'No Iranian will beat us on our home turf' (Cartoon issue)

[Behind the Aegis]

While the Muslim world is still boiling over the publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed in a Danish newspaper, two Israeli artists have decided to come out with an initiative to stress the importance of satire, freedom of expression and self-humor. After hearing about the decision by an Iranian newspaper to join the international Muslim protest and open a competition for cartoons about the Holocaust, illustrator Amitai Sandy and actor and screenwriter Eyal Zusman decided to bring Israel into the new battlefield: They have declared an Israeli competition for anti-Semitic cartoons, open to Jewish participants only.

"We'll show the world we can do the best, sharpest, most offensive Jew hating cartoons ever published!" said Sandy. "No Iranian will beat us on our home turf!" declared Sandy last week, in announcing the competition on his Internet site boomka.org. The announcement invited artists from all over the world to send in cartoons, illustrations and short comics that express hatred for Jews in the most outrageous way.

News of the competition spread over the net, and within a few days the initiators of the competition received hundreds of e-mails congratulating them on the initiative. Quickly the discussion spread beyond the realm of the Internet and reawakened the debate on the limits of satire; media outlets from all over the world swooped down on it with interest. Sandy says that within three days he was interviewed by more than 30 dailies, two television channels and a radio program broadcast on 450 local stations in the United States. Sandy, 29, relates that most of the e-mails have come from Jews around the world who say they are glad to hear about the initiative and that it has made them proud to be Jewish. E-mails from Christian surfers, who congratulated them on the initiative but noted that they would not feel comfortable participating in the competition, led him to decide to restrict the competition to Jewish participants only and to focus it on Jewish self-humor.

"I believe that humor is the best way to examine our values," he says. "The problem with values is that over time they become sanctified, and therefore the best education is to cast doubt, to ask questions all the time, even about the values one believes in. One of the best ways to do this is self-humor."

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