by: Shaya Lerner
June 02, 2016
A French cartoonist with a long record of anti-Semitic and anti-Israel art work has been named the winner of Iran’s most recent Holocaust cartoon contest. Zeon, who the Iranian media said was arrested in the past for his “anti-Zionist” cartoons in 2015, won the $12,000 prize. His winning work features what appears to be the entry gate of a Nazi-era death camp atop a cash register with six million in cash inside.
The next day, the Iranian Cultural-Art Masaf Institute announced a new cartoon contest – this time calling for submissions on the “Zionist Caliphate” that will focus on “Zionism, terrorism and racism” and “ISIL terrorism and genocide in the name of religion and to the benefit of the Zionists.” Conspiracy theories linking ISIS and Israel are common in the region.