While we’ll address later the content of the volley of hate towards Israel expressed in letters to the editor the Guardian published today (Letters: Obama’s empty rhetoric, Guardian, May 23), its worth noting the accompanying graphic.

With images its often necessary to understand the context, and the first thing to note is the Israeli flag’s Star-of-David inserted in the section of the U.S. flag where the stars, representing the 50 U.S states, would normally be located, placed under a title which cues readers to the theme of the subsequent letters: That Obama is all words and is not really dedicated to advancing the Palestinian cause.

The immediate thing which comes to mind is the argument that Israel exerts too much control over U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East – and indeed it is this “power” which prevented Obama from advocating more forcefully for the Palestinian cause.

While this anti-Semitic argument that Jews are “too” powerful is a common staple in the Guardian readers comments section, this trope has also been advanced by Guardian writers.  Jonathan Steele, Guardian foreign correspondent, warned last year of “ the pressure that pro-Israel campaigners put on the mainstream US media.”

So, I did a search and found the following:

From a site which opposes Vatican II and has an icon, on their home page, of the anti-Semitic preacher from the Great Depression era in the US., Father Charles Coughlin:

Here’s a book cover from a notorious extreme left anti-Semitic writer named James Petras. (open link and scroll down)

This cartoon by a white supremacist site in the U.S. caught the attention of the ADL”

And, this which caused a huge row when published in a 2004 student newspaper:

And, there was this, from an anti-Semitic conspiracy site:

Indeed, other examples of this motif – alleging that Israel, Zionists, or Jews have undue influence, or even control, over US policy – would not be difficult to find.

None of this is to say that it was necessarily the intent of the cartoonist, or of the editor who approved it, to advance this anti-Semitic narrative, merely that the graphic, at the very least, evokes such canards, and that a paper which claims the mantle of “liberal” would want to take more care to avoid imagery evoking hateful and dangerous narratives about Jewish control – even if that wasn’t their objective.

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