Anti-Semitic Cartoon wins Iranian Contest

An anti-Semitic cartoon was declared the winner of Iran’s first annual “International Wall Street Downfall Cartoon Festival,” on Monday, co-sponsored by the Iranian media outlet Fars News, according to a report by the JTA.

The winning entry depicted three haredi Jews praying in front of a building that combines the Western Wall and the New York Stock Exchange. The building in the picture is labeled “New York Wall Street.”

The festival's winning entry. Photo: Fars News

The purpose of the festival to show solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street movement and “help people in the United States take their message out to the world,” reported Radio Free Europe.

The cartoons, many of which promoted openly anti-Semitic and anti-American themes were entered into the contest by Arabs throughout the world. The contest was judged by seven members of a jury panel from Iran, Turkey, Poland and Romania who had to choose between 1,600 cartoons.

Mahmod Mohammad Tabrizi, who submitted the winning entry, was awarded 5,000 Euros, the festival’s statue, and a letter of appreciation.

“Once again, Iran takes the prize for promoting anti-Semitism,” said Anti-Defamation League (ADL) director Abraham H. Foxman. “Here is a trifecta of anti-Semitic notions – of Jews worshipping money, the canard that Jews ‘control’ Wall Street, and a cynical perversion of the Western Wall, the holiest site in Judaism.”

Foxman added that the contest “not only puts virulent anti-Semitism on a pedestal, but in posting the images online and involving judges from other countries, helps promote classical anti-Semitic notions before a global audience of potentially millions.”

Entries from the United States, Serbia, Kazakhstan, Turkey, Russia, and China were also submitted. A Ukrainian cartoonist, Oleksy Kustovsky, took home second prize at the festival for his depiction of a man being struck by falling rocks as two other wealthy men weigh bags of American money.

The second and third place winners at the festival. Photos: Fars News

Third prize was taken home by another Iranian artist, Farhad Gharamal, who drew countless poor men with water dripping out of their empty pockets, forming a large body of water in which a building labeled “Wall Street” is drowning. All entries can be viewed on Fars News’ website.

In 2006, the Iranian government notoriously sponsored a Holocaust cartoon contest in which the winning entries belittled the death of six million Jews in the Holocaust. Iranian newspaper Hamshahri, co-sponsor of the contest claimed that the event was held in order to test the Western world’s capacity for tolerance, according to IsraelNationalNews.

A Moroccan illustrator won first prize at the event for depicting an image of Auschwitz behind Israel’s security fence according to Radio Free Europe.