Earlier this week, I was offended and surprised by insulting depictions of the Prophet Muhammad in European newspapers, and I am sure that many of you were as well. I supported the Muslim community's right to protest these images, but the violence that has erupted as a result of these cartoons is progressively getting out of hand, with senseless deaths ensuing. One Iranian newspaper in particular has gone too far in its desire to respond to the images published in the Danish Jyllands-Posten newspaper.
The Hamshahri newspaper has announced a contest it is holding for cartoons depicting the Holocaust in response to the images of Muhammad. In justification of the contest, the best-selling Iranian newspaper offered this statement, according to BBC: "Does the West's freedom of expression extend to...an event such as the Holocaust or is this freedom of expression only for the desecration of the sanctities of divine religions?" The Hamshahri is offering gold rewards to the best 12 artists (to match the number of cartoons commissioned by the Jyllands-Posten).
While I empathize with the anger of the Iranian people and Muslims all over the world, the response which this newspaper is attempting to illicit is disgusting and deplorable. Exploiting the genocide of 11 million people (Jewish, Roma, Homosexual, Communist, and many others with them) in order to get revenge against the Danish newspaper lacks a great deal of rationale and human compassion. It is an action I am sure the Prophet Muhammad would have lamented: one of Muhammad's great teachings explains "to overcome evil with good is good; to resist evil with evil is evil."
The web site of the Arab European League published one of these cartoons on February 2: in it is a depiction of a childish Anne Frank in bed with Adolf Hitler, after the two have just had sex. Hitler is relaxed with his arms spread across the bed, saying, "Write this one in your diary, Anne!" The expression on Frank's face is one of horror. Another such image, entitled "The Robbery," shows a fat, malicious, militant Jewish man robbing an anthropomorphic globe at gun point; the gun reads "The Holocaust." These sorts of images are only a few among many now rampant all over the world, not just in Iran, and they are easily accessible online. The actions of the Hamshahri are most certainly not the first of their kind, and I doubt, unfortunately, that they will be the last.
When did this abhorrent desensitization to the Holocaust happen, and where was I when it occurred? Why is it that swastikas are appearing in high schools and college campuses across this country? I ask myself, is it ignorance or legitimate hatred? I could share my family's story with you: Nazi Germany slaughtered four generations of my kin in the death camps and ghettos of Eastern Europe. But I am sure you have heard this story or similar stories many times before.
I am deeply concerned by the surge of both passive Holocaust mockery in this country and the vitriolic, institutional attacks made by this Iranian newspaper.
Many of the comments made by Iran's President Ahmadinejad in the past months have troubled me, both as a Jewish person and as member of the global Human community; included in those comments are ones of Holocaust denial. I don't take Ahmadinejad's comments to be reflective of Iranians as a whole, but the response of many Iranian newspapers to the Muhammad caricatures raises unease in my mind.
When we say "never again" to genocide and to the Holocaust, we should start impregnating those words with some semblance of meaning. The International community shouldn't turn its back on Darfur the way Rwanda was ignored, Bosnia, Armenia?the list goes on. And it shouldn't ignore these outright attacks on the validity and pain of genocide.
Words and images carry great weight, and one should always be sensitive to one's audience before publishing images such as those published in the Danish newspaper, even if one desires to test the limits of free speech and press. One of my hopes is that people everywhere in the world, from the Bowdoin campus to Tehran, will reexamine the ease with which the language and images of the Holocaust are used as jokes, mockery, and tools of hate. As a community, I hope we denounce the response of the Hamshahri newspaper the same way we should denounce the depictions commissioned by the Jyllands-Posten, and fight insensitivity, ignorance, and hatred here at Bowdoin and in our lives beyond the campus.