Israel’s Peace Plan

Conrad is known for his dramatic images, and strong opinions. I say “bravo” to a man who stands up for what he believes. I know what it means to be on a pulpit, to point a finger at evil when you are certain others will rise up to curse you. I’ve been there.

Yet, on careful examination of Conrad’s cartoons on Israelis and Arabs, I have concluded that Conrad’s moral compass is dangerously crooked, and fluttering out of balance.

Over a 10-year period, from 1979 to 1988, Conrad produced 59 cartoons on Israelis and Arabs. Some have charged Israel with pursuing a genocidal policy toward Palestinians. Many have transformed the Jewish Star of David into a symbol of terror, murder and parasitical power. Still others, mimicking medieval anti-Semitic stereotypes of Jews, accuse Israelis of seeking to control the world, of crucifying or sacrificing innocents, of abandoning the true “Judeo-Christian ethic.”

In this vast output of opinion, only two cartoons were not critical of Israel. Over that same 10-year period, Conrad drew only eight cartoons about the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, only seven about Arab-on-Arab atrocities, only five about the tragic dismemberment of Lebanon by the PLO and Syrians.

Reviewing the record, I find myself wondering about motive, about what drives such a narrow focus on one dimension of the often baffling and sad Middle East.

For instance, on May 28, Conrad serves up an illustration of Shamir, machine gun in one hand, holding hostage a line-up of gagged, blindfolded, and handcuffed American statesman. The caption reads: “We’re going to show you Bush people that we’re in control!” Across the world, Chinese students are protesting in Tian An Men Square. Conrad is silent. On the subsequent weekend, Chinese students are slaughtered. Again, Conrad is silent, producing for publication on June 5 a depiction of the flag of Israel, its stripes and star crudely suggesting a policy of exterminating Palestinians.

The United States Supreme Court provides a respite.

Meanwhile, matters in China are still grim, and the situation in the Middle East is troubling. PLO operatives are killing any Palestinians on the West Bank or in Gaza who indicate a willingness to accept Shamir’s democratic-free election plan.

Elsewhere, Iraqi troops are massacring thousands of Kurds, driving half a million men, women and children out of their historic villages, using, it is reported, poison gas to spread fear, terror and death. In Israel, the Likud Party holds a convention, and votes on a party platform with conditions differing from those already accepted by the coalition government. Shamir says that the peace initiative “has not changed.” Yasser Afafat, who has refused for three months to give his blessings to Shamir’s election plan, now announces that the PLO rejects the proposal. Outside of Jerusalem, a Palestinian seizes the wheel of a bus, plunging it down a ravine, killing 16, and injuring many others.

Conrad’s response to all this? On July 13, he offers an illustration of Shamir, Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Rabin, and Ariel Sharon grasping the wheel of a bus swerving off a road, intimating the moral obscenity that their democratic differences are to be equated with the premeditated murder and maiming of innocents on a public bus by a Palestinian terrorist.

And all the while I am asking, where has Conrad been? Why no cartoon on the catastrophe of the Kurds? Why no cartoon on PLO tactics of intimidation and murder?

Why all this silence from Conrad on the one hand, and with the other this obsession of assaulting Israel? What sort of moral sensibility finds Jewish blood less significant when shed than Palestinian blood?

HARVEY J. FIELDS

Los Angeles

Fields is senior rabbi of Whilshire Boulevard Temple, Los Angeles, and chair of the Middle East commission of the community relations committee of the Jewish Federation Council of Greater Los Angeles.