So which is it? Is President Joe Biden a friend of Israel or Hamas? Is he a wimp or a warmonger? College students protesting America’s involvement believe he’s eager to help Israel drop bombs on Palestinian babies while right-wing nutjobs believe he’s anti-Israel and supports Hamas and Iran.
Once again, let’s use MAGA cartoonist Gary Varvel as an example. He created a cartoon of President Biden wearing a Palestinian Keffiyah after his statement that he would stop sending bombs and artillery shells to Israel if it invades Rafah.
There’s so much wrong about the cartoon. President Biden has been extremely supportive of Israel, not just for the entirety of his long political career, but especially after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7. He sent warships to the Mediterranean. He has sent additional weapons to Israel. He helped defend Israel from Iran’s recent drone attack. He has condemned Hamas and antisemitism. the United States has vetoed three ceasefire resolutions in the United Nations. Last month, Biden signed a bill sending an additional $17 billion to fund Israel’s war while sending $1 billion in humanitarian aid to Gaza. But Varvel puts Biden in the Keffiyeh which is either out of extreme ignorance, hatred, or both. Also, the Keffiyeh is Palestinian, not Hamas. Gary isn’t criticizing a group or organization by using the Keffiyeh, but people of a different race than him.
For my colleagues like Varvel and Michael Ramirez, I don’t believe they’re implementing critical thinking as much as they’re being blind partisans. The Middle East is a little more complicated than picking a football team based on your favorite colors. You can support a Palestinian state while supporting Israel. You can oppose Israel’s bombing of civilians and not be antisemitic. You can hate the killing of civilians by Hamas and Israel and in fact, you should.
Neither Varvel nor Ramirez (and probably not any conservative cartoonist) have criticized Israel for the deaths of Palestinian civilians. For them, that’d probably be like a Cowboys fan rooting for the Giants. It’s all partisan to people who can’t think critically.
I’ve tried to cover the war in Gaza understanding it’s complex and not partisan. I’ve condemned Hamas and have been accused of being antisemitic when I’ve criticized Netanyahu’s government for bombing civilians. When I drew this cartoon last week criticizing Biden’s slow response to the college protests, someone at GoComics accused me of supporting the “slaughter of innocent Palestinians.” You can’t win, but you can be honest.
If you’re confused with my coverage of the war, then you’re probably partisan, and those are the same people claiming President Biden supports Hamas or the killing of Palestinian civilians.
Music note: I listened to Fuel, which is one of those bands I rarely listen to and can only take so much of.
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CLAYTOONZ 
100% agree with you, and appreciate your empathetic cartoon aptly depicting how President Biden must feel as people criticize him no matter what he does. As someone with both Irish and English roots, I can empathize with those in Israel who believe they have done nothing wrong, and have trouble understanding. That’s because as an English person, I was never aware of the many ways the English wronged the Irish in Northern Ireland. When visiting Belfast, I saw incontrovertible evidence of the English oppressing the Irish, in the form of cannons aimed down from the English city center onto the Irish populace below. It was hard to know what to feel. Outrage at being correctly accused of things I had known nothing about, or outrage at having been so horribly and arrogantly oppressed. But one of the admirable things about the war between the IRA and the Brits is that it ended through a process of talks. An IRA fighter had to sit down and try to imagine the English point of view. Then the English had to do the same. And in the end, that’s how they made peace. Ireland is still in the Euro to this day and doing well. England is still, well, England, but a bit less oppressive. I applaud your political understanding and hope our politicians get to see your work. Thank you.
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Damned if you do, Damned if you don’t. Catch 22. Stuck between a rock and a hard place. Dilemma of our time.
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Stuck between Iraq and a hard place? Do you mean Iran?
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Engine revels rumff erumph and popping of the exhaust pipe blow back. High pitched voices begin to sing and the chorus booms over and over Leader of the Hack…yep that’s Ramirez that they are swooning about….he has only brought chaos to the editorial cartoon world with his lame desire to “be unique.”
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Biden is walking a very thin edge. But he is walking it very heavily.
(This is a paraphrase of what Danes say about Sweden’s neutrality during WWII)
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