Tina Smith: “I speak about antisemitisim, an ancient pestilence that has torn at the fabric of society for too long. Specifically, I…”

“I speak about antisemitisim, an ancient pestilence that has torn at the fabric of society for too long. Specifically, I have become concerned with the dissemination of antisemitic attitudes through political cartoons. Last month, on the eve of Rosh Hashanah, I stood in this chamber along with a bipartisan group of my colleagues to speak about the cancerous effect that antisemitism continues to have on humanity. As I stated then, it is of the highest priority for our Nation to stand up against this venomous invective and bigotry directed at the Jewish people. It is an unfortunate reality that some newspapers in the Arab world blatantly promote antisemitism. For my remarks, I had prepared several posters of cartoons that appeared in Arabic-language newspapers to illustrate to my colleagues their insidious nature, but in the end, I found them too unsettling to display. What I find disconcerting, however, is the fact that this sentiment is creeping into political cartoons both in Europe as well as here in the United States. Newspapers across the country and the world have published cartoons that have gone beyond reasonable differences of opinion and expanded into the realm of antisemitism. For example, I have seen a cartoon of a man lying on the ground, bleeding and clutching a small Palestinian flag. Impaled in his back is a large American flag with its stars arranged to form the Star of David.…”