Murder in Mumbai

The weather was lovely and so I decided to "get out" of my studio and do some cartoon script writing at a local sidewalk cafe. Israeli coffee houses provide the morning newspapers and it was from these that my wife and I first learned about the attack in Mumbai.

When we got back home we watched the news on Israel TV. I noticed that some of the "Breaking News" images being relayed on the TV broadcast carried English language graphics and the logo of IBN... so I googled up the URLs of some Streaming TV sites, found one that offered Indian sites ...selected IBN and we had live, 24 hour coverage by Mumbai reporters and commentators.

I remarked to my wife that this new age of communications was like living in the future, and she shushed me. She was chatting on the phone with a close friend and neighbor who comes from India. She'd called the cellphone and the woman answered, in Mumbai, where she was visiting at that very moment.

We live in an age of amazing technological wonders and a time of a terrible global threat.

Thanksgiving Day (1996)

I've always felt that American Jews should be thankful that this lovely American holiday is so friendly to Jewish participation. Turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, there's absolutely nothing non-kosher in the scrumptious holiday fare.

Many American Jews who make aliyah to Israel try to keep up the turkey-day tradition ...but as the years slide by it seems more and more foreign. ...and as the kids grow up they see it like some quaint and colorful custom from the "Old Country" that their immigrant parents came from. Which, of course, it is.

Happy Thanksgiving Day!

Waiting For It

We sit here in Israel and watch the economic meltdown moving towards us like a giant tsunami wave on the horizon. The local TV and newspapers seem almost eager to bring dire predictions and reports of lost jobs and pension funds hit with big time losses.

If you live here in the Jewish State, does it seem that way to you too?

Economic Pressure (1980)

Today's Golden Oldie is from September 1980. Yup, I drew today's cartoon twenty eight years ago.

Back then, the Israeli public was under economic pressure, and hoping for a way out. The guy in the cartoon goes from anger to complete confusion and then dismay about what life changes lay in store for him.

These days it's the whole world that's starting to feel the economic pressure ...and folks around the planet seem to be moving from anger to confusion and on to dismay about what's waiting in the wings for us.

So where are you on the anger->confusion->dismay time-line?

Civic Pride

Our local media, and our local police, have advised the public that we can expect an explosion of Mafia warfare on our streets following the taking out of a major crime boss. Gazans are hitting our cities with rockets and missiles. Olmert has resigned and remains in power, and highway safety continues to be a joke.

I'm beginning to think that seeing how much we can take is a matter of Israeli Civic Pride. So I did this cartoon.

Your opinion?

Soft Economy

What's in a name?

They're calling what we're living through an economic meltdown. We don't know if that's what History will decide to call it.

World War I was, at the time, called the Great War... They didn't know that a World War II was waiting in the wings.

At first I drew Mr. Shuldig melting all over, droopy nose, ears, hands, etc. Then I realized that the phenomenon is a bottom up deal, with us remaining conscious at all times as we slowly sink into the meltdown puddle. More fun to draw than to experience.

Did I manage to get a smile out of you in the last panel?

Hebrew Speaking Criminals (1977)

Today's Golden Oldie is from 1977.

Chaim Nachman Bialik was Israel's great national poet. He lived in the pre-state era. The Hebrew speakers around him dreamed of an age in which a Hebrew-speaking state in the land of the Hebrews would be considered "normal". Bialik died in 1934. Fourteen years before the founding of the Jewish state in 1948.

Bialik is credited with saying “We will be a normal state when we have the first Hebrew prostitute, the first Hebrew thief and the first Hebrew policeman.”

I'm showing this Golden Oldie because the faces of Hebrew-Speaking criminals are now splashed across the front pages of our local Hebrew papers. We are in the midst of an about-to-explode Hebrew-speaking Israeli Mafia gang war on our streets. And Hebrew-speaking policemen are trying to quelch it.

The story in TIME begins...

"Tel Aviv gangster Ya'acov Alperon liked his violence up close and personal. He relied on his boxer's swift, sledgehammer fists and the blade of a knife to terrorize Tel Aviv's shopkeepers, brothel owners and drug dealers into paying protection money. But in the end, what finally got Alperon was that most impersonal of assassin's weapons: the car bomb." -more.

The irony of the whole mess is that Bialik would not be proud.

President Elect Obama

Monday's cartoon showed Mr. Shuldig, my alter ego, listening to a former "Obama would be a disaster" alarmist express some hope for the future. The joke was that the only hope he/she could find was in Obama being an opportunist rather than an ideologue.

The reactions to the cartoon surprised me. Some readers assumed that Mr. Shuldig was expressing an opinion rather than listening to one.

I was also surprised at the unwillingness to give the President Elect a chance. He faces unbelievable obstacles and incredible challenges. The rest of the world is bristling with enemies of America. I wish America's new leader well.

...and, as you can see from today's cartoon, am showing him as he is "behind closed doors" ...as a guy with a new job rather than as a Superman or as a Manchurian Candidate Muslim anti-Christ.

What do YOU think?

UN Palestine Day (1978)

Today's Golden Oldie is from November, 1978. Yup, I did this cartoon thirty years ago this month!!

One year earlier the General Assembly of the United Nations (in Resolutions 32/40B of December 2nd, 1977) had proclaimed an annual “International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People” to be held the following November.

November was chosen because it was in November 1947 that the General Assembly of the United Nations passed the famous resolution 181, known as the Partition Plan, which recommended the partition of Palestine into “Arab” and “Jewish” states.

When I did this cartoon in 1978 it was thirty years after the first anniversary of the Arab rejection of a Jewish state in the Middle East.

As of November 2008 another thirty years have slipped by with continued regional rejection of the Jewish state as the only "glue" that holds our Arab neighbors together.

Your thoughts?

Second Thoughts About Obama

It's really weird. It seems like some formerly anti-Obama people are now ready for something good, fresh, and innovative to come out of the Obama Presidency.

To see what the thinking is in Iran and the Arab States I had to turn to MEMRI, the folks who translate media reports from the original Arabic and Persian.

MEMRI quotes . . .

Iran's Ayatolla Khatami in this past Friday's sermon:
"It will be a foolish thinking if one thinks there will be change in U.S. policies. There are others behind the stage." -more

and says that. . .

Abd Al-Bari 'Atwan, editor-in-chief of the London daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi called on Obama to:
"'Impose American Model of Equality, Rights, and Opportunities on All Arab Countries,' Saying: In an Arab Country, Obama Would Be Told, 'You Are a Slave'; 'We Arabs Are The Epitome of Racism'" The interview aired on BBC Arabic TV on November 7, 2008:" to see the clip (subtitled in English) click on MEMRI TV

and, in an overview, MEMRI reports that

Reactions in the Arab world to the election of Sen. Barack Obama as U.S. president fell into two main categories: expressions of appreciation for the American democracy which had made his victory possible, and attempts to assess the impact of his election on the political future of the region.

For the complete MEMRI review click on MEMRI Overview

Alternate Energies

There's a kind of humor where something happens "off stage" and the audience laughs at the image brought to mind.

I come from a family of key-losers in which "have you seen my keys?" is a familiar and pitiful cry for help. But it is always "keys" (in the plural). Because Mr.Shuldig is looking for a "key" (singular ) would the reader understand that he's looking for the key to wind up his off screen windup car? Did you?

Terror in Egypt (1993)

Today's Golden Oldie is from November 1993. Fifteen years ago this month. A series of Islamic terrorist machine gun and hand grenade attacks were carried out against tourist buses in Egypt.

In the cartoon I played with the idea of a not-too-bright terrorist trying to find a theological basis for their "holy" mission.

The President's Job

I drew this cartoon before Election Day while observing that both sides were running against the incumbent!! It's starting to look as if the President's job is to take the blame for anything that goes wrong. I don't know why anyone would want the position. In any case, I hope that America's next President succeeds in unifying the country behind his leadership.

Speaking Tour

No cartoon today ...I'm now off on a speaking tour in America on behalf of CAMERA. The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America.

Dry Bones cartoons and postings will resume on Wednesday, November 12. 'Til then, take care of yourselves!

Love,
Bones