I was heading to Palo Alto for a presentation at Stanford on political satire, diaspora pride, and the urgency of Jewish memory and conscience in the face of burgeoning fascism in America, but it was hard to pack amid panicked texts from my mom. The subject of her frenzied concern: metal detectors, security perimeters, and how to deal with “crazies” (her word) inspired by a New York Times opinion editor’s signal boost of an article stating that I posed an imminent threat to the safety of Jewish students on campus.
It all started, arguably, with the erasure of Jews in a comic. I’d been invited by the Stanford chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace to present my work during Palestine Awareness Week. Prior to the event, the groups distributed flyers featuring comics I’d drawn that mocked two Benjamins—Netanyahu and Shapiro—for their contempt for the progressive values shared by the majority of American Jews. In response, Stanford College Republicans plastered undergraduate dormitories with flyers setting a panel from one of my comics alongside images from Der Stürmer, a Nazi propaganda tabloid, all under the headline “Spot the Difference.”
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