Michael Leunig of The Age (Melbourne) responds to critics of his controversial cartoon about Ariel Sharon’s stroke:
I can almost imagine that if Sharon could have sat up from his coma and seen the cartoon, he might have approved: “Yeah, that’s me, with the last movement in my body I’ll attack my enemies, whoever they are.”
And isn’t that the point: this whole bitter, cruel tragedy of Palestine and Israel increasingly appears to be a stubborn, crazed fight to the death with the world getting dragged in….
If society no longer wants troublesome, disturbing cartoonists who take improbable positions, so be it. But let’s not hear any more of Pastor Martin Neimoller’s lament: “First they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.” What sort of a person will dare to speak out? Probably not a perfect one. Maybe even an idiot.
