Consistent in his skewed prejudice against Israel, coupled with concealing facts and distorting the truth, South African Jewish cartoonist stokes the fires of antisemitism and endangers the Jewish community.
By Stephen Schulman
The Cape Town Jewish community is presently in an unenviable position: under siege with many of its members fearing for their own and their family’s safety and even their future in this so called “rainbow nation”.
Why in such a “happy land” finally freed from the shackles of Apartheid should such a situation exist? Simply because the ANC that has been ruling South Africa for the last thirty-one years, through widespread corruption, an institutionalized kleptocracy and the appointing of its party hacks (who also mostly happen to be clueless nincompoops) to official positions, has managed to ruin and reduce it to the status of third world country. The government has also zealously devoted itself to the cultivation of ties to countries with odious human rights records. At the present, South Africa and Iran are snug in each other’s arms, locked in a passionate embrace with Pretoria assiduously disseminating that regime’s genocidal and virulently antisemitic vitriol. Cape Town is extremely fertile ground as it also has a large Muslim population that over the years has become deeply radicalized and increasingly militant, supporting Hamas and Hezbollah. Its clerics draw from the well-known pigswill bucket of anti-Semitic tropes, preach jihad, view the terrorists as freedom fighters, whitewash their atrocities and call for the destruction of Israel.
The combination of these two contributing factors has made the Jewish community come under assault; for Jews and Zionists are seen as one of the same. Jewish schools and institutions have naturally come under attack. There have been continuous demonstrations and mass protests, often violent, in areas that have a large Jewish community with the suburb of Sea Point now becoming the epicenter. Only recently, not content with demonstrations, a large motorcade with horns blaring, Palestinian flags waving and megaphones broadcasting slogans drove through the suburb. Unsurprisingly, all protests about this disturbance of the peace were brushed off by the municipal authorities for after all, when so many people are unemployed, live in squalor without basic services and suffer from a horrendous crime rate, there is nothing like the distraction of a well funded and organized demonstration against a common enemy i.e. the Jewish State to take their minds off their miserable plight.
Shapiro, a most gifted caricaturist, is well aware of the power of his cartoons in shaping public opinion Consumed and contorted by an obsessive and visceral hatred of Israel, devoid of any moral proportion with a tunnel vision that sees Trump and Netanyahu as the sole enemies of civilization – he is nothing less a groveling Iranian proxy eerily echoing the message of his evil masters that see the USA and Israel as the “Great Satan” and the “Little Satan”.
The caricature of the 24th June, “Theatre of War” is just one more example of his warped mentality. The message is crude and clear: Israel is the instigator of a war with Iran but suffers far less damage. Trump enters to help his old friend. However, the genuine causus belli is an act, a divisionary ploy to distract the world from Israel’s ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people. Moreover, in case you missed it, Shapiro feels the need to remind us that Trump is a “sulky egomaniac”
On the very same day, to drive his twisted message home, Shapiro eagerly churned out a second cartoon with the inspiration lifted straight from the 1964 film “Dr Strangelove“. In it, the grotesquely demonical Netanyahu, intent on needless destruction, is sitting astride a bomb while pulling Trump along like a dumb ox. Once again ad nauseam the State of Israel is the root of all evil. With such an impressive portfolio of distorted caricatures that would do a totalitarian regime journal proud, our Jonathan’s work could easily find a place at a Tehran gallery’s current exhibition of antisemitic cartoons and land a job at the North Korean and Iranian press offices.
A reasonably informed person would be aware of Iran as the leading state sponsor of global terrorism as well as being a genocidal state seeking Israel’s destruction. This person would also be aware of its contravention of limits imposed on its uranium enrichment and Israel’s defensive pre-emptive strike that concentrated on Iran’s military- nuclear complex. He/she would also learn from the media that Iran purposely sent missiles against population concentrations in the Israeli cities causing much devastation and rendering thousands of people homeless. Iran has also destroyed a large hospital serving the Jewish and a large Muslim community and ruined invaluable medical research laboratories in the famed Weizman Institute thereby destroying priceless research. It also used cluster bombs, outlawed in over one hundred countries, when targeting civilian centres.
True to form, Shapiro consistent in his hatred, concealing facts and distorting the truth, not only creates a willfully misleading picture. He – once more – not only deeply offends his home town’s proudly Zionist affiliated community but increases its fears and insecurity as he diligently stokes the fires of antisemitism and feeds the flames of racial hatred.
Donald Trump, our Jonathan’s other fixation and object of his venom is constantly and luridly depicted as a fully uniformed, jackbooted Nazi SA storm trooper complete with his swastika armband. The US president may be many things, but a Nazi he is not. His pride in his three Jewish grandchildren and his rallying to Israel’s side are hardly the actions of a subscriber to that abhorrent ideology. Shapiro in his typically shameless insensitivity, indiscriminately and arbitrarily abuses the term “Nazi” to describe anyone whose ideas do not dovetail with his own definition of political correctness. He has lifted the word out of its true context, distorted and debased it: a defilement of the memory of the martyrs of the Holocaust and an affront to the survivors – a number of whom reside in Cape Town.
A visit to Shapiro’s official site is both instructive and illuminating. A perusal of a lengthy list of his caricatures reveals a natural ongoing concern with SA’s problems, his chronic fixation with the USA and Israel – but next to nothing else (in well over two hundred and fifty of his caricatures, one relates to Bashar Assad and two to Putin). The “Why I am still fighting monsters everywhere!” fearless dragon slayer mounted on his high horse, preening himself on his ethics is simply incapable of or unwilling to seek out other “monsters” in this world. Hollow words from a little hollow straw man.
Jonathan Shapiro sees himself as an African and identifies with the struggle of its oppressed peoples, yet here he suffers from bad case of moral myopia and conveniently turns his head to look the other way. The continent is currently roiled by many wars and sufferings. There are the massacres and the genocide in Sudan perpetrated by the Janjaweed militia with the consequent mass starvation and devastation whose dimensions dwarf all other conflicts. In Nigeria, the Fulani tribesmen have destroyed many Christian villages and churches, murdering thousands, raping and abducting young girls. In some African states such as Mauritania, slavery is still actively practiced with millions still in bondage. And further afield, what about the atrocities committed by Al Qaeda and ISIS? Where is his voice? The silence of our shining knight with his self touted conscience is deafening. The reason is crystal clear: the perpetrators are Moslem and Jonathan, knows full well on which side his bread is buttered. Why cause offence, possibly be called Islamophobic and suffer the backlash? Why lose the support of your public when it is far more pragmatic to flush your so–called ideals down the bowl where they will spill out to further pollute the Cape beaches. Our man has to make a living by selling his books, penning caricatures for the newspapers, and peddling his cutesy statuettes of Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu (the unsigned ones are now on sale for a bargain half price!) Much better to turn a blind eye!
The jewel in the crown of Shapiro’s website is a filmed interview conducted by a most affable and accommodating young man who from his name appears to be Muslim. Ensconced in his comfortable Camps Bay home, sitting next to his drawing board with anti-Netanyahu caricatures prominently displayed, the self promoting, fawning, and sycophantic Shapiro, falls all over himself in his feverish eagerness to extol his moral virtues and display his political correctness. And lest we forget, the video opens with the camera focusing on two especially chosen exceptionally lurid and denigrating caricatures of – yes, you guessed it! – Netanyahu.
I must confess that after a few minutes of watching this cloying performance, I was overcome by nausea and had to stop. Those gifted with strong stomachs and endowed with infinite patience are welcome to try to watch a tedious and repetitive twenty-six minutes until the end.
In Jewish history there are many recorded instances of aberrant members who have forsaken, turned against and harmed their people. However, Jonathan Shapiro in sinking so low has created a new category: that of a self serving hypocrite who through his actions knowingly harms the community but has no qualms about exploiting its services for his own needs. Such an abhorrent individual, devoid of conscience, scruples and common decency is beneath contempt.
About the writer:
Stephen Schulman is a graduate of the South African Jewish socialist youth movement Habonim, who immigrated to Israel in 1969 and retired in 2012 after over 40 years of English teaching. He was for many years a senior examiner for the English matriculation and co-authored two English textbooks for the upper grades in high school. Now happily retired, he spends his time between his family, his hobbies and reading to try to catch up on his ignorance.
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