smear merchant. He is motivated by hate and
resentment. He has no regard for truth or justice. If you use his crude and
racist cartoons, you do your cause a great disservice.”
Arguably though, it’s a bit late to come to this conclusion
more than ten years after Latuff got a prize at Iran’s “International Holocaust
Cartoon Competition.”
And in any case, it seems that most so-called
“pro-Palestinian” activists remain ardent fans of Latuff’s vile output.
The notorious “hate
site” Mondoweiss features
his cartoons regularly; one good example of Latuff’s endless recycling of the antisemitic meme
presenting Israel as today’s Nazi Germany and the Palestinians as the Jews of
Europe in the 1930s and 1940s is a cartoon Mondoweiss published
last October “to celebrate the IDF’s 70th birthday.”
Here are some additional examples of Latuff’s largely
undiminished popularity among those who think the slaughter that has been going
on in Syria for years should not distract anyone from the urgent task of
demonizing the world’s only Jewish state.
