A political cartoon by Mohammad Saba’aneh drawn while he was in Israeli prison (arrested in March 2013) and completed after his release.
Edy Cohen, who describes himself on Twitter in both Arabic and Hebrew as “an Israeli journalist and academic doctor and researcher,” recently initiated a trolling campaign against award-winning Palestinian political cartoonist Mohammad Sabaaneh based on the latter’s cartoon of Mohammad Bin Zayed as a toilet paper roll. On Facebook, Edy Cohen (אדי כהן) describes himself as “Chief executive officer at Bar-Ilan University International School.”
Edy Cohen retweeted Sabaaneh’s cartoon of the ruler of UAE as a toilet paper roll precisely in order to kindle fires of hateful and frenzied insults in response to the cartoonist’s depiction. Here is my translation of Cohen’s comment, which he wrote in Arabic:
A Palestinian cartoonist abuses and curses Gulf rulers. These cartoonists are scared to draw Netanyahu, because he could deny their entry to Israel. This, notwithstanding that the biggest Palestinian community [in exile] in the world is to be found in Saudi Arabia and then in the Emirates. How weird you are Palestinians [to bite the hand that feeds you].
This attempt at divisiveness is Cohen’s reaction, not so much to the cartoon alone, but to the overwhelming revulsion among the Arab populace to the announcement of the normalization of relations between the United Arab Emirates(UAE) and Israel.
In opposition to the announcement to formalize the normalization that has been ongoing unofficially for decades, many Palestinian and Arab writers have boycotted the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (Booker), which is funded by the Emirati government, as well as the “Sheikh Zayed Book Award,” the “Etisalat” prize for children’s books, book fairs in Sharjah and Abu Dhabi, and literary and artistic events of all kinds in the UAE.
Outside Twitter and the machinations by Israeli “journalists” like Cohen, the sentiments against the move by the ruler of UAE are strong, including in the UAE itself — see ‘“Silent majority” rejects Gulf ties with Israel.’
“The Arab nations are in a free fall, everywhere, and Israel is the most proximate, but not only, cause.”
In an article in the Arabic language Palestinian newspaper Al-Ayyam titled “Arab and Palestinian intellectuals raise the slogan ‘No to normalization,’” Youssef Al-Shayeb notes that “the intellectuals of the Sultanate of Oman were the first to initiate the opposition to normalization.”
They were followed by a flood of statements and announcements by writers and artists across the Arab world in Kuwait, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Libya, Lebanon, Iraq and Jordan.
Al-Shayeb’s report begins by focusing on one response that stands out, the position of Emirati novelist Dhabiya Khamis. Al-Shayeb quotes some of her remarks on Facebook (my translation):
.. As a writer and Emirati Arab citizen, I hate Israel and Zionism, just as the Jews hate Hitler, Nazism, Italians, Mussolini, fascism, Spaniards, Franco, and dictatorship, and I do not see a difference in the racism between Zionism and Nazism, and they are all against humanity!
… Every cause and affiliation is history, memory, language and culture, and if these are absent, affiliation is absent, and a person can become completely identical to his enemy without being defeated in wars, because he will fight the enemy’s war against himself.
… Many statements are coming out by authors to boycott newspapers, platforms and Emirati cultural awards as a reaction to the announced Israeli-Emirati agreement. Well, does this mean that you will not write in our newspapers, will not accept institutional awards, and will not attend Sharjah and Abu Dhabi book fairs? This is a great disappointment and self-defeat for Arab culture, not the [ultimate] solution [Khamis herself is boycotting the Booker Prize], just as insulting the Emirates, its land and its people is not the solution for our situation today, and for what our reality has become. In response [to rage against the UAE] you will kindle the fires of hateful and frenzied insults. The Arab nations are in a free fall, everywhere, and Israel is the most proximate but not only cause. I invite intellectuals to analyze and be clairvoyant, to connect facts from the Gulf to the ocean. Long live the UAE as a free and Arab country.
Mohammad Sabaaneh responded to Cohen’s incitement against the cartoon on his own Facebook page with: “One feels as though Edy Cohen represents public opinion in the Gulf … He incites against one of my cartoons and so begins on Twitter a trolling campaign on my page. Anyone interested in attending the wedding [the trolling exercise], click on https://twitter.com/Sabaaneh/status/1296058521889447938?s=09
“بتشعر انو ايدي كوهين بيشكل الراي العام في الخليج .. بيحرض على احد اعمالي فتبدأ حملة شتائم و سب على صفحتي على التويتر .. الي حابب يحضر العرس على الرابط”
Mohammad Sabaaneh, like so many other Palestinian men of his age, has already had one stint in Israeli jail. As Cohen points out, he does not depict the image of Netanyahu in his political cartoons (he puts in an amorphous figure in army garb as a stand-in) because of possible repercussions to him in Palestine. He also faces censorship for political reasons by the Palestinian Authority.
This particular cartoon is not one of Sabaaneh’s “dangerous cartoons.” It has shock value simply because, unlike American audiences with Trump cartoons, Arab audiences are not used to seeing their rulers portrayed visually so harshly.
“Long live the UAE as a free and Arab country.”
Cohen’s attempt on Twitter to engineer public opinion and to make it seem as though Sabaaneh is being critical of the Emirati people rather than their government paid off, as it was meant to do, as Sabaaneh continues to post about the flood of invective he is getting as a result of Cohen’s and similar other incitement against him.
Following are a few representative responses on the Twitter link Sabaaneh provided in his response to Cohen (my translation):
One is from an Abu Dhabian ماجد الهاملي, whose Twitter logo is, “It is useless to convince those whose intellect is based on ignorance ..!”
You are depraved.. he [bin Zayed] is the crown decorating our heads, may God protect him.
Mohammad @Almuaini_M of Al-Shariqa says:
For years we have been helping them and hosting them, and in the end we got from them nothing but insults to us and our symbols .. O people of the Gulf, we are good at heart with them, and by God, they do not deserve it.
The Saudi hmod @hmod1h tweets:
Muhammad Al-Falasteezi, I have a visa for you to work in the UAE as my partner, with two thousand dollars. You have a day to respond if you don’t [respond in time] there are many like you mercenaries and sellers of homelands.
Political cartoonists are not diplomats. The metaphor of flushing waste down the toilet closely expresses the rage against this ruler, who is widely perceived as a traitor to the Palestinian cause. Mohammad Sabaaneh, like the Emirati novelist Dhabiya Khamis, who has also faced intimidation for her work, is inviting us to connect the dots and call for a free and Arab Palestine. He is not insulting the Emirati people any more than a critical or crude Trump cartoon is meant to insult the American people.
It’s a fact that most of the Arab populace is on the side of the Palestinian struggle for liberation and self-determination, not against it; they do not approve of the sabotage or liquidation (تصفية) of the cause. Furthermore, as Palestinian historian Nur Masalha wrote on Facebook:
It is important to understand that the international solidarity movement with the Palestinians is a “movement from the bottom up”; it begins with the solidarity of peoples around the world (not the regimes) with the Palestinians. The same principle must be applied to the solidarity of the Arab peoples with the Palestinians. We welcome any state that supports the Palestinians – But our struggle in Palestine is a “people’s struggle” and we have to ask “all peoples” to support us.
Long live all Arabs in their own free Arab countries — including Palestinians.
Note: White and Black: Political Cartoons from Palestine, published by Just World Books, offers a rare opportunity for English-language readers to become familiar with Sabaaneh’s stark black and white images, printed in newspapers across the Arab world.
