U.S. Media's Double-Standard (Or Should I Say Hypocrisy) Concerning Muhammed Cartoons

This evening I emailed off the following letter to the Honolulu Advertiser:

There was irony in your article, "U.S. Media Debate Cartoon Furor," on Sunday, February 6th. First you quote the Associated Press as saying that they chose not to carry pictures of the Danish cartoon caricatures of Muhammed "because they didn't meet AP standards for acceptable content . . . our practice is to not move material that is known to be offensive" Then, quoting Advertiser Editor Saundra Keyes, you cite your own paper's decision to not print the cartoons: "Taste is an issue we always consider in content decisions, as is respect for the beliefs of diverse faith communities."

You then, on the same page, print a photograph of an extremely anti-Semitic Palestinian poster showing the Danish flag as a hateful face with a snake (a well-known and often-used derogatory symbol of Jewish Zionism) coming out of its mouth. If you are completely naive about such matters then the juxtaposition is ironic. If you are well-informed then perhaps the word "hypocrisy" would be more appropriate.

In either case I suggest that the Advertiser owes an apology to the Jewish community in Hawaii for publishing this offensive and disrespectful photograph.
By the way, the photo was courtesy of . . . you guessed it . . . Associated Press.

Here is the offending photograph (click to enlarge):

Just to provide some support for my assertion that the snake is a derogatory symbol of Jewish Zionism I briefly scanned the internet and found the following pictures and quotations:

This photo is of the entryway to the U.S. Holocaust Memeorial Museum. Note the prominant display of a picture of a snake.

The following is taken from an article relating a visit to a Book Fair in Germany:

Last week at the Frankfurt Book Fair, I happened to find myself in the International Publishers section and was simply astonished. At the stand of the Iranian publishers, in plain view, was the text that influenced Hitler’s Holocaust fantasies like no other: “The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion,” published in English by the Islamic Propagation Organization of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The first page of the tract makes clear that Israel is the target of this new edition. It shows a snake made of triangles, enclosing an area labeled “Greater Israel” that includes large areas of Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, parts of Turkey and northern Saudi Arabia. Each triangle, according to the annotation, symbolizes the “Freemason’s Eye,” supposedly a “symbol of Jewry.

Mr. Küntzel is a political scientist in Hamburg and author of “Djihad und Judenhass” (Jihad and Jew-hatred), published in 2002 by Ça Ira Publishers. Belinda Cooper translated this article from the German.

The following pictures are taken from an exhibition of drawings done by students at the Palestinian-operated Hajah Rushdah girls schools in the Beit Ain Alma refugee camp in Nablus (August 18, 2004).

(Note that the snake has been a classic anti-Semitic symbol since the 19 th century but gained popularity at the beginning of the 20th when "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" were published.)

The Jewish snake (wearing a hat made out of the American flag) threatening to swallow the mosques on the Temple Mount and all Palestine. The drawing was done by Ghadam Hijawi, a student in the 9th grade.

A snake and a Magen David (Star of David) wrapped around a Palestinian hanging on a gallows .

Anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic hate propaganda in cartoons published in the official Palestinian Authority newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda:

A cartoon combining anti-Semitism and advocating suicide bombing attacks against Israel. The inscription above the arrow reads “suicide bombing attacks” and is stuck deep in the mouth of the Jewish snake to choke and kill it.

A cartoon, this one showing Jewish control (the snakes) of the United States.

Sobh, a monthly periodical identified with radical Islamic elements, published selected excerpts from the Protocols under the heading “The text of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion for establishing the Jewish global rule” (December 1998 – January 1999 Issue). The publication was illustrated with the notorious symbol of the Jewish snake swallowing the globe (click on picture of the magazine to enlarge it).

German Nazi propaganda slide entitled "Jewry, Freemasonry and Bolshevism," featuring a poisonous snake with bared fangs, which served as the title slide for an anti-Semitic lecture series. [Photograph #49819]

Antisemitic "symbolic snake" imagery, which was supposed to represent the purported "Jewish plot" to take over the world. Pictures and descriptions of the snake have accompanied the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" throughout its history.

A poster depicting Alfred Dreyfus as a snake. In 1894, Captain Alfred Dreyfus--the only Jewish member of the French general staff--was accused and convicted of spying for Germany. He was exonerated of all charges a decade later, but only after strenuous protests on his behalf. The case was widely followed in the U.S.

The following is taken from an article at The American Thinker (emphasis mine):

Christian Identity groups (a.k.a – white supremacist) and others like them use the Protocols as a commentary to the Bible. In Religion and the Racist Right, Michael Barkun, quotes a Christian Identity Pastor. This Pastor’s message of hate comes from Revelation 2:9, and these are his rhetorical questions:

“If Cain were not the offspring of Satan, there is no basis for the age-old conflict between Jews and Christians. Moreover, there are no reasonable grounds for the Jews themselves claiming to be from Cain. Why is the snake chosen as the symbol of the serpent’s seed in The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion?” (191)

It does not require a scholar to understand this anti-Semitic Pastor has taken the pure word of God and interpreted it, wrongly so, through the racist eyes of the Protocols. This anti-Semitic rhetoric taken from the pen of Nilus, the Russian clergyman who released the Protocols:

The learned men decided by peaceful means to conquer the world for ZION with the slyness of the Symbolic Snake, whose head was to represent those who have been initiated into the plans of the JEWISH PEOPLE – the administration was always kept secret, even from the JEWISH NATION itself. (Protocols, Intro.).

This idea, the Jewish people are a lineage of the snake or better known as the Seed of the Serpent is commonplace and dogmatic Theology in the Christian Identity movement. It is upon this Theology that the white supremacist religious groups (a.k.a Christian Identity) find a justification for hatred and violence against Jewish people.

This is the actual citation from "The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion" (a 19th century Russian anti-Semitic hoax purporting to articulate the ancient plot of the Jewish people to take over the world) that initiated this sybolism in the first place (Note that the "Protocols" are taught and widely read in the Arab & Muslim world as historical fact):

PROTOCOL No. 3.1
1. To-day I may tell you that our goal is now only a few steps off. There remains a small space to cross and the whole long path we have trodden is ready now to close its cycle of the Symbolic Snake, by which we symbolize our people. When this ring closes, all the States of Europe will be locked in its coil as in a powerful vice.

Lastly, a photo of an Arabic copy of the "Protocols:"

Satis Est.

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