Bret Stephens: A Despicable Cartoon in The Times
The paper of record needs to reflect deeply on how it came to publish anti-Semitic propaganda.
On Thursday the opinion pages of the New York Times international edition provided a textbook illustration of anti-Semitism. Except that the Times wasn't explaining anti-Semitism.
It was purveying it in the form of a cartoon in which a guide dog with the face of Benjamin Netanyahu leads a blind, fat Donald Trump wearing dark glasses and a black yarmulke. The dog-man wears a collar from which hangs a Star of David.
Here was an image that, in another age, might have been published in the pages of Der Sturmer. The Jew in the form of a dog. The small but wily Jew leading the dumb and trusting American. The hated Trump being Judaized with a skullcap. What was this cartoon doing in the Times?
For some Times readers - or former readers - the Times has a longstanding Jewish problem, dating back to World War II, when it mostly buried news about the Holocaust, and continuing into the present day in the form of intensely adversarial coverage of Israel. On the editorial pages, its overall approach toward the Jewish state tends to range from tut-tutting disappointment to thunderous condemnation.
The real story is a bit different. The international edition has a much smaller staff, and far less oversight than the regular edition. Incredibly, the cartoon was selected and seen by just one midlevel editor right before the paper went to press.
The cartoon's publication wasn't a willful act of anti-Semitism but was an astonishing act of ignorance of anti-Semitism at a publication that is otherwise hyper-alert to nearly every conceivable expression of prejudice. Imagine if the dog on a leash had been a prominent woman such as Nancy Pelosi, a person of color such as John Lewis, or a Muslim such as Ilhan Omar?
David Collier: Dominique (Dom), British terrorists and the Mike’s Place bombing
The 29th April is always a sombre day for me. Sixteen years ago today (29th April 2003), I was talking to a friend of mine ‘Dom’, about a new business adventure she was starting. I was eating a cake, a sample that she had brought me to taste. Dom came to pay for a flight I had sorted out for her. She had been to France to see her family and when she wanted to return from Paris, she’d call, I’d book the flight, and we’d settle once she had arrived. We chatted, I told her the cake was delicious and then we said our goodbyes. It must have been about 11am. ‘See you later’ I think I said to her. I wouldn’t though, in fact I never saw her alive again.
I had known Dominique (Dom) for about six years. Like many from Western Europe trying to find their way in Tel Aviv, Dom was part of the tourist crowd. A few hostels and pubs littered the Ben Yehuda, Allenby area and were full of working travellers. Thousands of young Europeans gravitated towards Tel Aviv’s Mediterranean shore. The hostels supplied the work, the pubs the recreation. Dom had been part of the scenery for a long time. I had first met her in the late 1990’s and if I remember rightly, at the time she worked in a launderette that doubled as a billiard/pool hall. We had been in touch ever since. Dominique was extremely popular and since I had my own tourism related business, Dominque was always sending me new customers.
Dom, the Buzz Stop and Mike’s Place
Dom worked for a while at a beachfront pub called the ‘Buzz Stop’. Originally sited near the ‘dolphinarium’ on the Southern beaches of Tel Aviv, the owner Eli, eventually moved it to the centre of town, near what was then the American Embassy. In 2001 another pub opened next door -a live blues music bar called Mike’s Place. Dominique switched from working at the Buzz Stop to Mike’s Place. She worked at Mike’s Place from the day that it opened. I frequented both. They were my local hang-outs and I knew most of the regulars.
The 29th April 2003 arrived and the second Intifada was still going strong. In January there had been a massacre in Tel Aviv’s Central Bus Station – a double suicide bombing. March saw a suicide bomb massacre in Haifa and another bombing in Netanya. In April Kfar Saba was the target of a suicide bombing. There were going to be four additional suicide bombings in May.
But Mike’s place was a pub on a beach front and full of tourists. It was a world away from the conflict. The evening of the 29th had been busy. It was Tuesday night- ‘Jam night’ for the Blues bar and everyone inside was having fun. Yet just a few hundred yards away in Hayarkon Street, two men were busy getting ready to kill.
Dzanc Drops Novel Criticized for Islamophobic Themes
After a week of controversy over Siege of Tel Aviv by Israeli-American author Hesh Kestin, which was released on April 16, publisher Dzanc Books has reverted the rights to Kestin and will not be printing any more copies of the novel. There are currently 2,000 copies of Siege of Tel Aviv in print.
The release, which was marketed by Dzanc as a “bizarrely funny” satire about Iran leading five Arab armies into Israel, destroying it, and restricting Jews to Tel Aviv with the plan of killing them all, was condemned on social media for what critics called its Islamophobic themes and content. Dzanc is accepting returns of the book, and intends to donate any profits to a Muslim relief organization.
"The author is welcome to publish the novel elsewhere," Dzanc publisher/editor-in-chief Michelle Dotter told PW in a telephone interview on Tuesday afternoon. Dotter disclosed that the decision had been made a few hours earlier after the publisher and author failed to reach a consensus on how to respond to the criticism being leveled at Siege of Tel Aviv.
While the book was endorsed by Stephen King, who called it “scarier than anything Stephen King ever wrote,” other readers have not been so benevolent. Siege of Tel Aviv has been condemned by many on social media—including Dzanc authors—as Islamophobic propaganda. One forthcoming Dzanc author, John Englehardt, tweeted that he was “very disappointed by the publication of Siege of Tel Aviv. I spent some time reading the novel online and believe calling it 'absurdism with satire with social commentary’ is beyond generous.” An Amazon reviewer complained that the novel “is a thinly veiled piece of IDF propaganda, to make Israel's horrifying apartheid practices toward Palestine seem justified. Disappointing that Dzanc Books would publish this bile.”
While explaining the rationale behind the decision to revert the rights, Dotter said that “the important thing about any book that we publish is, does it present a vision and give ideas to the world? Does it do more harm than good?” She added: “When we acquired this book [before the 2016 election] we were reading it from a different point-of-view. We intended to present it as satire. As publisher and editor-in-chief"—a position Dotter has held since August 2017—"my responsibility was to read it with a critical eye. I failed to do that.”