Cartoons are Crazy

On January 16^th 2015, The Ma’an News Agency published an article titled “For some Palestiniancartoonists. Religion is off limits”. The article reports on the responses of Palestinian cartoonists to the events surrounding the terrorist attack at the Charlie Hebdo Magazine at its Paris headquarters on January 7^th that left 12 dead and 11 injured. The attack was orchestrated by two French Muslim brothers who claimed to be religiously motivated to perform their attack to avenge the prophet Mohammed whom the magazine often mocked alongside a variety of religious and political leaders.  The article focuses more specifically on the attitudes of 3 Palestinian cartoonists (Mohammad Sabaaneh, Ramzy Taweel, and Baha al Boukhari) towards both the terrorist attack and the content of the Charlie Hebdo controversial issues. All three Palestinians shared two main points of view;1) that the attack was a terrible tragedy  and, 2) that while they defend free speech and condemn the violence they do not agree with the content that Charlie Hebdo published concerning the Prophet Mohammed. The first half of the article was concerned with this disapproval of both the attack and the magazines issues.

The second half of the article is separated by the bolded quote 'The pen and the smile' and focuses on the reasons why the Palestinian cartoonists are upset and what they think the response should have been. They believe that while free speech is important, faith and religion is a touchy subject that should be avoided by any aspect of mockery or satire. While some found it flat out offensive to depict the Prophet Muhammad in that way, they all agreed that violence is and was not the answer. Instead the Palestinian cartoonists believed that those offended should let it go, shrug it off, or as Mohammad Sabaaneh put it “combat idea with idea, cartoons with cartoons”. All 3 Palestinian cartoonists involved in this article acted upon this last suggestion, each publishing their own cartoon response to the events and circumstances surrounding the terrorist attack (Mohammad Sabaaneh, Baha al Boukhari, Ramzy Taweel)

The article summarized above was written by John Davison who is a journalistic contributor to AFP news agency. From the style in which Davison writes, one can presume that his point of view is disapproving of the religious based cartoons produced by Charlie Hebdo and sympathetic towards the Palestinian cartoonists. His point of view is not expressed blatantly but in the structure of his writing and his narrow area of focus. First, Davison structures the article in a way that portrays the Palestinian cartoonists in a positive protagonistic “fighting the true fight the right way” kind of light. Each cartoonist is first quoted saying something loving and positive and then only after is quoted mentioning a critical aspect, a sugar coating technique. Second, the narrow minded nature of the article is expressed in the first half of its title “For some Palestinian Cartoonists”. The opinions of this article are based off of 3 cartoonists from Gaza responding to an event involving Islamic extremism. The only reason this tiny demographics point of view was chosen by the author was because while the majority of the cartoon industry and world had overwhelming and complete support for Charlie Hebdo (Je Suis Charlie), these Palestinian cartoonists criticized the magazine even in the wake of the tragedy. Besides the three cartoonists, Davison also mentions that the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Mohammad Hussein criticized the Charlie Hebdo comic calling it an insult to a third of the world. The four sources for this article are all extremely one sided and form a specific niche of opinion. Thus Davison with bias writes from the point of view that is both supportive of the Palestinian cartoonists and critical of Charlie Hebdo.

 Regardless of the authors’ point of view, the sources used are all legitimate in the sense that the facts presented are factual. All of sources are cartoonists from Palestine (illustrator Mohammad Sabaaneh of the newspaper al-Hayat al-Jadida, free-lance Palestinian cartoonist Ramzy Taweel, and the veteran illustrator Baha al Boukhari of the daily Al-Ayyam). The Ma’an News Agency that posted the article is the largest independent media group in the West bank and Gaza strip. While Ma’an is popular in Palestine the company has been criticized for having an anti-Semitic tone. This tone was shown in the article when Davison mentions that it is widely believed that the famous Palestinian cartoonist Naji al-Ali was assassinated by Israel’s Mossad intelligence services. While this rumor of Israeli involvement exists nothing has ever been proven with concern to who murdered al-Ali and therefore the inclusion of the claim is suspicious.

On the other hand the article was originally published by AFP (Agence France‑Presse) which is one of the oldest international news agencies in the world.  AFP has a respectable history of trustworthy journalism which gives the article and its data legitimacy. In my opinion this articles legitimacy is not the problem but the narrow minded viewpoint is what makes the article insufficient reading for getting a well rounded understanding of the issue.