Farhad, two of your major topics are freedom and censorship… Do you have any personal motivation for concentrating on those two?

Censorship is an scary shadow which has followed me all my life…and I hate it. Therefore I talk about it. Freedom is a topic that concerns many people on this planet. I have never had as much freedom as I wished. Being born in Iran is just like being born in a cage. After that you will always be looking for freedom.

How did censorship follow you? Did you experience censorship in Europe as well?

Censorship loves artists and intellectuals! It never lets us go. I experienced this almost everywhere, under different names and in different shapes. But I can recognize it everywhere: even in Italy and Holland – anywhere.

Would you mind telling me in which way your work has been censored in Iran and in Europe?

If I make something that questions their politics or authorities they will find a way to let me know that they are not happy with that. I can lose my job because of that. This has happened many times in my life. They make me understand that, if I want to work and have a better life, I have to be careful about what I say.

On your website you state that you have been born three times, what do you mean by that?

I was naturally born in Teheran. Later I had to emigrate twice – once to Holland and once to Italy. Each time changing place, country and direction of my life was like being born again. I said that I have been born three times because each time I had to start everything over again, just like a baby.

You returned to Holland in 2000 after some time in Italy. How did it feel to come back to a place you had left?

It did feel like a kind of coming back home. It may sound strange, but I miss all the places that I have lived in. Even those that felt like a cage!

Could you imagine moving back to Iran? What was the reason you had to leave your birthplace – how was it like a cage for you?

Cage is maybe not the best word to describe the situation in Iran. As a bird in a cage, someone will take care of you. They will give you water and food and maybe even love. At the time that I left, Iran was more like hell than like a cage – there was the war with Iraq, daily bombardments, not having my freedom, etc. I had to go away and I did it.
I would love to go back to Iran, but after 24 years in Europe it wouldn’t be easy for me to leave my work, my friends and everything behind me. I created a life, a world for me here and I cannot leave it behind.

Do you still have any connections to Iran today?

Almost every day – with my colleagues, family, …

Would you say that Iran has changed since you left it?

Very much: cities, roads, people, culture, many things.

Would you say that there is a place that is “home” to you? How would you define it?

To me, “home” is a place where I feel that I’m not alone. A place where you can feel that you exist, where you are being seen. Sometimes I have that feeling in Iran, sometimes in Holland, even in Berlin. It is a strange feeling, but “home” to me is a wish, a dream, a utopia. Or maybe “home” is just something inside ourselves.

Thanks for your time!

Paul Hellmich

The Middle East Conflict is one of the most frequent topics for cartoons on toonpool.com – and one of the most controversially discussed. I dare say that no other issue has created as much uproar: there have been deletions of cartoons, allegations of anti-Semitism, complaints about censorship and loads of angry comments. One thing I have been missing, however, was actual dialogue.

Ramzy A. Taweel was born in Beirut in 1978 to a Palestinian father and a Lebanese mother. In 1993, shortly after the Oslo Agreement, his family returned to Palestine. Today, Ramzy lives in Ramallah and works as a media officer for the Palestinian president’s office. He is also about to complete his MA thesis in International Studies and he is drawing pretty cool cartoons about everyday life in Palestine. I asked him a couple of questions about life in Ramallah and about relations between “us” and “them”. Which can be read as Israelis and Palestinians, as Jews and Muslims, as men and women or as TV-addicts and fundamentalists, depending on what part of the interview you are reading.

Ramzy, can you tell me how you ended up drawing cartoons?

My passion for cartooning officially started in 2002, when I was trying to amuse a beautiful lady at my university. That was when I created my cartoon character Fashcool, a Palestinian college boy who is trying to live a normal life under occupation. The lady is long gone, but Fashcool stayed with me. Moreover, it made me a celebrity at my university and finally at universities all over Palestine.

What limitations do you face in everyday life in Ramallah due to the political situation?

Limitations? … First, I did not travel out of Ramallah from more than five years – since 2001. And Ramallah is a pretty small town. There are too many things happening for the size of this place. I’ve seen death and joy, soldiers and tanks. I’ve seen airplanes bombing houses, soldiers humiliating people and kids crying. I’ve walked through a blizzard together with two thousand other students because the Israeli army had closed the road between my university and Ramallah.

In your cartoons on Palestine, you hardly ever make explicit reference to Israel. Why is that so?

In my cartoons, I try to show my own perspective, not the political situation as a whole. I draw cartoons about every day situations – about love and friendship and about how the occupation affects our lives.

For example, since I am from Ramallah, I couldn’t marry a Palestinian girl from Jerusalem. The whole relation was very stressful and even dangerous for her: Israel might have taken away her ID papers and kicked her out of Jerusalem just because she slept outside the city limits. I drew a lot of cartoons about this situation and about how I lost my love because of it. I also draw about how I am not able to meet my friends because of the wall. All of these are very personal issues. I can’t see them as an abstract political crisis; it’s simply personal pain.

When I draw cartoons, I look for that tiny light that might draw a smile despite the bloody scenery. Young people here have to face multiple problems: their studies, love, work, family and the occupation. Forcing them to smile even at the darkest times is how I fight the occupation.

Is it possible to sum up the position of the Palestinian people toward Israel or are there differences between certain groups?

People are people on either sides. But the problem is not so much between Israelis and Palestinians and it’s definitely not a war of religions. Two plain words: the occupation and the settlements. That’s where the trouble lies. Shortly after the Oslo agreement, Israelis were visiting Ramallah and the other Palestinian cities almost on a daily basis. Even today, the economic relations between the West Bank and Israel are more important than the European market. But the settlements eat up Palestinian land and cut off the roads between our cities. Israel even controls over 80 percent of our water supply. They sell our own water back to us.

But when the Israeli government finally accepts the fact that we must and will  have our sacred right of  freedom and independence, when they demolish the apartheid wall, you will see how fast wounds can heal.

You say that the West Bank Wall is one important obstacle on the way to peace. What is your reaction to the Israeli argument that the barrier has effectively prevented suicide attacks and thus saved hundreds of lives?

Actually, my problem is not with the wall itself. It’s rather that it was built on our side of the border. On lands inside the 1949 green line which is recognized by the UN as the border of the Palestinian territories.

The wall cuts West Bank into blocks and ghettos with electronic gates between them. For instance, the city of Qalqilyah is completely surrounded by a 9 to12 meter wall. There is a single gate that opens and closes depending on the mood of the Israeli soldiers guarding it.

The wall is a tool to seize more ground from us and to protect settlements. It’s a tool to maintain the occupation, not to protect Israel.

In the past, there have been several cartoons uploaded to toonpool.com that comment on the Palestinian conflict in an aggressive way that is sometimes pretty close to being anti-Semitic…

Paul, if you lived in Palestine for less than one month you might begin to think the same. Yesterday my brother was escorting our dad in an ambulance from Jordan. My dad is dying … and they did not let my brother stay with him. There was no one to hold his hand. Not to mention they forced the doctors to switch ambulances at the border.

I do my best to separate between religion and politics. I almost never use the Star of David. Instead, I use “צה”ל” (“Tzahal”), the acronym for Israel’s military forces. It’s not the Jews but the state of Israel that has committed war crimes against myself and against my people.

As for other cartoonist… You see, I can’t blame them because Israel made it very hard for cartoonists to separate religion from politics.

This question might be a bit naïve: I noticed that most of your characters have a very “western” look. The only reference to a Muslim society I’ve found was that woman wearing a long dress in the background of your “beach” cartoon. What are your reasons for doing it that way?

Actually, this is what we are. Palestine is neither Afghanistan nor Saudi Arabia. We are more moderate than you might imagine. Islamic costumes and ways of living only came up in the past 15 years. They are a part of the growth of fundamentalist Islam which has several reasons. There is the failure of development in several Arab countries, for example. And there are some oil states in the Gulf region that actively support extremist views like Wahhabism.

In fact, I’ve drawn several cartoons with females wearing so-called Islamic dresses. But, again, you would be surprised to see what kind of dresses we have here.  Women are women anywhere in the world. They will search for beautiful clothes no matter where they live.

As for me, I am a practicing Muslim., but I do live in a global era. You and me, we share values and a way of life. I watched every episode of Saved by the Bell even when I lived in a camp in Jordan. Michael Jackson is my favorite singer and Steve Irwin was my hero. I cried when I heard that he was dead. This is not a Western era anymore, it’s a Global culture with a Western look, don’t you think?

Thanks for your time!

Paul Hellmich

The Berlusconi cartoons are pretty uniform in their evaluation of the court’s decision – no one seems to like that little rich guy. As you would suspect, a lot of them come from Italy. Some, unfortunately, exceed my language skills and the Google translator (my Italian is basically French with an accent). So, if anyone could translate one of these, I’d be happy. Cartoons without words or even in English are easier. I liked the way these two by Uber and Matteo Bertelli correspond if you ignore that it’s Lady Justice in one cartoon and Italia Turrita in the other.

As a whole, the cartoons express some hope that Signore B. will finally feel the consequences of his actions (take either one of these). And then there is this one that shows Lady Justice dropping her blindfold and as a consequence all that makes justice just. I don’t know if this was intended or not.

The Obama cartoons differ in their interpretation of the event but, as a friend pointed out to me, a lot of them replicate toonpool.com’s well-established categories of opinion. There are those that  emphasize the hope for change (this one and this one). There are those that concentrate on aggressive American foreign policy (here and here). There are those that… dislike Obama (here). And there is George W. Bush winning the prize.

Finally, there are two cartoons that manage to include Silvio and Barack (here & here).

Cartoons of Interest

My favorite this week is “Execution” by Easterby. It’s a very classic cartoon –  banana republic-style military executions definitely are cliché cartoon settings. And a similar joke has been made in several films and TV programs (with a blind guy instead of an executionee). But I still laughed. Take that, innovative humor.

Paul Hellmich

Winner: "Steinmeier and Obama" by Lexluther (Germany)

Second Winner: "Angela Merkel" by Nicoleta Ionescu (Romania)

Third Winner: "Steinmeier VS Merkel" by Salnavarro (USA)

You can see the winners and places four to ten in this collection. It was hard enough to agree on three winners, so actually all other cartoons in this gallery share place four. If you want to make up your own mind about all the Merkels and Steinmeiers: this collection contains all participanting cartoons.

For all of you who participated: Thank you for submitting your work. You contributed to a global exchange of art, opinion & humor and I am sure you made a couple of people laugh, smile, smirk, or giggle. Keep up the great work!

members of the jury: Max Pohlenz, Bernd Pohlenz (CEOs, toonpool.com), Rebecca Conrad (Creative Director, toonpool.com), Paul Hellmich (Blog Guy, toonpool.com), Niels von Boldvig (Cartoonist from Århus, Denmark), Sven Larsen (Lecturer, Berliner Technische Kunsthochschule), Karl-Ludwig Baader (Editor, Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung)

Paul Hellmich

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Jury photos:

Max, can you tell me about the cartoons you have removed from toonpool.com so far?

Well, basically we will delete all images that violate our terms of use. This includes, for example, copyright infringements. We have removed a couple of pictures that were using copyrighted characters, e.g. Donald Duck or Warner Brothers characters, without adding some new interpretation.
Another reason for removing cartoons is plagiarism – sometimes artists have obviously stolen somebody else’s ideas. Of course it’s often difficult to determine whether a cartoon has been plagiarized or if people just got the same ideas. Somebody even put up a collection dealing with that matter. A third category would be offensive and discriminating content directed against any group or individual.

Most of the deleted images that raised complaints about censorship were political in nature. Were there any similarities between the ones you removed?

We have been running toonpool.com for almost two years now and there are members from 140 countries representing all major religions. So, when it comes to political cartoons, there are necessarily differing points of view the users will express in their art.
The most outstanding event in this matter were the Israeli attacks on Gaza in January 2009. A lot of the cartoons we received were directed against Israel’s policy. Some of them, however crossed a line. There were some openly anti-Semitic cartoons and others that compared Israel to Nazi Germany, often using swastikas. Those clearly violated our terms of use and have been deleted.

Some users have called this censorship, keeping them from expressing their opinions.

As administrators, we have to set some rules of conduct. There are mainly three reasons for doing so: First of all, toonpool.com is supposed to be a site for an exchange between artists from different cultures. Such exchange is endangered by hateful statements, so we try to keep things peaceful while trying to allow for a maximum range of opinions.
Second, there is a legal dimension. Toonpool.com is hosted in Germany, where as a consequence of our history the use of swastikas and similar symbols is limited by the law and incitement to ethnic or racial hatred is a criminal offense.
Third, the toonpool.com staff feels a responsibility to take a position in these kind of things. As I said, we allow for a maximum range of artistic expression. We try to remain as neutral as possible and keep a lot of cartoons and images that we disagree with. Sometimes we need to act, though. We don’t want our site to be misused for aggressive propaganda.

But people might argue that other comparisons with Hitler or the Nazis are still online, take this caricature of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, for example.

Basically, we disagree with any comparisons between Nazi Germany and other states. They necessarily distort the system depicted and tend to trivialize the horrors of National Socialism. Still, we kept some of them owing to toonpool.com’s ideal of artistic freedom. Drawing parallels between Israel and the Nazis in our eyes is especially harmful and hateful and will not be tolerated. It doesn’t do anything to explain the Israeli / Palestinian conflict and is a severe insult to the experience of the Jewish people during the 1930s and 1940s.
We are currently rethinking our policy towards Nazi imagery in general, but haven’t come to a decision yet. Concerning the latest incident, I hope that the users will accept our position and respect our terms of use.

I noticed, that you have two ways of dealing with controversial pictures: sometimes you just delete them but in the most recent case you replaced it with a disclaimer and left the comments. What effect do you hope this will have?

Replacing the image was my idea, this was the first time we tried it. Partly, we did it for technical reasons: If somebody posts a link to a picture that has been deleted, its better to have the disclaimer in place of the picture than an error message. On the other hand, we wanted to offer the opportunity to further discuss the topic.

Will you do this with all removed pictures in the future?

We will do this in most cases of cartoons that don’t fall into the copyright violations category. If an artist keeps uploading a picture we deleted, however, we will remove his profile from our site. The new procedure is meant to provide more transparency. I hope that the opportunity to discuss these matters will relieve some tensions.

Thank you for your time!

Paul Hellmich

Image: “Censorship” byAlexei Talimonov