Follow Up To The Adbusters Warsaw Ghetto-Gaza Photo Essay

By Jonathon Narvey

It seems the bizarre spectacle of Adbusters' Warsaw Ghetto-Gaza photo essay comparison isn't over yet. We received the following email late last night from the Editor of Adbusters (which was also sent to a number of other public commentators):

Here's something for all you people who cannot see the striking similarities between two atrocities:

http://www.nationalpost.com/tale+ghettoes/3761672/story.html

for the wild, Kalle

kalle lasn / editor@adbusters.org

www.adbusters.org

Lasn is unrepentant. Indeed, he only digs herself in deeper with his weird rationalizations. Here's one nub of his criticism:

Last week, in a move to silence criticism of Israeli policies, the Canadian Jewish Congress labelled Adbusters -- and anyone who makes the above historical analogy -- anti-Semitic. The CJC has lobbied Shoppers Drug Mart not to carry Adbusters. Three-thousand-five-hundred copies of Adbusters will no longer be sold at Shoppers Drug Mart's 515 Canadian stores.

Totally bogus.

First of all, the CJC was not merely making a statement of its own opinion (which is still allowed, isn't it?), but passing along the judgement of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum (where Adbusters got the images for the photo essay) when they said "Any comparison between the Warsaw Ghetto (or the Holocaust as a whole) and the situation in Gaza is wildly inaccurate, a gross misrepresentation of the facts and offensive to victims of the Holocaust."

Also, the CJC did not lobby Shoppers Drug Mart to not carry Adbusters to censor the magazine. If anything, the CJC's approach was utterly respectful of free speech. Their position:

And we’ve asked our community members to take a moment to see if their local bookstore or newsstand sells the magazine, to show the clerk or the owner the offensive material and to tell them that “this is anti-Semitic and shameful.” This latest Adbusters anti-Semitic pictorial isn’t like what the real Nazis published in Der Sturmer — that would be a wrong analogy after all — but it doesn’t have to be to qualify as garbage. Should it be forced off the shelves? We aren’t asking for that, but we do think that store owners need to find out — from their customers — what strange goods they are selling .

There was no demand for Shoppers Drugmart or any other store to ban this magazine. Instead, the organization merely asked that shop owners be aware of the content of magazines being sold on their own shelves and make up their own minds about whether they wanted to sell this product.

As for the actual content of the Adbusters essay, readers are welcome to make up their own minds. It's the opinion of this magazine that Adbusters has sunk to a new level of dishonesty. It is shameful. What's worse, Lasn will no doubt try to turn this into a bogus issue of free speech, when his aim with his latest editorial seems only to disparage legitimate criticism.

UPDATE: See my fuller commentary on this issue in the Vancouver Sun online in Adbusters Gets It Wrong

Jonathon Narvey is the Editor of The Propagandist.

Video: Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto and the Nazi Holocaust