I first became acquainted with the hate-filled cartoons that emanate out of the Arab world when I purchased Arieh Stav's Peace: The Arabian Caricature: A Study of Anti-Semitic Imagery published in 1999.  The cartoons depict Jews as bloodthirsty ghouls and play upon the age-old blood libel canard.  Israelis are depicted as the reincarnation of Nazis.  Judaism is shown as a religion of degeneracy and America is shown as instigating and supporting the murderous Zionists.

My next introduction to the cartoon media world was through Joel Kotek's Cartoons and Extremism: Israel and the Jews in Arab and Western Media, published in 2009. On its cover, Israeli soldiers are shown bayoneting Jesus in the Pieta scene and the Arab world writes "Do not kill him twice" as if Islamists care a fig about Christian symbolism. Arab cartoons revive the myth of Jews as ogres and vampires as Jews are accused of Palestinian infanticide.  The Arab-Muslim Judeophobia knows no shame.  The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) regularly prints examples of these vile cartoons ~ many coming from Egypt and Jordan who have signed "peace" treaties with Israel.  Cartoons are constantly publicized in the Arab world which allude to Jews "as descendants of apes and pigs."  Moreover, the Simon Wiesenthal Center publicizes the unremitting antisemitic hatred spewing from Arab countries and other regions of the world.

So to learn that a fatwa has been issued against American cartoonist Molly Norris is but another example of the disingenuous, hypocritical world of the fundamentalist Muslim. Ms. Norris was first threatened a few months ago for attempting to draw the prophet Muhammad.  Unbelievably, she has now been named to an execution list on Inspire, a new online English language al-Qaeda magazine.  It is a publication that attempts to recruit American Muslims for jihad.

Morris and eight other cartoonists, authors and journalists from Sweden, Holland and Great Britain have been targeted for "their blasphemous caricatures" of the prophet Muhammad.  One would almost relegate the rage of these Muslims over a cartoon to the dustbin except that they are deadly serious.  American-Yemeni Islamic cleric Anwar al-Aulaqi has made the dictates known and death is the answer.  This is the same al-Aulaqi linked to the Christmas Day bombing earlier this year!

American laws, thankfully, guarantee the right to free expression and writer Kathleen Parker urges Americans not to be "cowed by Muslim objections to cartoons."  She writes that "to that end, and in support of Norris and others, 19 Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonists have signed a petition condemning threats and attacks against cartoonists.  The petition is posted on the Cartoonists Rights Network International Web site (http://cartoonistrights.com).  It hasn't nearly enough signatures." 

 
Eileen added her name to the petition and can be reached at middlemarch18@gmail.com