Israel Matzav: Is it anti-Semitic or 'just' anti-Israel?

Is it anti-Semitic or 'just' anti-Israel?

The disgusting cartoon at the top of this post comes from Cologne, Germany.

A crude anti-Israel exhibit in Cologne’s Cathedral Square in the heart of the bustling pedestrian zone does not meet the criteria of inciting hate, Rainer Wolf, a spokesman for the public prosecutor in Cologne, told The Jerusalem Post on Monday.

Wolf said the public prosecutor plans to dismiss the complaint of Gerd Buurmann, a non-Jewish theater director, who filed a grievance in February, asserting a violation of Germany’s hate-crime law.

Buurmann told the Post that he was “horrified” by the decision and plans to now participate in a civil legal action against Walter Herrmann, the exhibitor of the anti-Israel exhibit.

Herrmann’s long-standing exhibit, “Cologne Wailing Wall,” has been deemed anti-Semitic by critics in the Cologne City Council and a commentator from the large daily Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger.

Buurmann initiated legal action because the exhibit shows a cartoon of a man sporting a Star of David on his bib as he devours a young Palestinian boy with a fork draped in an American flag and a knife with the word “Gaza.” A blood-filled glass next to the plate appears to symbolize the blood of the child.

Wolf, the prosecutor’s spokesman, told the Post that six or seven complaints have since been filed, ranging from private individuals to the Society for Christian-Jewish relations.

Asked whether the cartoon is an expression of modern anti-Semitism, Wolf said, it is “not a tendency of hostility toward Jews, but an actual criticism of the situation in Gaza.”

He added that the exhibitor, Walter Herrmann, seeks to “criticize” and the “cartoon is a sarcastic expression of the Israeli army in Gaza.”

Read the whole thing. Hitler and his friends would have fit right in to Cologne 2010. Hope and change same.

Although in all fairness, I have to say that I have been to Frankfurt a couple of times (once on business and once I got stuck there on my way back to Israel), and it was a lot less creepy than Vienna, for example. Apparently, there are some parts of Germany where there is shame over their role in the Holocaust, while there are other parts where they would like to pick up where Hitler left off.

Israel Matzav: Is it anti-Semitic or 'just' anti-Israel?