New Article: Bourdon & Boudana, Controversial Cartoons in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Bourdon, Jerome, and Sandrine Boudana. “Controversial Cartoons in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Cries of Outrage and Dialogue of the Deaf.” The International Journal of Press/Politics (early view; online first).
 
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1940161215626565
 
Abstract

This article analyzes the controversies triggered by sixteen cartoons about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, published in nine western countries between 2001 and 2014. For this, we use E.D. Hirsch’s distinction between the meaning of a text—which refers to the author’s intentions—and its significance—which emphasizes the contexts of production and reception. Critics focused mostly on significance, defenders on meaning. Using this distinction, we first examine the rhetoric of cartoons: stereotypes linked to antisemitism (accusations of deicide and blood libel), use of the Star of David as metonym of Israel, disputed historical analogies (between Israeli policy and Nazism or Apartheid). Second, we analyze four levels of contextual interpretations that have framed the debates: the cartoon as genre, the ethotic arguments about the cartoonist and/or newspaper’s track record, the cartoons’ historical and transnational intertextuality (especially with the Arab press), and the issue of audiences’ sensitivities. We analyze the complex exchanges of arguments that led mostly to a dialogue of the deaf, but also, in some cases, to partial agreement on the offensive character of the cartoons. We conclude that this methodology can be applied to other controversies around popular political texts, which offer similar characteristics.

 

 

 

Lecture: Danjoux, Political Cartoons and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Political Cartoons and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Wednesday, January 27, 2016 at 1:00 pm

CEREV Exhibition Lab – LB 671.00

1400 de Maisonneuve Blvd. W

Ilan Danjoux

Affiliate Assistant Professor

Azrieli Institute of Israel Studies

 

Despite growing analytical interest and explosive international attention, political cartoons remains on the outskirts of serious academic research. The visceral debate and violent reaction to both the Danish Cartoon controversy and the Charlie Hebdo caricatures only underscores the need for cartoon literacy. Using over 1,200 Israeli and Palestinian editorial cartoons published in the weeks preceding the outbreak of the Second Intifada, Dr. Danjoux will examine the cartoon’s relationship with violence and its ability to anticipate outbreak of conflict.

 

New Article: Katz, Religion and Ethnicity in Israeli National Dolls

Katz, Maya Balakirsky. “Dressing Up: Religion and Ethnicity in Israeli National Dolls.” Religion & Gender 5.1 (2015): 71-90.

 
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.18352/rg.10108  [PDF]
 

 
Abstract

This article considers Israel’s national image both at home and abroad through the framework of Israeli costume dolls, looking specifically at the way that gender played a role in Israel’s national image as it travelled from domestic production to international reception. Initially, predominantly female doll makers produced three main types of Israeli dolls, but over time the religious Eastern European male doll triumphed in the pantheon of national types. Produced for retail sale to non-Hebrew speaking tourists by immigrant woman, the Eastern European religious male doll came to represent Israel abroad while the market pushed representations of the Middle Eastern Jewish woman and the native sabra child to the side-lines. This article examines the shift from the multi-ethnic collection of dolls as representative of the nation’s idea of itself to the privileging of the male Eastern European doll as representative of the normative image of Israel abroad.

 

 

New Article: Jaspal, Delegitimizing Jews and Israel in Iran’s International Holocaust Cartoon Contest

Jaspal, Rusi. “Delegitimizing Jews and Israel in Iran’s International Holocaust Cartoon Contest.” Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 13.2 (2014): 167-89.

 

URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14725886.2014.919804

 

 

Abstract

 

In 2006, the Iranian government-aligned newspaper Hamshahri sponsored The International Holocaust Cartoon Contest. The stated aim of the contest was to denounce “Western hypocrisy on freedom of speech,” and to challenge “Western hegemony” in relation to Holocaust knowledge. This government-backed initiative was a clear attempt to export the Iranian regime’s anti-Zionist agenda. Using qualitative thematic analysis and Social Representations Theory, this article provides an in-depth qualitative analysis of the cartoons submitted to the contest in order to identify emerging social representations of Jews and Israel. Three superordinate themes are outlined: (i) “Constructing the ‘Evil Jew’ and ‘Brutal Israel’ as a Universal Threat;” (ii) “Denying the Holocaust and Affirming Palestinian Suffering;” (iii) “Constructing International Subservience to ‘Nazi-Zionist’ Ideology.” Although the organizers of the International Holocaust Cartoon Contest claimed that their aims were anti-Zionist, this article elucidates the overtly anti-Semitic character of the contest and its cartoons. It is argued that the cartoons exhibit a distorted, one-sided version of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and of Jewish history, and may therefore shape viewers’ beliefs concerning Jews and Israel in fundamentally negative ways, with negative outcomes for intergroup relations and social harmony.

Cite: Stähler, Constructions of Jewish Identity and the Spectre of Colonialism

Stähler, Axel. “Constructions of Jewish Identity and the Spectre of Colonialism: Of White Skin and Black Masks in Early Zionist Discourse.” German Life and Letters 66.3 (2013): 254-76.

 

URL: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/glal.12015/abstract

 

Abstract

Early Zionist discourse was ripe with constructions of a new Jewish
identity. Discussing responses to the so-called Uganda plan of 1903–5
and notions of Jewish colonisation in Africa and elsewhere, the article
investigates demarcations of Jewishness from, and identifications with,
‘blackness’ in the early twentieth-century German Zionist press and
literature and their impact on the Zionist imaginary vis-à-vis
the colonial paradigm. Particular attention is given to Max Jungmann’s
‘Briefe aus Neu-Neuland’, published in the satiric journal Schlemiel
between 1903–7. It is argued that with his fictitious account of the
Zionist settlement of East Africa (which historically never happened)
and with the creation of the black African Mbwapwa Jumbo and his
conversion to Judaism Jungmann articulates an intricate and critical
response to colonial aspirations, Jewish or otherwise, and formulates a
scathing but highly perceptive commentary on the convergence of Zionist,
racial, and colonial discourses.

ToC: Israel Studies 18.1 (2013)

Israel Studies 18.1 (2013), Table of Contents:

 

1.  

   The De-politicization of Israeli Political Cartoons (pp. 1-30)

   Maya Balakirsky Katz

   DOI: 10.2979/israelstudies.18.1.1

   Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/israelstudies.18.1.1

2.  

   From “Great History” to “Small History”: The Genesis of the Zionist Periodization (pp. 31-55)

   Hizky Shoham

   DOI: 10.2979/israelstudies.18.1.31

   Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/israelstudies.18.1.31

3.  

    American “Welfare Politics”: American Involvement in Jerusalem During World War I (pp. 56-76)

   Abigail Jacobson

   DOI: 10.2979/israelstudies.18.1.56

   Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/israelstudies.18.1.56

4.  

   All Quiet on the Eastern Front; Israel and the Issue of Reparations from East-Germany, 1951–1956 (pp. 77-100)

   Jacob Tovy

   DOI: 10.2979/israelstudies.18.1.77

   Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/israelstudies.18.1.77

5.  

   Palestinian Armed Struggle, Israel’s Peace Camp, and the Unique Case of Fatah-Jerusalem (pp. 101-123)

   Hillel Cohen

   DOI: 10.2979/israelstudies.18.1.101

   Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/israelstudies.18.1.101

6.  

   The Arab Minority in Israel; Challenges and Limits in Recent Disciplinary Approaches (pp. 124-145)

   Oded Haklai

   DOI: 10.2979/israelstudies.18.1.124

   Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/israelstudies.18.1.124

7.  

   Shaping Israeli-Arab Identity in Hebrew Words—The Case of Sayed Kashua (pp. 146-169)

   Batya Shimony

   DOI: 10.2979/israelstudies.18.1.146

   Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/israelstudies.18.1.146

8.  

    “The Hand of Esau in the Midst Here Too”—Uri Zvi Grinberg’s Poem “A Great Fear and the Moon” in Its Historical and Political Contexts (pp. 170-193)

   Tamar Wolf-Monzon

   DOI: 10.2979/israelstudies.18.1.170

   Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/israelstudies.18.1.170

9. Notes on Contributors (pp. 194-195)

   DOI: 10.2979/israelstudies.18.1.194

   Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/israelstudies.18.1.194

10. Guidelines for Contributors (pp. 196-198)

    DOI: 10.2979/israelstudies.18.1.196

    Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/israelstudies.18.1.196