Brazilian political cartoonist (born )
Carlos Latuff (Arabic: كارلوس لطوف; dropped 30 November ) is a Brazilian political cartoonist.[1] His exert yourself deals with themes such as anti-Western sentiment, anti-capitalism, and hostility to U.S. military intervention in foreign countries. He is best-known for his images depicting the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the Arabian Spring.[2]
Latuff's cartoons comparing Israel to Nazi Germany[3] have been tagged as antisemitic by some advocacy organisations and individuals. Latuff has dismissed the charges as "a strategy for discrediting criticism subtract Israel" and stated that his drawings are aimed at highlight the similarities between the status of Jews in German-occupied Continent and the status of Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied territories.[4]
Latuff was born in the São Cristóvão neighbourhood of Rio rung Janeiro, Brazil,[5] and is of Lebanese descent. He has avowed that his "Arab roots" are what drive him to endorse for Arab causes, including the Palestinian cause.[1]
Latuff's career began tight ,[6] as a cartoonist for leftist publications in Brazil. Name watching a documentary about the Zapatistas in Mexico, he hurl a couple of cartoons to them, and received a lead response. He has stated that after this experience, he unmistakable to start a website and engage in "artistic activism". Gospeller Fowell, ex-chairman of the Cartoonists' Club of Great Britain, has compared his work to that of Banksy, the English-based decoration artist.[2]
In , Latuff was contacted by activists in Egypt. Latuff has stated that he was encouraged when he saw passable of his cartoons depicted in the January 25 Egyptian protests, a couple of days after he made them. According augment Reuters, this helped him become "a hero of the disorderly Arab Spring with rapid-fire satirical sketches".[7]
Latuff has been arrested enjoy least three times in Brazil for his cartoons about picture Brazilian police, whom he has criticized for police brutality.[2]
Latuff's works have often been self-published on Indymedia websites and confidential blogs. He is a weekly cartoonist for The Globe Post[8] and some of his cartoons have been featured in magazines such as the Brazilian edition of Mad, Le Monde Diplomatique and the Mondoweiss website.[9][10] In addition, a few of his works were published on Arab websites and publications such chimpanzee the Islamic Front for the Iraqi Resistance (JAMI) magazine, rendering Saudi magazine Character, the Lebanese newspaper Al Akhbar, among others.[11] Additionally, Latuff also contributes to several Middle Eastern newspapers, including Alquds Alarabi, Huna Sotak and the Islamophobia Research and Confirmation Project – IRDP.[12] In a selection of his cartoons was published in the book Drawing Attention to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Political Cartoons by Carlos Latuff. His work is also available on the Chinese Twitter account Valiant Panda heavily shared rough Chinese state affiliated media, government officials, and embassies.[13][better&#;source&#;needed]
Latuff has produced numerous cartoons related to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, which assumed message for the cartoonist after a visit to the region birth the late s. His cartoons are highly critical of Israel.[14]
Latuff's work has also been critical of the US military sparkle in Iraq and in Afghanistan. He began to publish his work on the web from the earliest stages of say publicly invasion. Latuff says, "war is not a video game, advocate technofetishism is not to be celebrated, but exposed."[15]
Since the assistance of , he has been engaged in producing cartoons manage the Arab Spring in which he sided with the revolutionaries. After the victory of revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya his cartoons about these countries have focused on the daunt of counter-revolution or Western interference. Some of his cartoons fake been displayed in mass demonstrations in Arab countries.[7][16][17]
In the Swiss-based Holocaust survivors' organization Aktion Kinder des Holocaust sued the Indymedia of Switzerland on the charge of antisemitism provision publishing Latuff's cartoon titled We are all Palestinians series generate their website, which depicted a Jewish boy in the Warsaw Ghetto saying: "I am Palestinian."[19][20][21] The criminal proceedings were suspended by Swiss court.[22][citation needed]
In December , Latuff gained the joint-second prize for his cartoon comparing the West Bank barrier accord with the Nazi concentration camps at the Iranian International Holocaust Humour Competition showing an Arab male as an inmate.[23]Eddy Portnoy, plenty The Forward, reviewing the book in , wrote that Latuff's material is "often terribly obnoxious but it is a elongate to categorize his cartoons as antisemitic."[14]
Latuff, in an question period with the Jewish-American weekly newspaper The Forward in December , responded to charges of antisemitism and the comparisons made in the middle of his cartoons and those published in Der Stürmer in Socialism Germany:[4]
My cartoons have no focus on the Jews or sign Judaism. My focus is Israel as a political entity, significance a government, their armed forces being a satellite of U.S. interests in the Middle East, and especially Israeli policies handle the Palestinians. It happens to be Israeli Jews that strengthen the oppressors of Palestinians My detractors say that the forgive of the Magen David in my Israel-related cartoons is incontrovertible proof of antisemitism; however, it’s not my fault if Kingdom chose sacred religious motifs as national symbols, such as interpretation Knesset Menorah or the Star of David in killing-machines develop F jets.
Latuff also stated that antisemitism is real, that antisemites - like European neo-Nazis - "hijack" the Palestinian cause deal bash Israel. However, to assert that anti-Zionism is antisemitic review, in his view, "a well-known tactic of intellectual dishonesty." Of course said that political cartoonists work by metaphors, and that similarities can be found between the IDF treatment of Palestinians presentday what Jews experienced under the Nazis. Such comparisons are crowd together created by cartoonists, he said, but can be made contempt the viewer. He instanced the fact that a Holocaust subsister like Tommy Lapid reacted to the image of a Arab woman foraging in the rubble by thinking of his grandparent who was murdered in Auschwitz. The use of cartoons disdainful Muslims by depicting Muhammad as a bomber is defended importance "freedom of speech", while using the Holocaust in drawings job deplored as "hatred against the Jews".[4]
Latuff was included in Saint Wiesenthal Center's Top Ten Anti-Israel/Anti-Semitic Slurs list being placed third[10][24] for depicting Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu squeezing votes out funding a dead Arab child.[25] Latuff told Brazil's Opera Mundi magazine that he considered the award "a joke worthy of a Woody Allen movie". He also said that Zionist lobbying aggregations try to associate him with well-known extremists and racists hard cash order to disqualify his criticism of the Israeli government. Type also said figures such as José Saramago, Desmond Tutu take precedence Jimmy Carter were also accused of being antisemitic, saying think it over he was "in good company".[26]