Cartoons: What's good for the goose....

From politicalcartoons.com :

2/04/06
SUNDAY MUHAMMAD CARTOON NEWS: ANOTHER DANISH EMBASSY BURNED, WORLDWIDE PROTESTS

The Muhammad cartoons story made the lead on MSNBC.com for the first time today as, "Thousands of Muslims rampaged Sunday in Beirut, setting fire to the Danish Embassy, burning Danish flags and lobbing stones at a Maronite Catholic church as violent protests spread over caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad." The Danes had evacuated the embassy earlier.

Protesters in Lebanon torched firetrucks and stoned a Catholic church. Muslims also protested the cartoons in the streets of Afghanistan, the West Bank, Iraq and New Zealand, where two newspapers reprinted the cartoons yesterday.

Middle East analyst, Tom Gross, has been collecting anti-Semitic political cartoons from Middle Eastern newspapers and has put up a page of typical, hateful selections here. Compare these to the Muhammad cartoons to see the hypocracy of the protestors.

The first cartoon on Tom's page is by Jordanian cartoonist Emad Hajjaj, who appears on our site. Emad translated the sign on the concentration camp to read "Gaza Now" in his archive from 10/19/2003.

The cartoon at the below is by Matt Bors. It refers to the Muhammad cartoon with the bomb in the turban and a recent cartoon by Tom Toles of the Washington Post, depicting a handicapped war veteran, which drew a rebuke from the Joint Chiefs of Staff. I went on the Hannity & Colmes show on Fox News a couple of days ago to talk about this cartoon and a similar cartoon of mine from 2004. I haven't mentioned this flap in the blog because I think it is a non-story. (Frankly, the Muhammad cartoon thing is much ado about nothing too, on a grand scale.)

London's Times Online has a story about the twelve Danish cartoonists, noting that they have gone into hiding, that that they are under 24 hour police protection, and that they were paid $73 each for the cartoons.

COMMENTS FROM THE CENTER OF THE STORM
Jyllands-Posten reporter Anders Raahauge was very helpful in getting us up to speed with the Muhammad cartoons story early on. I asked Anders for his comments from the center of the storm, about how things look from Denmark and the Jyllands-Posten now that the Muhammad cartoons story has evolved into a hurricane.

Hi Daryl, Well, apart from the major events, that you now finally get from the (news) agencies (latest is the embassy-fire in Damascus, with Syrian police not protecting the building), I can tell about the climate: the most liberal-left wing Danes can understand the Muslim reaction (suffering discrimination for so long etc.). Industry owners are wringing their hands about the trade-boycott, urging for apologies, they also - well some of them, (and) other "capitalists," stand tall and declare that any bill should be paid without whimpering; some principles are too dear to be sold out. And apart from that, they hold (that) the situation is like negotiating with terrorists who take hostages -you'll never see the end of it but only (see) new demands. So one may as well decline any surrender from the outset.

And the many Danes? Well, judging from the letters to the newspapers, the vast majority take this second stance. Enough is enough. We won't be dictated (to about ) How to behave in our own country; we are not going to settle things like they do in the Middle East-dictatorships ... Of course some Danes are pretty anxious, terror threats have been launched, but the mood is predominantly defiant, and people consider the case an eye-opener.Your poor colleagues though: In London the demonstrators now emphazise that there is no reason to apologize, it is not required, and it won't make any difference. The 12 cartoonists just must be executed - by us or else they can fix it (themselves), preferably (by) beheading, they explain. And that can, as in the case of Rushdie, be sooner or later; perhaps in ten years time. Will the cartoonists ever get their lives back? ...bestAnders

Cartoon by Matt Bors
Read my column with background on the Muhammad cartoon controversy here.Read past updates in my blog.See the offending cartoons here.

Wrap...