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Political cartoons are valuable cultural artifacts which not only capture moments in time but also offer the illustrator's insight into those moments. This essay examines how three of Israel's Religious Zionist cartoonists have illustrated the first three months of the 2023 nationwide protests and the judicial overhaul that sparked them. Shay Charka, Or Reichert, and Reut Bortz all self-identify as members of the Religious Zionist community but their cartoons show diverse reactions to the protests and proposed legislation. Examining their works provides insight into how the cartoonists themselves are navigating significant changes in their own society and also what messages are being conveyed to the Religious-Zionist readership. What emerges from this analysis are thematic overlaps in which the artists draw upon common visual tropes and themes but offer distinct readings of the judicial overhaul and the protests that ensued. The value of analyzing the three cartoonists' work in this way is that it provides insight into the messages that are disseminated to the wider Religious Zionist community given their role as figures who shape and construct Religious Zionist ideology and mentality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An arts-based qualitative research study was conducted to study the use of political cartoons in Israel education in a high school class. Data analysis revealed that students' initial interest in the cartoons coupled with the diversity of representations of Israeli society on display in the cartoons facilitated an Israel education experience that afforded students the opportunity to engage in meaningful text-to-self connections that also deepened their understanding of the complexity of Israeli society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the use of political cartoons as an arts-based assessment strategy in teaching about Israel. Topics include integrating arts-based learning, the unique features of arts in education, the use of political cartoons, and the benefits of student-produced cartoons in academic and social contexts.

This interview with Belgian-Israeli graphic novelist and political cartoonist Michel Kichka covers his growing up in Belgium during the Golden Age of bande dessinée. The author discusses his early readings and influences, as well as the development of his own career in teaching and drawing. The discussion focuses in particular on the creation and publication of his graphic novels Deuxième Génération [Second Generation] and Falafel sauce piquante [Falafel with Spicy Sauce], published in 2012 and 2018. These works foreground essential questions about Kichka's experience as a second-generation Holocaust survivor and about his relationship with Israel. Taking an international perspective, the interview sheds further light on the emergence of the comics medium in Israel and the transnational reception of Franco-Belgian bande dessinée. It also considers Kichka's work and engagement as a political cartoonist. Interview conducted via email, following Michel Kichka's keynote at the "Tradition and Innovation in Franco-Belgian bande dessinée" conference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A qualitative practitioner research study was conducted with 31 high school students studying religion contemporary Israeli society. The purpose of the study was to understand how using cartoons written and illustrated by the religious Jewish-Israeli settler Shay Charka challenged students to think about religion in Israeli society in new ways and whether introducing perspectives that were foreign to their North American Jewish education led to new ways of relating to and understanding Jewish-Israeli communities. Results of this small-scale study yielded that the comics were successful in introducing new ways of thinking about religion and in introducing a more complex portrait of Israeli society. As a pedagogical device, comics proved to be of salience and interest to the learners, which also led students to be motivated to study them. Students were particularly interested in the ways that Charka subverted their assumptions of gender in religious-Israeli communities and this specifically led to increased awareness of religious diversity in Israeli society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article treats the topic of political cartooning and the evolution of a genre during the early years of Israeli statehood. It focuses particularly on the work of two prominent cartoon artists, Friedel Stern and Kariel Gardosh (Dosh), who made their careers in Israel in the 1950s and '60s and whose politically charged images have been sanitized over time. It looks at how attitudes towards certain imagery have changed so that political commentary that was seen as relevant and acute during early statehood eventually lost its political edge through historical handling and revision. These two cartoonists provided strong visual symbols of early Israeli national identity, which invariably had political motivations, and yet their legacy as political commentators during a crucial period in Israeli political history is often overlooked. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents political cartoons from the Arab newspaper al-Hayat on how the Arab world views current events in Israel, including the U.S. and Israel jointly attacking the United Nations Goldstone report, a Gaza Palestinian boy returning to his destroyed home to tell his mother he was learning about the Holocaust, and a group of illegal settlements that spelled out "yes we can" in reference to U.S. President Barack Obama's 2008 campaign slogan.