Democratic Reps. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota posted a cartoon depicting President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu silencing them. The artist of the cartoon has been accused of anti-Semitism in his previous work.
The cartoon, drawn by Carlos Latuff, depicts Netanyahu holding his hand over Tlaib’s mouth as Trump holds his hand over Omar’s. Both of them are shushing the congresswomen at the same time.
Oof. Looks like both Rep. Omar and Rep. Tlaib shared this awful Carlos Latuff cartoon in Instagram stories yesterday. In 2006, Latuff came in second in Iran’s International Holocaust Cartoon Contest, which is a thing that exists, in case you thought the TL couldn’t get any worse. pic.twitter.com/uwyBPAsz7T
— Batya Ungar-Sargon (@bungarsargon) August 18, 2019
The cartoon represents the Israeli government’s decision to bar Tlaib and Omar from entering the country, citing a law that allows the country to forbid people who have supported calls to boycott Israel, as they have done. Trump weighed in, arguing in favor of Israel not letting them in hours before the decision was made.
Tlaib posted it on her Instagram story Saturday, and Omar copied the post.
Back in 2006, Latuff finished second in the International Holocaust Cartoon Contest, which was run by the Iranian newspaper Hamshahri.
To whom it may concern: this is the cartoon I participated in the International Holocaust Cartoon Competition (2006) and the interview I gave in 2008 about it for the Jewish Daily @jdforwardhttps://t.co/eSRuKMIjIO pic.twitter.com/WhSROMJMl0
— Carlos Latuff (@LatuffCartoons) August 18, 2019
“The artwork with which I won second place was a depiction of an elderly Palestinian man wearing a Nazi concentration camp uniform,” Latuuff said of his own cartoon in a 2008 interview with Forward.
“I saw this contest as both a good chance for denouncing the suffering of the Palestinian people before the eyes of world public opinion and for raising questions about the West’s double standards,” he said of the cartoon. “I mean, you insult the Muslims with a cartoon depicting the Prophet Muhammad as a bomber and then claim the right to ‘freedom of speech,’ but if you make drawings about the Holocaust, then it’s ‘hatred against the Jews.'”
