[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 17]
[Senate]
[Page 23027]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              ANTISEMITISM

  Mr. SMITH. Mr. President, I speak about antisemitisim, an ancient 
pestilence that has torn at the fabric of society for too long. 
Specifically, I have become concerned with the dissemination of 
antisemitic attitudes through political cartoons.
  Last month, on the eve of Rosh Hashanah, I stood in this chamber 
along with a bipartisan group of my colleagues to speak about the 
cancerous effect that antisemitism continues to have on humanity. As I 
stated then, it is of the highest priority for our Nation to stand up 
against this venomous invective and bigotry directed at the Jewish 
people.
  It is an unfortunate reality that some newspapers in the Arab world 
blatantly promote antisemitism. For my remarks, I had prepared several 
posters of cartoons that appeared in Arabic-language newspapers to 
illustrate to my colleagues their insidious nature, but in the end, I 
found them too unsettling to display.
  What I find disconcerting, however, is the fact that this sentiment 
is creeping into political cartoons both in Europe as well as here in 
the United States. Newspapers across the country and the world have 
published cartoons that have gone beyond reasonable differences of 
opinion and expanded into the realm of antisemitism.
  For example, I have seen a cartoon of a man lying on the ground, 
bleeding and clutching a small Palestinian flag. Impaled in his back is 
a large American flag with its stars arranged to form the Star of 
David. This graphic image, insinuating that an Israeli-controlled 
America has killed the state of Palestine, is appalling.
  In Italy, the Newspaper La Stampa ran a cartoon depicting an Israeli 
tank rumbling toward a baby Jesus, who is crying ``Surely they don't 
want to kill me again?!'' This is not a criticism of policy or 
leadership. This is nothing other than an antisemitic attack thinly 
veiled as political parody.
  In the Greek Newspaper Ethnos, a cartoon appeared showing two Israeli 
soldiers stabbing captive Arabs. One of the Israeli soldiers is 
depicted as saying to the other ``Don't feel guilty, brother. We were 
not in Auschwitz and Dachau to suffer but to learn!'' How can that be 
construed as anything other than bigotry? This kind of hatred is simply 
unacceptable, and I urge my colleagues in the Senate, as well as 
leaders across the world, to make every effort to end this terrible 
plague of hatred.

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