Lifestyle/Community
‘A diversion on the main thrust of news’
“I would like to see all of France marching in Paris with armbands sporting yellow stars and carrying placards saying ‘Je Suis Juif’ [I am a Jew] – coming out against anti-Semitism,” said veteran South African cartoonist Dov Fedler, following the terrorist attacks in Paris on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish kosher supermarket.
SUZANNE BELLING
PHOTOGRAPH: JENNA KAUFMAN
Fedler’s cartoon which appeared in The Star newspaper drew no ire from the Jewish Community.
He added: “I am not that kind of cartoonist,” – to poke fun at religion.
If one were, however, to draw a cartoon of Moses holding up iPhones (tablets), “Jews are not going to storm in with machine-guns”.
Cartoonists, in Fedler’s opinion, “have no political significance; we are merely a diversion on the main thrust of the news” and had no bearing on the doorstep of history.
“I do what I do because change is possible,” but the shapers of history would be the leaders, the people featured in the cartoons, not the cartoons themselves.”
Leaders like Robert Mugabe had brought about change – “he is still in power and will still be in power after he is dead”. Julius Malema too – “heaven forbid” – could have a bearing on history.
He quoted playwrigh David Mamet: “the world needs something and we (the Jews) are the approved target of hatred”.
“But then, it states in the Torah that in every generation an Amalek would rise to destroy us.”
Referring to Paris, Fedler said: “It was a horrible, horrible event, but that is the world in which we live.”
Fedler has written a book “Out of Line – A Memoir” which will be on sale from the middle of February.