Carlos Latuff

Template:Short description Template:Infobox artist Carlos Latuff (born 30 November 1968) <ref>Template:Cite web</ref> is a Brazilian political cartoonist.<ref name="gulfnews">Template:Cite news</ref> His work deals with themes such as anti-Western sentiment, anti-capitalism, and opposition to U.S. military intervention in foreign countries. He is best known for his images depicting the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the Arab Spring.<ref name="Gdn20110822">Template:Cite news</ref>

Latuff's cartoons comparing Israel to Nazi Germany<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> have been labelled as antisemitic by some advocacy organisations and scholars. Latuff said the characterization was a dishonest defense of Israel.<ref name="forward-interview" />

Early life

Latuff was born in the São Cristóvão neighbourhood of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil,<ref>Trigo, Luciano. "‘Imagens podem ser apropriadas por qualquer um’, diz Carlos Latuff." G1 (O Globo). 25 January 2013. Retrieved on June 18, 2014. "nascido no subúrbio carioca de São Cristóvão:" (Carioca means from Rio de Janeiro)</ref> and is of Lebanese descent. He has stated that his "Arab roots" are what drive him to advocate for Arab causes, including the Palestinian cause.<ref name="gulfnews"/>

History

Latuff's career began in 1990,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> as a cartoonist for leftist publications in Brazil. After watching a 1997 documentary about the Zapatistas in Mexico, he sent a couple of cartoons to them, and received a positive response. He has stated that after this experience, he decided to start a website and engage in "artistic activism". Graham Fowell, ex-chairman of the Cartoonists' Club of Great Britain, has compared his work to that of Banksy, the English-based graffiti artist.<ref name="Gdn20110822" />

File:Latuff nazi camp 2.gif

Latuff's cartoon comparing a Palestinian prisoner to prisoners of the Auschwitz concentration camp. It was awarded second place at the 2006 Iranian International Holocaust Cartoon Competition.

Latuff won second place in the 2006 Iranian International Holocaust Cartoon Competition, for which he won a prize of US$8,000, shared with far-right French cartoonist Chard. The latter would turn the prize down, claiming her cartoon was entered without consent.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

In 2011, Latuff was contacted by activists in Egypt. Latuff has stated that he was encouraged when he saw some of his cartoons depicted in the January 25 Egyptian protests, a couple of days after he made them. According to Reuters, this helped him become "a hero of the tumultuous Arab Spring with rapid-fire satirical sketches".<ref name=reutersArab />

Latuff has been arrested at least three times in Brazil for his cartoons about the Brazilian police, whom he has criticized for police brutality.<ref name="Gdn20110822" />

Published works

Latuff's works have often been self-published on Indymedia websites and private blogs. He is a weekly cartoonist for The Globe Post<ref>Template:Citation</ref> and some of his cartoons have been featured in magazines such as the Brazilian edition of Mad, Le Monde Diplomatique and the Mondoweiss website.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref name="TJP20121230">Template:Cite news</ref> In addition, a few of his works were published on Arab websites and publications such as the Islamic Front for the Iraqi Resistance (JAMI) magazine, the Saudi magazine Character, the Lebanese newspaper Al Akhbar, among others.<ref>Interview for JAMI magazine
My cartoons in Saudi Arabia magazine
Article about my art in the Lebanese newspaper "Al Akhbar"
Cartoon reproduced in Iraqi magazine</ref> Additionally, Latuff also contributes to several Middle Eastern newspapers, including Alquds Alarabi, Huna Sotak and the Islamophobia Research and Documentation Project – IRDP.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> In 2019 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 published on the Chinese Twitter account Valiant Panda heavily shared by Chinese state affiliated media, government officials, and embassies.<ref>Template:Citation</ref>

Themes

Latuff has produced numerous cartoons related to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, which assumed significance for the cartoonist after a visit to the region in the late 1990s. His cartoons are highly critical of Israel.<ref name="Fwd20081218">Template:Cite news</ref>

Latuff's work has also been critical of the US military action in Iraq and in Afghanistan. He began to publish his work on the web from the earliest stages of the invasion.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

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Since the end of 2010, he has been engaged in producing cartoons about the Arab Spring in which he sided with the revolutionaries. His cartoons on the Egyptian Revolution of 2011 were enlarged and carried by the Egyptian demonstrators.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> After the victory of revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya his cartoons about these countries have focused on the menace of counter-revolution or Western interference. Some of his cartoons have been displayed in mass demonstrations in Arab countries.<ref name=reutersArab>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Allegations of antisemitism

File:Holocaust Remembrance Day.jpg

Carlos Latuff's cartoon "Holocaust Remembrance Day". It was offered as material for teachers training on a website run by the Education Ministry of the Flemish Region in Belgium. It first appeared at a Holocaust denial conference in Tehran in 2009, according to Joods Actueel, who said it was removed shortly after their article was published.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

In 2002 the Swiss-based Holocaust survivors' organization Aktion Kinder des Holocaust sued the Indymedia of Switzerland on the charge of antisemitism for publishing Latuff's cartoon titled We are all Palestinians series in their website, which depicted a Jewish boy in the Warsaw Ghetto saying: "I am Palestinian."<ref name="Aktion Kinder des Holocaust">Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Alex Schärer: Linke und Antisemitismus: Der Indymedia-Streit – Aufpassen, was im Kübel landet, Die Wochenzeitung, April 4, 2002</ref><ref>Junge Welt: Ärger im Internet: Wegen antisemitischer Beiträge hat Indymedia Schweiz den Betrieb gestoppt, February 25, 2002</ref> The criminal proceedings were suspended by Swiss court.<ref name=Redress>Template:Cite web</ref>Template:Citation needed

Eddy Portnoy, in The Forward, reviewing the book in 2008, wrote that Latuff's material is "often terribly obnoxious... but it is a stretch to categorize his cartoons as antisemitic."<ref name="Fwd20081218" />

Rusi Jaspal cited Latuff as an example of political cartoonists who "make use of existing anti-Semitic social representations (e.g., that Jews are evil) in order to derogate Israelis."<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> German historian Juliane Wetzel wrote in 2017 that Latuff "employs classic antisemitic motifs in order to discredit Israel" in his cartoons.<ref>Template:Citation</ref> Cary Nelson analyzed a cartoon of Latuff's depicting a distressed Palestinian woman facing a line of large coronaviruses, captioned "Israel and coronavirus unite against occupied native Palestinians", as an example of antisemitic conspiracism related to the COVID-19 pandemic.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Israeli cartoonist Michel Kichka described Latuff in 2012 as "a good cartoonist, not very subtle. And a well-know antisemite."<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> British scholar of antisemitism David Hirsh also identified Latuff as an antisemite, in 2015.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

File:Ship to Gaza by Latuff.gif

The Israeli embassy in Egypt issued a complaint to an Egyptian newspaper that published this cartoon, identifying it as an antisemitic caricature.

In 2010, the Israeli embassy in Egypt sent a complaint to an Egyptian newspaper that published a cartoon by Latuff depicting the Gaza Freedom Flotilla "being grabbed by an octopus carrying an Israeli flag with a Nazi swastika in place of the Star of David symbol." A spokeswoman for the embassy described it as an antisemitic caricature.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Latuff's response

File:Al-Rashid massacre (1) by Carlos Latuff.jpg

Cartoon by Carlos Latuff criticizing the Flour Massacre

Latuff, in an interview with the Jewish-American weekly newspaper The Forward in December 2008, responded to charges of antisemitism and the comparisons made between his cartoons and those published in Der Stürmer in Nazi Germany:<ref name="forward-interview">Template:Cite news</ref>

My cartoons have no focus on the Jews or on Judaism. My focus is Israel as a political entity, as a government ... It happens to be Israeli Jews that are the oppressors of Palestinians ... My detractors say that the use of the Magen David in my Israel-related cartoons is irrefutable proof of antisemitism; however, it's not my fault if Israel chose sacred religious motifs as national symbols ...

Latuff stated, while that antisemites do "hijack" the Palestinian cause to bash Jews, the equivocation of anti-Zionism with antisemitism is "a well-known tactic of intellectual dishonesty." He said that political cartoonists work by metaphors, and that similarities can be found between the IDF treatment of Palestinians and what Jews experienced under the Nazis.<ref name="forward-interview" />

Latuff was included in Simon Wiesenthal Center's 2012 Top Ten Anti-Israel/Anti-Semitic Slurs list being placed third<ref name="TJP20121230" /><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> for depicting Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu squeezing votes out of a dead Arab child.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Latuff told Brazil's Opera Mundi newspaper that he considered the award "a joke worthy of a Woody Allen movie".<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Publications

• Drawing attention to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Political Cartoons by Carlos Latuff, 2019, Template:ISBN.

External links

• Official blog
• Latuff's official page on Twitpic
• Latuff's official page on DeviantArt