This
article in Le Monde reports on an exposition of Holocaust caricatures that opened on August 14th in Tehran, Iran. It is in response to the famous caricatures of Muhammed published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten, and copied all over the Internet and in other newspapers around the world. The logic of this is that Westerners criticized the outrage of Muslims in response to the Muhammed cartoons as being anti-freedom of the press, so now Muslims will put on this exposition to show them how it feels.
Of course, the criticism was mostly against the violent reaction by Muslims: there were demonstrations that resulted in several deaths over the Mushammed cartoons. This distinction seems to have been discounted by those who are putting on the Holocaust cartoon expo.
The implementers of the exposition, held at the Museum of Palestinian Contemporary Art, believe that the only true holocaust is that suffered by the Palestinians, and that fact is reflected in many of the drawings selected for display.
The article gives several examples: the poster for the exposition, sourced at the top of this diary, consists of Nazi and Israeli helmets put together so they appear symmetric; two Nazi work camps, one with a sign "Work makes freedom", the other saying "War makes peace"; one with the word "Israel", where the final L is a boot crushing the world; one where a Statue of Liberty with the left hand holding a book about the Holocaust, the right hand in a Nazi salute.
As might be expected, the Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem has denouced the exhibit, but this Le Monde article is the only news report I've seen about it.
I'm going to go out on a limb here, and make a bet that there will be no mobs of Jews or anyone else, there will be no violence by those offended by the drawings, and that in fact, the overall reaction will be the same as mine: as childish as the original drawings were, Round Two is even more puerile, so ludicrous, in fact, that most people will not even notice it. What this says about the world, about the Holocaust, about Jews, about Muslims, and about the press, I will leave for the reader to decide.
Greg Shenaut