Arab European League convicted for Holocaust toon
In a reversal of a decision made by a Dutch court in June, an appeals court fined the Arab European League 2,500 Euros for causing “unnecessary offense” with this Holocaust denying cartoon.
The cartoon was published online by the AEL in an effort to deliberately provoke a prosecution which would prove that
Freedom of expression is only a pretext to make life bitter for Muslims… and if [they] try to bring this hypocrisy to light, that right is denied them.
Abdoulmouthalib Bouzerda, the leader of the AEL, must be happy that he has finally been vindicated.
He almost has a point. If it’s okay to insult muslims by pointing out that their prophet was a terrorist, it should also be okay to insult jews by trying to make light of the holocaust. I’m not saying either course is desirable or necessary.
I think there’s an important difference in that one makes light of millions of deaths within the past century, while the other defames a long dead historical figure.
That said, I’d note that the paper which published the original cartoons is known to be quite racist, so if the only basis for prosecution was “it’s racist” then they’ve got a point. Unless some basis is given for what level of racism can result in prosecution by the courts, there’s something rather dodgy going on here.