Gilad Atzmon reports:

More than two months ago, following the cartoon scandal and the outrage of the Muslim world that ensued, a group of Israelis announced their own anti-Jewish cartoons contest. At the time, they received very wide coverage in the Israeli media and Jewish supportive press around the world. At the end of the day, the Israelis in particular, and Jews in general, insist on being 'seen' as open-minded beings, people who can easily handle self-mockery.

The contest is now over. More than a few cartoons were submitted from around the world, many of them made by Jews and Israelis. Most of the cartoons are hilariously vicious, but -- how can one put it -- the Jewish and the Israeli media are now far less enthusiastic about the entire issue of self-mockery. Two out of the four jurists (Art Spiegelman and Amos Biderman) were quick to distance themselves from the contest, dismissing the submissions as disappointing, low quality work. While Spiegelman suggested that the cartoons were "frightening for being too real, lack any sense of irony, and look very much like genuine Anti-Semitic cartoons," Biderman insisted that the illustrations are not funny at all and fall into the category of "letting the shit hit the fan."

Atzmon goes on to critique the cartoons and discuss the themes they covered, and to speculate about the degree of alienation and betrayal that they may represent in the current generation of progressive Jews worldwide, when they consider the current state of Israeli politics, the Occupation, etc.

This has to be one of the stranger spinoffs of l'Affaire des Toons so far.

The difference between theory and practise in practise ...