Israeli ambassador to Norway submits complaint to press watchdog

[mogster]

The Israeli ambassador to Norway, Miryam Shomrat, submits a complaint to the Norw. press own watchdog, PFU, about a cartoon published in the paper Dagbladet published Monday July 10.
(NO):
http://www.dagbladet.no/nyheter/2006/07/25/472244.html

The cartoon depicts the Israeli PM Ehud Olmert in a scene from the film Schindler's List, where the nazi camp commander Amon Götz randomly chooses a Jewish victim for his personal execution. The topic of the article is the situation in Gaza (article published before Lebanon invasion), and the cartoon is headed by the text: "Success".

Says Shomrat:

"- The charicature compares the Israeli treatment of Palestinians with the nazi's treatment of Jews during WWII. It bears witness of ingorance about the nazi mass extermination of the Jewish people, and I find it totally unacceptable."

The cartoonist, Finn Graff, calls it: "A bit over the top" but adds "There are no limits to what can be cartoonized".

The cartoon was actualized further by the situation in Lebanon and also by the chilling fact that a member of the Norwegian Jewish community was attacked on the street recently.

Dagbladet is known as the co-publisher of the Muhammed-cartoons in January, an episode that led to demonstrations across the Muslim world, burning of Norwegian embassies and an attack against our forces in Afghanistan.

Does Norwegians exist only to offend people? :shrug:

I'm so sorry for this, because I know how deeply it offend people who lost their loved ones during that time.

Edit: Some typos

[MikeDuffy]

1. Is Israeli leadership immune from criticism

of acting with Nazi tactics as long as it never gasses and cremates 6M people?

[furman]

2. That cartoon is outrageous

That is a horrible cartoon, but unlike the infamous Muslim cartoons, you probably won't see Jews rioting all over the world because of it.

[mogster]

5. The ambassador has set an example

This need a debate, and that's why she's doing it, I think. The PFU is a press watchdog with no means of punishment apart from a slap on the wrist, but it will generate a lot of attention and discussion (it already has) towards the topic of anti-semittism.

The Muhammed-cartoons was published with an intention of 'teaching the Norwegian muslims their right place', and was pre-announced as something that probably would provoce death threats. It differs from this publication in that respect; this was just another offending cartoon by a cartoonist known for doing just that - offend people. He said in an interview in 2004 or 2005 that he didn't want to draw Muhammed because of the presumed death threats he'd receive. I said back when the Muhammed-cartoons was published that if this guy had drawn Muhammed, it would have been easier to accept.
So I accept this, if somewhat grudgingly, but think it should be debated and also receive attention from abroad.

[mogster]

4. Awright, MikeDuffy

But the criticism, especially when made as a nazi comparison, would be better if it's not off the mark, no?

From 1937 to 1945 app. 240.000 people were taken to Buchenwald (some of them Norwegians) and 56.000 died. Not all were Jewish, but the film Schindler's List was a Jewish epic about the Holocaust and by many - and not all of them Jewish - counted as a memorial about that time, and the very dire times we went through. In addition it was made by a famous Jewish director, which makes this cartoon like stepping on all that is Jewish.

[RaleighNCDUer]

3. Yes, the cartoon is offensive,

but it is far less offensive than the collective punishment that the Israeli government regularly inflicts upon the Palestinians and now inflicts upon the Lebanese people, to force those populations to turn on the terrorists in their midsts. It has long been the policy to punish the people of the occupied territories and Gaza because of the Palestinian Authority's inability to stop terror attacks. Now they are using the same failed tactics, attacking the Lebanese people and military because the Lebanese have not been able to stop Hezbollah from their terror attacks. As we are doing in Iraq, what they are accomplishing is the creation of a new generation of terrorists.