Cartoon as a tool for
dehumization of an indigenous population
in implicit justification for their expulsion
TNA KV 5/11 An interesting cartoon for its timing, February of 1948. Just as the Zionist armies' ethnic cleansing of Palestine was underway, the noted illustrator and political caricaturist Arthur Szyk, who was staunchly Zionist, drew this cartoon dehumanizing "Arabs". Precisely at the time the Palestinians were being denied the freedom and democracy they had sought, and were being robbed of their land and killed in the depopulation of their villages, Szyk depicts them opposing democracy and freedom, and wanting to rob and kill. The attempt to transfer the Nazi identity onto the Palestinians with the the swastika was part of a strategy calculated to influence not just the public, but also to innoculate survivors of WWII from soul-searching when they now found themselves committing massacres because of people's ethnicity. Published in the Legionaire, ‘Voice of the Hebrew Legion’, 13 February, 1948. (Odd spelling ‘Legionaire’ is correct.) See: State of Terror, 244 |
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