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November 1: Arab Cartoonists and the 2012 Election

lawrencebush
October 31, 2015

The Anti-Defamation League reported on this date in 2012 that the U.S. electoral contest between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney was being portrayed in many Arab newspapers as a contest between candidates “indis­tin­guish­able in their sub­servience to Jews and Israel.... On a daily basis, the edi­to­r­ial car­toons which ADL com­piles from media out­lets across the region fea­ture stereo­typ­i­cal Jew­ish fig­ures (some­times depicted as Israel or Israeli lead­ers) as pup­pet mas­ters of the region, the inter­na­tional com­mu­nity, and most par­tic­u­larly, the United States.” Some samples follow:
election-2012-16election-2012-12election-2012-23election-2012-14 election-2012-24 election-2012-6

“While many of the fea­tured car­toons include clas­sic anti-Semitic imagery and stereo­types, oth­ers exhibit a more nuanced, yet still defam­a­tory, por­trayal of Jew­ish con­trol over the upcom­ing US pres­i­den­tial election.... The 2008 cam­paign fea­tured sim­i­larly themed car­i­ca­tures, but many focused exclu­sively on then-candidate Barack Obama as enslaved by/in the pocket of Jews and Israel.” —Anti-Defamation League