Rob
Sherman Advocacy
Click on either picture for larger image and picture description.
Rob
Sherman Advocacy
Click on either picture for larger image and picture description.
"Fighting injustice, one victory at a time."
The Chicago Tribune published an editorial cartoon in their newspaper, today, in which the cartoonist suggests that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is selling out his people and his country for a few United States dollars. Rob Sherman Advocacy and the State of Israel both condemn the proposition as false, preposterous, not credible and defamatory.
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During the past four years, the scandal-plagued Republican Party in Springfield has sold out the people of Illinois for a few dollars for themselves. During the past four weeks, the borrow-and-spend Republican Party in Washington, D.C. has sold out the people of the United States with massive tax cuts for their fellow wealthy Republicans, which will end up being paid back by huge tax increases on the rest of us ordinary working people in future years.
Chicago Tribune editorial cartoon published on May 30, 2003
It seems only logical, then, to the Tribune, a newspaper that has always leaned Republican, to think that movement on any dispute would be the result of the payment of a bribe. The Tribune cartoonist's assertion, combined with a caricature that only an anti-Semite could love and published just in time for the Jewish Sabbath, is just not credible.
The Jewish people have suffered indescribable horrors for thousands of years in anticipation of some day being able to live in peace. That future could be just around the corner, but only if their leaders have the discipline to not budge one single inch until the terrorism stops. Rob Sherman Advocacy therefore suggests that the picture, below, might have been more accurate for the Tribune to publish.
This picture, by Rob Sherman Advocacy, features an American flag with my hand pointing to the one-inch mark on an eighteen-inch-long ruler. The message would be to tell America that Israel will not move one single inch until the terrorism stops.
See if you can figure out the significance of my using a ruler that is eighteen inches long. I'll bet Josh Weinberg can figure it out. He's the Director of Communications at the Israeli Consulate in Chicago. Mr. Weinberg provided Rob Sherman Advocacy with his perspective on the Tribune editorial cartoon:
I was shocked and appalled by the Tribune’s decision to print today’s cartoon. Depicting Israeli Prime Minister Ariel as a Jew following money, laid down to him by a bribing President Bush, goes beyond all good sense and is extremely offensive on many levels.
First of all, this cartoon is outwardly anti-Semitic. To display the Prime Minister of a leading Democratic country as a hooked-nose shylock, wearing a Star of David on his lapel, while following a dollar bill-paved trail, picks up on timeless themes of anti-Semitic rhetoric and reflects famous stereotyping of Jews deeply seeded throughout a tortuous history. It would surprise me little to see this type of canard from the quintessential anti-Semitic manifesto “The protocols of the Elders of Zion, ” or displayed with prominence in explicitly anti-Semitic, anti-Israel, and anti-Western publications stemming from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran and the other Gulf states. But from the Chicago Tribune, this is absolutely unacceptable.
Second, to think that Israel is only interested in peace because of some sort of financial gain is ludicrous. Since the time of its existence, Israel has extended its hand for peace only to have it rejected many times and bitten several others. On the two occasions that a peace offer was accepted, both Egypt and Jordan found a sound partner with Israel and benefited greatly from open borders, economic cooperation, and an end to violence.
Most recently, Israel attempted to forge a long lasting real peace with the Palestinians at Camp David in July of 2000. This was rejected and the Palestinian people, led by Yasser Arafat (whom the cartoon depicts as waiting for Sharon to come to him for peace), resorted to violence and terror. Israel then tried to resume negotiations in Paris with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in Paris, and Arafat stubbornly and offensively ran out. Once again in Taba, Egypt January 2001, and now a third time with the quartet’s road map.
Prime Minister Sharon’s record of action for peace speaks for itself as he willingly returned the Sinai Peninsula (including oil fields and air bases) to Egypt in 1979.
The people of Israel want peace and will go to great lengths and take many risks to find it. I hope not only to see this letter published, but I also except to read a written apology for the offensive nature of this cartoon.
Josh
Weinberg
Chicago, IL
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