Bill Leak cartoon in The Australian, 31 July 2014
UPDATE: To sign the petition, visit http://chn.ge/1A4h3lv
UPDATE (4/8/2014): Still no response from The Australian. Not to this post or my email or anyone else’s. Disgraceful.
The death toll in Gaza has well and truly surpassed 1400, with thousands more injured, tens of thousands displaced and no escape in sight. A majority of these casualties are innocent civilians – women and children. As the United Nations, Twitter and anyone with any humanity left in their heart, continue to condemn the actions of the Israeli defence force, The Australian decided it was appropriate to post the cartoon above.
It is completely unbelievable, and when I saw the outrage on social media, I thought the image must have been doctored – it must have just been some propaganda by some misguided activists who were aiming to bring light to the unfair depiction of the people of Gaza in the media.
I was horrified to find out that no, it was in fact a real image. Mariam Veiszadeh wrote an incredible letter to the Australian, which you can read at the end of this post.
It is outrageous that anyone could depict the murder of these children as a ‘PR war’. How vile and inhumane. How disgusting that the pools of innocent blood can be reduced to nothing more than an apparent smoke-screen, intended to fool the West into supporting the people of Gaza. I cannot believe that no one working for the newspaper put a stop to this.
Imagine if a similar image was used to belittle the victims of flight MH17. Better yet, imagine if this is how the media chose to depict the murders at the hands of the Nazis.
Ironically, Bill Leak has depicted exactly what the IDF are doing – targeting children who happen to be doing nothing more than playing in the streets. All of the people of Gaza are targets, as Israel undertakes a mass punishment. With 53% of the population aged under 18, it is children who are the targets of Israeli operations. Innocent children who, just yesterday, were vilified by The Australian.
Never did I imagine that anyone could be so low, so pathetic. Congratulations to The Australian for sinking to a whole new level.
What can you do about this?
1. Retweet this post and ensure to include @Australian in your tweet.
2. Retween Mariam’s post demanding an apology from Bill Leak and The Australian.
3. Write to the Editor-in-chief of the Australian, Chris Mitchell. Explain to him how reprehensible this depiction of the murder of the children of Gaza is. Demand an apology.
4. Keep posting about the plight of the Palestinians and the people of Gaza. Israel needs to know that the world will not turn a blind eye to its crimes against humanity.
Submission for publication – Letters to the Editor
I was appalled by the Bill Leak cartoon titled “How the West was won over” published in The Australian on 31 July 2014.
The offending cartoon depicts a Palestinian father telling his child “There! Now you go out to play and win the PR war for daddy”.
The cartoon implies that Palestinian parents are sacrificing their children for a Public Relations stunt. It seeks to trivialise the death of hundreds of innocent Palestinian children. It is deeply insensitive, highly offensive and dehumanises the Palestinian people.
The UN has consistently refuted the Israeli claim that Hamas has been hiding and firing weapons from its civilian facilities or using civilians as human shields. Anyone who is familiar with the densely populated Gaza Strip knows that the notion of militants using civilians as shields is preposterous.
Vilifying the Palestinian people, who are not able to defend themselves against these heartless accusations is completely reprehensible.
Kind regards,
Mariam Veiszadeh
Unveiled Thought 
You are aware that Hamas intentionally leaves its citizens in harms way, in the hope they are killed for the PR benefit? The IDF systematically warns Palestinian residents if an operation is to be carried out in their area.
Here is Mushir al-Masri on al-Aqsa TV, July 16, 2014 doing just that.
To address your point that Hamas doesn’t use civilians as shields.
Rockets fired from a school.
And again
And again (during a ceasefire no less). I could go on, all day.
The use of children in this conflict is vile. You need only watch Palestinian children’s television to see the culture of hate that exists.
And so on.
Lastly, you say that the cartoon depicts a fallacy. I say quite the opposite. The cartoon is factual and horribly poignant.
That is the depressing reality.
So, I must disagree with your complaint.
LikeLiked by 1 person
The problem is that there is absolutely no safe place for the people of Gaza to hide. Where are they going to go? Into Egypt or Israel? Nope. Blockades. Into UN shelters? Nope. Specifically targetted by the IDF. Maybe they should go and drown themselves in the ocean instead?
There have been multiple accounts of the IDF specifically targeting children – those on the beach, those in the park in a refugee camp. An Israeli soldier celebrated the death of the 13 children he specifically snipered. Israelis were out in the street celebrating and chanting about the lack of school in Gaza because the children were dead.
Thanks to social media, every Israeli comment about murdering children is captures and shared around the world.
The fact is, the death of these children is on Israel’s hands.
The depressing reality is that children from BOTH sides are conditioned to hate each other.
Further, Israel is just as guilty for firing during a ceasefire. Both sides are at fault, but there is no doubt that Israel is perpetrating a mass punishment affecting the children more than anyone else.
The point of this outrage is that the Australian is telling people that Hamas are purposefully killing their children. That’s outrageous. The ones firing are Israel. We don’t side with Gaza because of a ‘PR campaign’. We do it because Israel is committing acts of terrorism.
LikeLike
Not only is there voluminous evidence of deliberate Zionist child murder since the massacres of the Nakbah, but there have been recent calls in the Knesset for the murder of Palestinian mothers for breeding ‘little snakes’, coming from leading lights in the Jewish Homeland Party, vital in Netanyahoo’s coalition. Israeli social media is alive with thousands of calls for more and more brutal child murder, and psychotic jubilation at those already committed. And the Judaic religion also advocates child murder, the murder of civilians and collective punishment being firmly and repeatedly declared, over centuries, to be good deeds or mitzvahs.
LikeLike
You post (edited) clips to then go and draw extraordinary conclusions from them.
You state, without any real prooof
“..Hamas intentionally leaves its citizens in harms way..
..Where are the population going to go, Sinai? Would you and yours love that!
They tried UNWRA buildings and look what happend there.
“..in the hope they are killed for the PR benefit?..”
..That is a disgusting and racist slander, based upon nothing more than the cunning stunts of Zionist propagandists.
I reply to you that the Zionist leadership callously puts all Jews in harms way so they make be minimally traumatised by the pathetic kinetic missiles from Hamas, thus justifying Zionist genocide of the Palestinians and the final seeping clean of Gaza. Those damned untermensch!!
LikeLike
Hey I didn’t see this post before! Great stuff.
Without any real proof? You have a video of a high level Hamas political figure telling people to ignore Israeli phone calls that a military strike is about to take place in their residence, and to remain where bombs will shortly fall, because it will ‘disrupt the home front’. Are you seriously suggesting that isn’t evidence?
If the Australian government had information that another country was about to bomb your neighborhood, what would your reaction be if the PM came on TV and told you to just remain in your house?
Can’t move? Have addressed that below. Attacks are targeted to no more than a block. You can’t move a block for a few hours or even a day? To save your own life and your families? Don’t pretend Gaza is just 1 big inescapable house.
Hmm, maybe they can go to Egypt. Oh wait, Egypt blockades them just as Israel does. Never seem to hear about that though do we. No Jews in Egypt of course.
Racist? Quite a reach mate. Love to hear exactly what race i’m being prejudiced against there.
Do you have any evidence of the ‘evil Zionists’ putting Jews in harms way? Love to hear it.
You finish with a hilarious dismissal of the 2500 rockets a year that are fired into Israel. Oh they only kill a few people a year, whats the harm.
far out.
LikeLiked by 1 person
“The point of this outrage is that the Australian is telling people that Hamas are purposefully killing their children….”
How then do you explain the bizarre spectacle of the late Mariam Farahat, an elected official in Gaza who died of natural causes a year or two ago? She was well known in Gaza as Um Nidal (mother of the struggle). She had six children, three of whom (sons) died as suicide bombers. She was best known for a Hamas recruitment tape where she showed her 17 year old how to kill Jews with a suicide bomb, including the dramatic bit where she tells him not to come back alive and sends him on his way. When popular officials in Gaza are widely celebrated by Hamas for purposely getting their teenage sons killed, what part of the claim that Hamas are purposefully killing their children is wrong?
Are the Israelis always right? Hey, I don’t think so. But is The Australian really wrong on this one? They seem to be 100% accurate.
LikeLiked by 2 people
You said it yourself, it was a bizarre spectacle. Do you honestly think that those people who are screaming while holding their decapitated children were hoping for that to happen?
The actions of an insane few should not be depicted as the norm for everyone else. The Australian wasn’t 100% accurate. If anything, they were showing the actions of a psychotic minority as a reflection of what everyone else thinks.
LikeLike
“The actions of an insane few should not be depicted as the norm for everyone else.”
A few? Well, never mind a popularly elected official like Mariam Farahat, how do we explain this Hamas TV show extolling martyrdom to children?
And this other Hamas TV show from last year starring some relatives of Farahat, complete with young children stating that “Jihad bestows pride and glory on you when you become a martyrdom seeker.”
Then there’s the animated show from local TV extolling the virtues of young children taking on Israeli soldiers so that they can die with “dignity” in combat with them:
Sadly, we’re not talking about the actions of a minority- there is a veritable industry in promoting this nonsense to children. Which is exactly what The Australian was saying in the first place.
LikeLike
I think my problem with your sentiments is that you’re talking about it as though these are people who are sending out suicide bombers or children who will fly planes into buildings. This isn’t a situation where they are at peace, and they’ve decided it’s a really fabulous idea to die.
These are people who have been under attack for DECADES. There are people who have grandparents who were born during the same occupation. Three generations of people who suffered through war and destruction and occupation. You can send me as many videos as you like about what they’re showing their children. It means absolutely nothing in my context (ours, if I’m assuming you’re living in Australia or somewhere in the west).
People talking about martyrdom (note: it’s not just Muslims who refer to people who die in these situations as martyrs – Christians also do it) aren’t talking about it in the sense of a suicide-bomber, that we’re used to in the West. Martyrdom means dying as a result of an unjust option. Women who die while giving birth are also martyrs. People who drown or die in a fire, too.
Of course they’re going to say they’re martyrs. I believe every person who has been killed unjustly by the Israeli occupation is a martyr. My Islamic beliefs tell me that an unjust murder, such as these, results in the killed person entering heaven without judgement – they lost their life unfairly and have no chance to continue to do good or make up for any wrongs they have committed.
‘Then there’s the animated show from local TV extolling the virtues of young children taking on Israeli soldiers so that they can die with “dignity” in combat with them’. Yeah. Again, I’ve never lived in this situation, but I can only imagine that any other country with three generations worth of war is going to talk about something similar, whether it’s dying as a martyr or with honour.
I don’t know what the point you’re trying to make is. Are you justifying the murder of children because their community is attempting to lessen the devastation that comes with it? Children growing up with ideas of martyrdom aren’t causing Israel to fire.
LikeLike
You are literally out of your mind. The original article is about the accuracy of the comic in relation to reality. The evidence clearly shows its accurate. End of discussion. Your utterly warped ideas about justifying suicide attacks have no place on this earth.
LikeLike
WHAT??? Justifying suicide attacks? No, YOU’RE out of your mind. I literally just said that these CHILDREN are NOT suicide bombers. They’re not doing anything. They’re being children, playing in the street. I said that sure, maybe the community calls those who die martyrs, but that doesn’t mean that they’re trying to get their children killed.
As in, if these people were suicide bombers, then the comic would be making a fair point. If you go out of your way to kill yourself and others, you deserve what’s coming to you.
Go back and read my comment. Suicide bombers are the absolute worst, immoral, pathetic low lives.
LikeLike
You have no idea what you’re talking about. Children are just playing in the street? You’re deluded. Children are recruited as suicide bombers, being sent into Israel strapped with explosives to blow themselves up in the hope of also killing Israelis.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_suicide_bombers_in_the_Israeli%E2%80%93Palestinian_conflict
What is being played to Palestinian children on TV is abuse. Indoctrination to kill jews from the ages of 3 and up? How can you ever hope to have a peaceful resolution to the dispute when you brainwash an entire generation with this garbage. Kill the jews. Stone the Jews. Wipe them off the map.
The comic is absolutely on point, relevant and accurate. Simple as that.
LikeLike
Had this been any other post, with someone spewing the amount of crap you have been, making comments in the way that you are, I wouldn’t have approved your comments – not because I hope to censor people’s opinions on this site, but because they are so upsetting, and so heartbreaking, that I don’t need my readers to see them. That anyone could excuse the genocide of defenceless children is just so beyond rationality, that I don’t even know what to say. I see no difference between your comments, and the sentiments of the ‘When Is Genocide Justified’ post. It’s truly disgusting.
However, this is a situation that calls upon open conversation and discussion.
Literally every single post you’ve sent has its Israeli equivalent. What do you call the IDF? What do you call the indoctrination of the Israelis? Not only do they hate the Palestinians, but they are all pushed through the IDF. http://www.vice.com/read/israeli-racism-gaza-kleinfeld-511 They hate is coming through from both sides. The hate is on both sides.
How can you ever hope to have peace when the Israelis are tearing down houses, occupying, murdering and punishing the entire population.
You cannot justify the murder of the Palestinians. You just can’t. You cannot belittle the murder of the Palestinian children as a PR campaign.
Where the hell do you want these people to go? I’m sure they’d just LOVE to hear your ideas about where they should hide.
LikeLike
I agree the IDF has done terrible things, I have never denied it. But i hold a balanced viewpoint. I hold both sides to account for their actions. You clearly do not.
There is no ‘crap’ I spew, just simple facts. You deny the use of children as suicide bombers, I show you proof otherwise. Its that simple.
Again, this whole article comes back to the factual accuracy of the cartoon. Its accurate. You have provided no evidence to the contrary. I and others have provided plenty of evidence in the affirm.
Censor me if you wish, it changes nothing. If you want your article to be taken seriously, it needs to stand up to critical thought. I disagree with your viewpoint, and I can provide evidence as to why its ill founded.
If you have a rebuttal to the facts, I’m all ears. Everything else is just hysterics.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Agreed.
Are you just waiting for me to approve your justification for the murder of these children? It won’t happen.
This, to me, comes back to a few simple questions.
Is there any justification for the killing of children? The answer is no.
Is there anywhere safe for the people of Gaza to hide? Again, the answer is no.
Can we then say that the children are just part of some sick PR campaign? No.
Is the world unjustified in condemning Israel for its actions, and for the mass punishment being rained down on Gaza? No. In fact, there should be more condemnation.
LikeLike
I can’t reply above for some reason.
Anyway to continue. Will Hamas stop firing rockets if Israel asks them nicely? No.
How do you stop the rockets? You need to make an incursion. Don’t challenge me on that, I have the statistics at hand to prove it.
So you need to make an incursion, you do all you can to warn the civilian population. You falsely assert there is nowhere to go, I disagree. Gaza has large open areas, it has public buildings. The IDF rings each house/unit in the target area (which is not a large area, maybe a small group of buildings) and asks the residents to leave. To argue that people are incapable of leaving a city block for a few hours to save their own lives is ridiculous. The IDF attacks aren’t random, they PHONE AHEAD.
As I have shown above, Hamas INTENTIONALLY pressures the residents to stay, in the bloody target area, and to ignore Israels warning. You continue to ignore this point. Hamas WANTS its people to be killed, for political gain. Its unimaginable evil, and yet you completely ignore it. But lets move on;
Why does the IDF need to move into these heavily populated areas anyway? Its because the tunnel network and the rocket launch locations and weapon storage facilities are intentionally located in civilian areas. In schools. This has been internationally condemned by the UN yet they do it anyway. Why? 2 reasons. 1, when they launch rockets at Israeli civilians from the wide open areas, they are easy targets for return attacks. 2. If Israel fires back at them in the built up areas, they have bodies to hold up to the media.
The IDF isn’t ‘justified’ in killing children, but they are left with no choice. I have addressed the only means to stop the rocket attacks. Its either that, or do nothing and allow another nation to fire thousands of munitions into your country every year without recourse. No other country on earth would tolerate that treatment. No country should.
The only people who could ensure those children don’t die are Hamas themselves. Stop firing rockets? No incursion. No incursion? No children die. Its that simple.
Are the children part of a sick PR campaign? Of they are, and I have demonstrated that how many times now? They are paraded on TV in military gear. They are sent to die with explosives strapped to them. Abdullah Quran was 12 years old when he was equipped with explosives and directed at a checkpoint near Nablus. What kind of monster sends a 12 year old child to die?
Cartoon? Still spot on. The only thing missing is the explosive belt or the AK47 in the childs hands.
There we go.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Instead of asking if Hamas will just stop firing if we all asking nicely, why don’t we figure out WHY they’re firing. They have not been given any reason to negotiate or compromise. Palestinian land continues to be absorbed into Israel. Palestinian homes continue to be demolished and replaced with Israeli settlements. Palestinians continue to be treated as second class citizens and nothing is improving for them – and this isn’t even considering the hell that the people of Gaza live with.
You think Israel’s warning system is noble? They shower the city with flyers in psychological warfare that is unimaginable. Let’s not get into that. I’ll take your point on face value – Israel warns civilians. The very shelters that Israel tells the civilians to hide in are hit. Hospitals are hit. We’re talking about a 35 x 11km stretch of land where even UN schools and hospitals are hit.
Hamas wants it’s people to be hit? Okay, again, let’s take your point on face value. If shelters and hospitals and universities are hit, what would you consider a safe place to hide? Like we said, borders are closed (you mentioned earlier that no one mentions that Egypt has closed its borders. Uh, yeah, we do. All the God damn time – especially when it’s to let medical supplies through and they refuse). Shelters are not safe. No where is safe. So really, where do you want them to go?
You want them to move a few blocks away. To where, exactly? You think Israel sends one strike, and then patiently waits for all the civilians to move out of the way before targeting somewhere far away? We’re talking about AIR STRIKES. How do you explain what happened on the beach with the 4 children? Journalists captured what happened – those children were targeted multiple times. All the precision technology happened to ‘miss’ and kill those kids, did it?
I think it’s disgusting that you talk about these deaths like they’re trophies. You need to look at how these people are suffering and screaming out. They are doing everything they can to protect their children. Have you no sense of what death actually means?
The only people who can stop the death of children are Israel. Stop the occupation, Hamas will stop firing, no deaths. But you’re right, really. It’s Hamas’ fault for not training all of Gaza in the way that it trains their ‘non-civilians’ – they have the lowest number of deaths. They must be doing something right to stay alive.
The PR campaign that the comic talks about isn’t referring to children being paraded in military gear. It’s about those kids playing outside and being blown to pieces by Israel. So no, not spot on.
Again, we’re not talking about suicide bombers here. Those kids dying in Gaza are not strapped with explosives. They’re children hiding in the very shelters you want them to escape to. They’re children in a park or on a beach.
Stop trying to twist this into something it’s not. Stop trying to justify their death. You cannot, under any circumstances justify their murder. You are a few steps away from justifying genocide – that those kids will grow up to blow up, so let’s get them now. You really need to think about what you’re saying.
I mean, you say that Israel’s actions aren’t justified, but that they have no choice but to continue what they’re doing. That is the very definition of justification.
LikeLike
You are a propagandist. A hasbara operative. One of the useful sayanim.
As such, your comments, although they contain some factual accuracy, display a distinct lack of interest in truthfully understanding the underlying acts behind the occupations, killings and ongoing oppression and how that can change people’s behaviour.
You can not acknowledge or recognising how little the IOF care about the many thousands of Palestinians, ordinary people who love their children as much as any parents, yet whose lives have bee destroyed by the mechanised killing machine that is Zionism. Just imagine the weeping and wailing, the rending of garments and gnashing of teeth, were a fraction of that number of Jews to have been killed.
You would be raising the spectre of the Jewish holocaust, yet you are quite comfortable with denying the atrocities of the Palestinian al Naqba.
You are an al Naqba denier.
LikeLike
Thanks for the abuse. Do you have an actual point or do you wish to just sling me with insults for a while?
LikeLiked by 2 people
Pingback: The Australian Newspaper Must Apologise | Unveiled Thought
Pingback: Petition: The Australian Must Apologise For Bill Leak’s Gaza Comic. | Unveiled Thought
There is no idea of civilians among the Palestinians. It’s a definition that they use when it’s convenient. President Arafat, the symbol of the Palestinians, said this:
We will not bend or fail until the blood of every last Jew from the youngest child to the oldest elder is spilt to redeem our land!
In his speech “The Impending Total Collapse of Israel” at the Grand Hotel in Stockholm, Sweden, January 30, 1996 as quoted in “The Legacy of Islamic AntiSemitism: From Sacred Texts to Solemn History”, by Andrew Boston, Prometheus Books, c.2008, pg. 682.
Or again: “This child, who is grasping the stone, facing the tank, is it not the greatest message to the world when that hero becomes a martyr? We are proud of them.
On Palestinian Authority Television” (15 January 2002)
So in reality you should be just as happy as your dear President Arafat was when these things happened and quit complaining.
LikeLiked by 1 person
You’re right. There are no civilians in Palestine. They’re all prisoners in their own lands, oppressed for decades, for generations.
You’re talking about children throwing rocks at tanks. Does that not tell you anything? You have TANKS ready to attack CHILDREN and their ONLY defence is to THROW ROCKS. AT TANKS. No? That doesn’t strike a chord with you at all?
If that’s how you want to claim that there are no civilians in Palestine or Gaza (which is absolutely ridiculous, if you’re not sure of my opinion yet), we can use the same language for Israel. Israel has mandatory conscription, and almost all citizens will serve in the IDF. Israel might as well be Sparta.
If you don’t like my opinion, that’s fine. You’re free to actually not read anything here. Instead of telling me to quit complaining, how about you read up on some history, understand what’s going on and maybe dust away some of the coal that’s crushing your heart.
LikeLike
Why should i stop posting? U didn’t even try to deny anything that I wrote. If pres Arafat said this is it not proof that he encouraged children endangering themselves?
How about I go over to ur kids school and sell beer at the gate? Would u have a problem with that?
LikeLiked by 1 person
I didn’t stay stop posting.You told me to stop complaining. I told you that you don’t have to read my opinion if you don’t like it.
I didn’t deny anything. I actually explained why what you wrote was ridiculous.
You’re the one who has ignored what I said – you choose. Either Israel and Palestine BOTH have civilians, or neither have civilians. You can’t apply different rules to each group.
I have no idea what your selling beer at the gate analogy is supposed to be about.
LikeLike
It’s not that hard to understand, genius. If ur president says it’s a great thing to be a martyr then what’s the problem with selling them booze? U portray it all as aggression against pal children when ur leaders fully endorse sending them to die. So u might as well get them loaded and hand them the keys to ur Mazda and say have fun!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yasser Arafat:
This child, who is grasping the stone, facing the tank, is it not the greatest message to the world when that hero becomes a martyr? We are proud of them.
On Palestinian Authority Television (15 January 2002)
LikeLike
So disgusted with cartoon in today’s Australian newspaper. How dare this man make light of this evil. Hang your head in shame Mr. Leak
LikeLike
“one cow in israel is worth more than all jews in europe.” who said it? thats the pr war we are witnessing now. israel and its private shame is not so private. funny then australian will probably never look up this and draw a cartoon on it. the book ggest trouble in western policy is where they get their news from and how the form public mandate.
LikeLike