The image in question: Source
Yet another case for the collection and one more where anti-Semitism is the alibi for silencing voices critical of the state of Israel. The private US university Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, has suspended the local chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine(SJP) and confiscated its funds for posting a political cartoon on social media that it deemed "anti-Semitic".
The perennial joker of anti-Semitism has been enough for the university to take down the collective in one fell swoop even when the image was shown outside the university environment.
According to The Duke Chronicle, the student newspaper, the illustration posted on Instagram was the only reason the collective was suspended from all organisational activity after the Office of Institutional Equality received complaints that led to a weeks-long dispute between the SPJ group and the Department of Student Affairs over the authority to take disciplinary action.
The image in question shows a pig with the inscription 'Zionism' holding up a Star of David, while its arm is intertwined with that of another pig, with the inscription 'US imperialism', which is holding up the torch of freedom. With the other hand, the two animals salute each other and hold a gun. The image was created in 1970 by political cartoonist and Black Panther Party member Emory Douglas and was published in the newspaper "The Black Panther".
SJP leaders claimed that the image was never intended to be "anti-Semitic" and that criticising Zionism as a political movement "is not the same as attacking the Jewish people". They added that in the same issue of The Black Panther in which the image appeared, it was already explicitly stated at the time that the struggle was directed exclusively against what they call the "Zionist regime".
Humour in trouble, a collection of cases
Cases of cartoonists who have had problems of some importance because of their cartoons or satirical illustrations. There are also some stories of other people who, without being cartoonists, have got into trouble for sharing them.
