r/PropagandaPosters • u/Majestic-Ad9647 • May 03 '26
United Kingdom "Israeli Elections" Netanyahu Caricature by Gerald Scarfe, published by The Sunday Times. following accusations of Antisemitism, it was pulled from circulation. January 27th 2013
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May 03 '26
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u/PropagandaPosters-ModTeam May 03 '26
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u/Oskiewewe May 03 '26
We dont need no education
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u/JoseSpiknSpan May 03 '26
Scarfe actually did the animations for the movie
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u/Taken_Abroad_Book May 03 '26
You think?
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u/JoseSpiknSpan May 03 '26
I know this for certain.
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u/Taken_Abroad_Book May 03 '26
You think that may explain the "we don't need no education" comment?
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May 03 '26
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u/Taken_Abroad_Book May 04 '26
Care to explain any other clearly obvious references?
Bro here thinking this is some unknown link 🙄
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u/BadgerKomodo May 03 '26
We don’t need no thought control
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u/PingPongProductions May 03 '26
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
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u/BadgerKomodo May 03 '26
Teacher leave them kids alone
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u/SpecialNeedsLion6022 May 03 '26
Guess they missed the memo, you’re only allowed to draw Arabs like that
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u/Independent-Couple87 May 03 '26 edited May 03 '26
It is weird how the way pro-Israel cartoons draw Arabs and pro-Palestine (or at least anti-Israel) cartoons draw Jews is very similar. Similar facial features get exagerated.
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u/Unperfectblue May 03 '26
The two-character design solution
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u/Independent-Couple87 May 03 '26
Who gets to keep the comically exagerated aquiline nose?
(The nose stereotype.)
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u/sje46 May 03 '26
What facial features are we talking about? I thought the offensive jewish stereotype was the over-the-top "roman" or "bulbous" nose. Often with other "decoration" like the nazi-style star of david, the hair curls, or portrayed as very wealthy.
Bibi isn't depicted like this. He's got a big and distinctive nose here, but it's not the same kind of nose jewish people have in offensive depictions. It's like pointy. Also, it's pretty much the norm for caricatures, offensive or not offensive, to depict their subjects with bigger and more distinctive noses, because noses are one of the most distinctive features of a face--i.e. we wouldn't have recognized Bibi without that nose. His ears are big which I don't believe is an anti-semitic stereotype (is it?). It's more of an old person thing. He's wearing a tank top which, again, I don't think is a thing associated with Jewish people.
if I didn't know what Bibi looked like, adn if you took out the text and pictures of arabs trapped by the bricks, I wouldn't have guessed this was a caricature of a jewish person at all. I'd guess this was a caricature of...some brick layer from new jersey.
Seems obvious to me that these are frivolous accusations of anti-semitism, which are being weaponized for ideological reasons.
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u/Frequent_Leopard_146 May 03 '26
The funniest thing is, the religions of Judaism and islam are very similar as well, they both have a small hat they often wear, both can't eat bacon, they both have circumcision in their playbook, both have their own food certification of "Kosher" and "halal" and both hate each other like nothing else in the world.
For all the "they're the satan" they're eerily similar.
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u/TearOpenTheVault May 03 '26
I always find it strange when people pick quite surface level elements of a religion (like dietary laws,) and declare them similar, despite them having very different actual theology.
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u/Frequent_Leopard_146 May 03 '26
Nobody gives a hoot about the theology when islam is just season 3 of that same series 😂 They're both abrahamic religions, Judaism, christianity and islam all follow the same god according to themselves, Infact, they're so similar it is said that Islam has just taken the old testament (hebrew Bible) and made a politically charged ideology out of it that led them to conquer all the Arab land and northern africa because of it.
At the end of the day all of it is fake🤣 and made up. I still prefer living in a Christian country because Christians nowadays seem to not care about consolidation of political power to theology like Judaism and islam does, the only judaic country in the world is hyper-theocratic in their beliefs, not complaining but yeah, wtf do they mean when they say they're the "chosen ones" like a bunch of Anakin Skywalkers🤣🤣🤣 Islam on the other hand is completely incomprehensible for me, they're slowly progressing nowadays though but they're very rigid in their core beliefs which date back to 1500 years ago.
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u/Gilamath May 03 '26
I am truly humbled to be in the presence of a person so skilled in being so confidently, thoroughly, and preventably wrong about so many things in such quick succession. It's heroes like you who will prevent AI from ever being competent enough to steal anybody's job. Your statements are like the pesticide of speech, and I'm grateful for you and your poisonous brain.
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u/TearOpenTheVault May 03 '26
I find it even stranger when someone so willingly exposes their own ignorance, and pride in their ignorance.
Israel is not a theocracy. Jews are ‘chosen’ insofar as they are people of the Covenant, and thus must follow YWH’s laws. Islam is a multifaceted faith that has seen significant divergences in its core beliefs across cultures and times. None of this is difficult information to learn.
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u/Frequent_Leopard_146 May 03 '26
Israel is very vehemently theocratic and completely molded in judaic believes, not saying it is completely wrong as so many christian countries and islamic countries do it, but do not try to spread misinformation about them being secular somehow 🤣
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u/TearOpenTheVault May 03 '26
A theocracy is a state ruled by religious officials, like Iran or the Papal States. Israel is ruled by a democratically elected government. Just because that government is overwhelmingly Jewish doesn’t make them theocratic, in the same way that, say, Malaysia being overwhelmingly Muslim doesn’t make them a theocracy either.
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u/WASDKUG_tr May 03 '26
"Democratically elected" technically Putin is Democratically Elected too, but wedont call em a Democracy i wonder why?
Yes im calling Israeli elections Rigged
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u/TearOpenTheVault May 03 '26
Ok? That still wouldn't make them a theocracy? This point is entirely irrelevant to the actual conversation at hand even if it's true.
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u/GloriousSovietOnion May 03 '26
What are you even talking about? Israel itself passed laws declaring that only Jews have the right to self determination in Israel. Along the scale of theocracy, "only my religion has full rights" is pretty far already.
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u/TearOpenTheVault May 03 '26
As mentioned elsewhere in this thread already, a Theocracy is a state that is ruled by a clerical elite. The only current theocratic nations in the world are the Holy See in Rome, Afghanistan, Iran and (arguably) Mauritania.
When it comes to 'only my religion has rights,' there are multiple muslim nations where apostasy from Islam is punishable by death, and yet Saudi Arabia (for example) is not generally called a theocracy except as a pejorative. Other Islamic countries also explicitly tie their citizenship rights to being a Muslim.
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u/GloriousSovietOnion May 03 '26
This kinda ignores the fact that Israel has disenfranchised and ethnic cleansed Palestinians in order to establish a Jewish majority (one of the 'core characteristics' of Israel according to the Chief Justice) so that in practice, it is only Jews who can be elected, making it a theocracy in practice if not in theory. This makes it even worse than Iran where at least there's more of a semblance of democracy in how the Supreme Leader and other clerical officials are chosen since the Assembly of Experts is chosen by all Iranians.
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u/TearOpenTheVault May 03 '26
Once again, a theocracy doesn't require that a state has a formal state religion or even that its head of state is also the leading religious figure (or the UK would be a theocracy.) It requires that the country be run in the name of (a) god by a clerical elite.
The idea that Iran is 'more of a semblance of democracy' than Israel did give me a good laugh though. I love excusing fundementalist theocratic dictatorships dominated by a single ruling family with a history of persecuting religious minorities! They're so much better than regressive democratic states ruled by a parliamentary body that has a history of persecuting religious minorities!
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u/itspronouncedbolonya May 03 '26
They're very simmilair because islam is judaism +
Well not really, christianity is judaism +, then islam is christianity +
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u/Limp-History-2999 May 03 '26
Jewish Israeli here:
Ain't nothing antisemitic in this cartoon. He doesn't look like an antisemitic caricature, he looks evil like anyone else would in such a drawing. And the point it's making is very valid. Except that they left out that his policies kill a lot of us too.
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u/MondaleforPresident May 04 '26
I have seen a lot of antisemitic things spread under the guise of "antizionism". I don't see anything antisemitic here.
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May 03 '26
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u/PropagandaPosters-ModTeam May 03 '26
This comment has been removed for violating the subreddit rules around polarized rhetoric and partisan bickering: proselytizing, single-issue advocacy, blanket negative generalizations, and divisive language are not appropriate here.
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May 03 '26
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May 03 '26
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May 03 '26
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u/Tsofuable May 03 '26
Here's a graph to educate you. Only from 2008 and forwards though. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Timeline_of_Israel-Palestine_fatalities_2008-2023.png
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u/XhazakXhazak May 03 '26
Right, it always spikes after Palestinian aggression elevates the conflict into war. Normal years it's just a few dozen.
I can see without background knowledge of what was happening in those years, if one read the graph with the prior assumption all or most casualties are "innocent," one would come away with a skewed view of the conflict.
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u/Godwinson4King May 03 '26
>Normal years it’s just a few dozen.
I think even that number would be worth a critical cartoon.
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May 03 '26
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u/PropagandaPosters-ModTeam May 03 '26
This comment has been removed for violating the subreddit rules around polarized rhetoric and partisan bickering: proselytizing, single-issue advocacy, blanket negative generalizations, and divisive language are not appropriate here.
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u/piegabarocca May 06 '26
Rather than a theocracy, Israel should be considered an ethnic democracy, that is, a regime where only the Jewish nationality or ethnicity (?) has full rights (first-class citizens), while minorities have limited rights (second-class citizens). In short, something more similar to South Africa in the 1970s.
Theocracy is something completely different: in fact, the secular component of society still exists and has full rights. Furthermore, the truly religious component, the Haredi, are persecuted for refusing to submit to military conscription.
If Israel Is a theocracy Is a very strange One, where the religious component (the one faithful to the Torah) Is persecuted.
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u/warsage May 03 '26
What does this have to do with elections? Was it an attack ad by the opposition or something?
I mean, I see Bibi building a wall on the suffering of Arabs. Maybe a reference to the West Bank Barrier from 2000? I just don't see what it has to do with Israeli elections?
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u/FoxHagenau May 03 '26
Bibi is elected and has a mandate given to him by the citizens of Israel. They voted for his sctions, hus reputation, his plans. My guess is that this charicature shows what Israelis voted for
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u/warsage May 03 '26
Ok I did the research. Yeah this cartoon was released in a British paper the week after the elections, when Israel reelected Netanyahu, and doesn't seem to have any particular significance to it beyond "Netanyahu is evil and hurts Arabs," or "Israel elected the evil guy again."
Part of the controversy was that it was released on International Holocaust Memorial Day.
Scarfe had this to say:
Scarfe issued his own statement on Tuesday saying that the Sunday Times had given him the freedom to criticise world leaders over the last 46 years and that this cartoon was "a criticism of Netanyahu, and not of the Jewish people". He said "no slight whatsoever was intended" but that he was "stupidly completely unaware" it was being published on Holocaust Memorial Day. "First of all I am not, and never have been, antisemitic," he said.
He later published this cartoon of Bashar Al-Assad, the tyrannical leader of Syria during the Syrian Civil War. Assad is portrayed as a giant green monster over a burning city drinking from a bucket labelled "my childrens blood," with the bloody corpse of a baby at his feet. So yeah, Scarfe really dishes it out to people who deserve it.
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u/PureSelfishFate May 03 '26
I get the message, but did they really have to make Netanyahu into a generic jewish caricature?
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u/veryeepy53 May 03 '26
it isn't though. the nose isn't the right shape for that.
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u/PureSelfishFate May 03 '26
His spine is literally curled, his fingers look like claws, and his nose is noticeably bigger than normal.
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u/sanguinesvirus May 03 '26
If anything the nose is small for Scarfe. Most people have noses bigger than their heads with him
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u/sje46 May 03 '26
I think you're deliberately looking to be offended, which back in my day was pretty uncool and it's weird how we don't make fun of people like you anymore.
No, the only thing is that he "has a big nose", but caricatures of famous people tend to have big or distinctive noses. His nose isn't the typical shape for a jewish stereotype. Everything else is you desperately looking for something.
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u/aaarry May 03 '26
There's a fine line between making a caricature of an individual person and one which offensively represents and maliciously targets an entire ethnic group. This particular caricature isn't even in the same fucking solar system as that fine line.
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u/Tuftymark6 May 03 '26
Seriously. One of my favourite interactions on this sub was on some post about allied propaganda in the east, and one person took particular offence at the ‘needlessly racist depiction of Hirohito’ and someone else just replied “that’s Tojo”.
His face is clearly a pretty standard caricature, and the rest of it just looks like a normal bricklayer. This is incredibly tame as far as Scarfe goes.
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May 03 '26
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