Who is Khalil Bendib?

According to Wikipedia, Khalil Bendib was

born in Paris, France and is an Algerian fine artist and political cartoonist. Born during the Algerian revolution, Bendib spent 3 years in Morocco before returning to Algeria aged 6. After receiving his Bachelor’s degree in Algiers, he left Algeria at the age of 20. He

currently resides in Berkeley, California.

Bendib became a professional political cartoonist and sculptor/ceramicist after earning his Master’s Degree at the

University of Southern California in 1982. 

In 1995, Bendib resigned a position he had held for eight years working for Gannett Newspapers (based at the San Bernardino County Sun) because he believed his work was being unnecessarily censored.

Largely utilizing the internet, Bendib now distributes his political cartoons independently to alternative media outlets outside of the corporate mainstream media. By August 2007, when his first book, Mission Accomplished: Wicked Cartoons by America’s Most Wanted Political Cartoonist, was published, Bendib’s cartoons had appeared in more than 1,700 small and mid-sized newspapers.

In addition to his work as a cartoonist, Bendib also co-hosts a weekly one-hour radio program called Voices of the Middle East and North Africa on Pacifica Radio station KPFA (94.1 FM), in Berkeley, California.

A visit to his web site shows that his political cartoons cover a wide range of issues.  Of specific interest to me are his cartoons covering Palestine, Arabs and Islam.  It is these cartoons I highlight on the home page of this site, in a side-by-side comparison with the racist, antisemitic cartoons propagated by the National Socialist German Workers Party in Germany (aka the Nazi Party) from the 1920s until the end of World War Two in 1945.

The demonizing and dehumanizing character of the Nazi cartoons, which depicted Jews in stereotype such as large hooked-noses often in black kaftans, demonic and sub-human in appearance, are recognized by scholars of the period as the epitome of racist antisemitic visual propaganda.

As the materials presented in this blog show, Bendib often uses these same stereotypes when presenting his graphic opinion on Israel, Zionism and Jews.

Comments welcome.