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God Save The Queen From Eli Valley
By Eli Valley / January 29, 2008
Jewcy’s comic artist turns his gimlet eye away from the Jewish people and towards their detractors. As Britian’s former European minister noted in The Washington Post this fall, antisemitism is on the rise in the UK. Jews are four times more likely than Muslims to be attacked because of their religion, according to a widely circulated article in City Journal, and hate crimes against Jews have doubled since 2001.
Below, Eli Valley imagines what happens when this trend hits the schools.
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The comic is heavy handed and a little over the top but the basic premise is correct. You've got academics who can't seem to let go of their boycott fantasy; the editor of a British paper (can't remember which one) who says he automatically ignores the opinion letters of people with Jewish names; the Oxford student union mounts a debate on the "right" of Israel to exist, and stocks both sides with noted anti-Zionists; the BBC hasn't quite come out and said "We hate Israel!", but only not quite; and I don't think the term "Londonistan" came out of nowhere. It's like folks in Mississippi who get pissed off when you mention they still have a problem with black people. I mean, come on.
And the old "I'm not an anti-semite, I'm just an anti-Zionist" is bullshit. Like here in America (and I'm in the South, so I know what I'm talking about) when someone starts a sentence with "I'm not a racist, but…" you can be fairly sure he's a racist. The Brits have never been down with the Jews. Following the Holocaust, most Brits could work up quite a bit of sympathy for the survivors, but after 50 years of a Jewish state, the sympathy is gone. It's not Jews per se the Brits don't like, I guess – it's the Jews with guns. The Jews who fight.
I think Mr/Ms Anonymous is confused by my well-crafted comments. Although they must seem to him to have required hours of diligent labor to compose, they each represent only few moments at the keyboard. Just a gift, I guess.
Craig, thanks (I think) for trying to restore some measure of civility here, but I have to disagree. Calling me anti-Semitic is not OK. Anti-Semitism is a false belief practiced by the unimaginative and those ignorant of history. I fall into neither category. I am, on the other hand, proudly anti-Zionist, which, despite the foolishness one often hears, is an entirely different thing.
Finally, I'm tall, easy on the eyes, smart as a whip and quite fond of puppies and long walks on the beach. On top of all that-and I know this must really pain mr. or ms. anonymous up there- my wife and I are really quite a happy pair.
So hate me for my blessings, if you must, but don't confuse your envy with insight.
By the way, Craig, I'm aware that you, Izzy, Joey et al have from time to time warned the inmates here to stick with substantive comments and to lay off the name-calling. Wanting to conform to Jewcy's standards, I ask your advice; would it be unnaceptable to refer to mr/ms anonymous as a "cum-soaked cockholster", or could this be construed as a simple statement of fact?
Awaiting your decision, I remain, etc., etc.
Yuoo're-a un untee-semeetic peeece-a ooff
tresh vhu lufes Ereb terrureests vhu moorder Jooeesh cheeldree. Yuoo
hete-a Mrs. Um gesh dee bork, bork!Pheelips becesooe-a she-a vreetes
zee troot und becoose-a shes' a vumun. Yuoo regoolerly beet up yuoor
veeffe-a und dooghter becoose-a thet's vhet Moosleems du. Yuoo hete-a
Joos und vumun su ooff cuoorse-a yuoo're-a gueeng tu hete-a Mrs. Um
gesh dee bork, bork!Pheelips. Um gesh dee bork, bork!
[Dialectized; please see our comments policy.]
I think there is reason to believe reports of a rise in British antisemitism. Ms. Phillips' credentials are irrelevant. The other reporter is a Member of Parliament charged with investigating the phenomenon, and he clearly believes it to be a problem. In any case, Eli isn't basing the comic on these two articles; he's merely offering them as points of reference.
The humor lies in parodying old European attitudes toward Jews, and theorizing as to what a "textbook" for children upholding those views might look like – in much the same way that the Christian right in the US is publishing school books replete with their revisionist history and pseudoscience, in the process of supporting the parallel reality they're attempting to create.
I think it's funny in any case, Eli.
And I'm fine with lesbians being in charge. They certainly couldn't do worse than the current administration.
(I'm an Anglophile too, Eli – however, in my case, it comes from watching too many years of Masterpiece Theater!)
Well, I can't say that I endorse young Max's outburst above (although I appreciate hearing some unmitigated spleen from the usually spacey navel-gazer), but Eli, fer chrissake, basing a whole comic on a Melanie Phillips fever dream?
For those unaware of her pedigree, Ms. Phillips is a trafficker in the hoariest effusions of bullshit this side of Bush fils. Besides her pathological anti-Arabism, she frowns on gay marriage, pooh-poohs the evidence for global warming, is not at all comfortable with the theory of evolution and endorses the teaching of creationism in Brit schools, and so on. If someone on Jewcy approvingly cited an imam who was similarly encumbered with such medievalisms, they would be pilloried instantly.
So I am very skeptical of Ms. Phillips uncited references purporting to demonstrate the high incidence of anti-Semitism in England.
More troubling, though, is the sneaky way she segues from the disgusting assault on an innocent kid by a band of thugs to the "obsessive" criticism of Israeli policy, which she locates as merely the latest incarnation of European anti-Semitism. This shameful sleight-of-hand is, of course, designed to render suspicious the remarks of anyone with a strong sympathy for the Palestinians.
My point is this: Eli, I look forward to your comix and your brief, quirky written pieces as well. But for stuff to be funny, it has to be parodying something with at least a nodding acquaintance with reality. Just as paranoid right-wing scribblings about a future America under the thumb of unshaven lesbians and feral Africans makes sense only to those who subscribe to survivalist fictions, so too a comic which takes off from the ravings of a lunatic like Phillips has limited appeal to those in the reality-based community.
Well, OK, maybe the unshaven lesbians are a little scary…..
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