Embedded Files
Shylock is an interesting Shakespearean character, interesting in the variety of presentations he has been given over the years. Was he to be the archetypical 16th century European Jew famililiar to Shakespeare's audiences with hooked beak of a nose acting as a money-grubbing heartless enemy of Christian values, or was he a voice for justice and understanding? How are we now to interpret his rhetoric when he enquires:
Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is? If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die? And if you wrong us shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge. The villainy you teach me I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.
— The Merchant of Venice, Act III scene 1.
It is in those last lines that Shakespeare gives his audiences the character they were expecting - one who would be heartless in his pursuit of repayment, demanding his "pound of flesh" from the indebted. And then in the reversal that would delight that audience, the heroine disguised as a (male of course) lawyer would present the clever little linguistic trick by which Shylock will be denied his claim. But you can go reread Act 3 for yourself.
The Shylock of that play has been the target meme for antisemitism for much of the past 2000 years. Recently (1903) a pamphlet titled The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was fabricated in Russia, assigned as school reading in Nazi Germany and is still available in text and digital form for any purposes that modern bigots might have, principally to advance the theory of a global Jewish conspiracy for the overthrow of Christian democracies. But what other Jewish memes do we have now? And for what purposes?
A soldier of Israel standing guard before a star of David flag
The words "Never Again" superimposed on the gates of Auschwitz.
And you can suggest many others, I'm sure, some of them even produced by Muslims for Zionism - seems a contradiction in terms, I know. If you have a strong stomach, go check it out.
Memes or icons or graphics are a shorthand for our brains, in particular the emotions, and most often the specific emotion of sympathy. And here I argue with myself. Yes, there are memes, (depictions), meant to incite rage or revulsion and such strong reactions are of course, also the currency of motivation. So which works best?
I think of the editorial edict, "If it bleeds, it reads," or more recently the online trolling motto, "If it enrages, it engages." Make 'em mad or make 'em sad? Look no further than at the postings regarding the recent murder of Charlie Kirk.
I believe that winning hearts and minds is better accomplished by eliciting sympathy for a cause before specifying a target for the defence of that cause. And sometimes the graphics are designed to combine the evocation of both rage and sympathy.
So in war we have posters of the exaggerated features of the "enemy" in the act of committing some atrocity in order to achieve some or all of these goals:
to convince the public to support aggressive military operations
to convince the public to buy war bonds or accept rationing
to encourage soldiers to kill other human beings
to demonize the enemy as inhuman without moral virtues
to normalize "collateral damage" of civilian death
Where is this happening today in our world?
More important, what am I doing about it?
And sometimes, a photographer will capture a scene so poignant that it obliterates all the propaganda and shocks the viewer into a reawakened sense of justice and morality. The napalm girl of Viet Nam was one such photo. It was the one time I hid the front page of the newspaper from my kids. I had never censored their media consumption before (this was the pre-cellphone '70s). They could learn about sex when they were curious, but that terrible act of violence against children, I could not let them see. It's here at the end.
There are so many images and news stories today that if we read them all we are in danger of becoming numb to the horrors that are presented and it is a danger. Loss of compassion, the turning away from photographs and stories by those reporters who might be dead even as their work goes to press, that avoidance can become normal. Look at what the "normalization" of lies and bullying has produced in the United States and mark its incursion into Canadian political rhetoric.
Some unpleasant history we have all been exposed to. The holocaust was real, the blitz was real, trench warfare was real. I have always felt that I had "a duty" if you will, to read about those events, but a novel or movie is just a synopsis of the lived experience of others, and at some point I have just wanted to tend to my flower garden and play with the kids. But the reminders are always nearby.
On the way to an exercise class we pass a church with a large display board on which will be presented some clever quotation or aphorism. Recently, I stopped to back up and read the message. It was a paraphrasing of a line from one of Christ's sermons - and there was a guy for aphorisms if ever there was one.
"Whereas you have done it unto the children of Gaza, you have done it unto Him." said the sign. I'm told, but haven't checked every source, that the one consistent directive in all of the world's religions is to deal with other people as you would have them deal with you, and given my benign brand of atheism I will always see the capitalized "Him" in a church message board as "We-all".
Well, we're a long way from Shylock and The Merchant of Venice perhaps, but that old Jew had a point when he warned, "If you wrong us, shall we not revenge?" That is the part that many Jewish (but not Zionist) observers believe has been overdone in international circles.
Chris Hedges in his report wrote recently that the "genocide in Gaza has exposed the weaponization of the Holocaust as a vehicle not to prevent genocide, but to perpetuate it, not to examine the past, but to manipulate the present." And from our United Nations comes this:
A United Nations commission of inquiry says Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.
A new report says there are reasonable grounds to conclude that four of the five genocidal acts defined under international law have been carried out since the start of the war with Hamas in 2023: killing members of a group, causing them serious bodily and mental harm, deliberately inflicting conditions calculated to destroy the group, and preventing births.
It cites statements by Israeli leaders, and the pattern of conduct by Israeli forces, as evidence of genocidal intent.
Ultimately, we all have to decide what media we will let in, what reports and images we will valorize and share. In doing so, we understand that all memes and stories have an agenda - a design upon our beliefs and actions and resources. I say that we should not harden our hearts to avoid this input but rather give it scupulous assessment. And then act. Below is part of my response. What's yours?
But nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight --
Got to kick at the darkness 'til it bleeds daylight.
Bruce Cockburn "Lovers in a Dangerous Time"
Conscience Posters (DP 9-9-2025)
One photo stopped a bloody Asian war –
one screaming girl with napalm burning in
who'd wear the wounds her life upon her skin
became the conscience poster to implore
that we, compassionate humanity restore
to expiate in part complicit sin
in military propaganda's spin
on manufactured reasons, weapons - more:
We could not turn away, pretending space
of distant battles distanced us from shame
demanding simply courage to refrain,
some reflex act to hide our guilt or face
the carnage visited upon the lame,
the innocent, the screaming child in pain.
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