My daughter, Susie, joined me in Israel for the last week of my trip last month.  She has been posting her daily cartoon account of the trip on her blog at http://thisiswhatconcernsme.com and she’s posting a new day of the trip every day now as she paints them in.

Susie had a different perspective on the trip than I did - and she looks much nicer than she draws herself.  Here are the most recent three days she has posted in her cartoon diary.

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The conflict between Israel and the Palestinians still looms large in cartoons around the world, with an endless flow of cartoons from Arab countries showing monster-Israel assaulting, eating, crushing or somehow decimating the poor Palestinians. The dove of peace has been killed by Israel in every imaginable cartoon - crushed, squeezed, stabbed, burned, eaten. Poor bird.

The conflict goes on forever, long after every original cartoon idea has been exhausted. Americans don’t see much of these cartoons because they would be regarded here as anti-Semitic at worst, or as the same thing over and over, at best.

Here I am at the tomb of Yassir Arafat in Ramallah.

After Algeria, my Middle East speaking tour took me to Egypt, Israel and the Palestinian territories. At my first event in Cairo I spoke to a group of Egyptian journalists who brought a newspaper up to me, proudly pointing out that in Egypt, editorial cartoons are often printed big and in color on the front page of the newspaper. The cartoon they showed me would make an American editor choke; it showed a spitting snake, in the shape of a Star of David; inside the snake/star was a peace dove, behind bars, and above the snake, in Arabic, were the words, “It’s not about the bird flu, it’s about the swine flu.”

I explained that in America this cartoon would be regarded as anti-Semitic, and it would never be printed. The Egyptian journalists were emphatic, explaining to me that the cartoon was about Israel, not about Jews - an important distinction to them.

“Israel isn’t mentioned anywhere in the cartoon,” I said.

“But we all know the Jewish star is the symbol of Israel,” they responded.

I said, “It is a religious symbol. It is the same as if I took the star and crescent off of the flag of Pakistan and drew a similar cartoon, saying it was about Pakistan.” They didn’t respond to me, my comment was such nonsense. I continued, “The cartoon seems to say that Jews are like snakes and pigs.”

“No, no! We have lots of symbols for Israel that we all know, like the Jew with black clothes and a big hooked nose!” one of the Egyptian journalists insisted with some passion. “We like Jews, we just don’t like Israel!”

The newspaper with the cartoon disappeared when I mentioned that I would like to scan the cartoon for a column about our spirited conversation. The Egyptian journalists all continued to insist that I misunderstood what the cartoon meant.

I had an opportunity to meet with a group of Palestinian editorial cartoonists in Gaza by teleconference. I sympathize with their plight; the poor cartoonists had almost no outlets to print their cartoons. One of the Gaza cartoonists showed me a cartoon he was proud of, showing an alligator eating a dove. I told him I didn’t understand the cartoon, and he explained that the alligator was blue, “which everyone understands to be Israel” and the dove had green wings, “which everyone understands to be Palestine.”

I tried to come up with some advice for the Gaza cartoonists on how to get their work published. I suggested that they could submit their work to international publications, but that it would be tough if every cartoon was another Israel/monster cartoon. The cartoonists responded to say that in Gaza, they are under siege, and they don’t care to draw anything else.

I suggested that the Gaza cartoonists need to coax Western editors into printing their cartoons, and they would do well to consider some other angles, for example, drawing about their personal experiences and day-to-day difficulties. Palestinian cartoons criticizing Hamas and Fatah are rarely seen and would get reprinted. I spoke with one West Bank Palestinian cartoonist, Amer Shomali, who lost his gig with his newspaper because he insisted on drawing cartoons critical of Fatah; he was so frustrated that he rented a billboard to post a Fatah cartoon that his newspaper refused to publish. The billboard was swiftly taken down.

Here I am in Ramallah with Palestinian cartoonist Khalil Arafeh.

I explained to the Gaza cartoonists that when the Israel/Palestine conflict is big in the news, and we post cartoons about the topic on our site, our www.cagle.msnbc.com traffic goes down. Americans are not very interested in events that happen outside of America, especially when it is the same news story, year after year. I told them that the most popular topic ever on our site was Janet Jackson’s boob, and that our readers really like cartoons about cute puppies. Hearing this, the Gaza cartoonists stared at me blankly, and then urged me to organize an international exhibition of cartoons that highlight their plight at the hands of Israel.

Not all Palestinian cartoonists fit the same Israel/monster mold. I met two interesting West Bank cartoonists in Ramallah. The cartoon below is by Khalil Abu Arafeh, who has a nice style and range; he draws for the Al Quds, the big newspaper in the West Bank. This cartoon is about the United Nations Goldstone report, when they were looking for witnesses to testify about Israeli war crimes in the recent Gaza incursion, a lady stands out from the crowd saying, “We are all witnesses.”

"We are all witnesses." Cartoon by Khalil I. Abu Arafeh, of the Palestinian West Bank newspaper Al Quds.

Another interesting Palestinian cartoonist in Ramallah is Ramzy Taweel, who draws about everyday life in the West Bank, and posts his cartoons on Facebook here. I regret that they are all in Arabic, and incomprehensible to most of our American audience, but the cartoons are quite nice.  Befriend Ramzy and take a look at his cartoons. It would be good if we could send a few new Facebook friends Ramzy’s way.

After meeting with the Egyptian journalists and Palestinian cartoonists, I spoke in Israel to close to three hundred students in a crowded auditorium at the Bezalel Academy of Art & Design and to a Journalism class at Hebrew University. I also spoke to a journalism class in the West Bank, at Birzeit University. The students were all great fun.

Thanks again to the U.S. State Department for arranging the trip and the speaking engagements.

11/2/09 Postscript
Ramzy Taweel just sent me these interesting cartoons to post here.  Be sure to friend Ramzi on Facebook to see more cartoons.

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The news hit me like a rolled-up newspaper to the side of the head.

According to The Washington Times, Robert Davi, a tough-guy Hollywood actor, and Rep. Thaddeus McCotter, R-Mich., an alleged conservative, did something tough guys and conservatives don’t often do.

Cartoon by Werner Wejp-Olsen (Purchase cartoon)

They collaborated to get a bill onto the floor of the U.S. House seeking a $3,500 annual tax deduction for pet expenses.

I love animals. I still mist up when I think of the time my dog Jingles ran off in the ’70s. But Americans have lost their bearings where their pets are concerned.

According to the American Pet Products Association, we spend $45 billion a year on our pets — that’s up 5 percent over last year, despite a nasty recession.

Nearly $20 billion alone is spent on dog grub — including the expensive “gourmet” stuff. That’s up 5 percent too.

And since the pet food recalls of 2007, says ABC News, here’s another trend: More pets are enjoying home cooking.

If Rover overeats, no problem. There are doggie personal trainers now. There are doggie gyms, doggie aerobics classes and doggie weight-loss programs. (Biscuit Watchers?)

If Rover is having behavioral problems — or perhaps he is depressed — the dog psychiatrist will tend to his woes. (”What’s that, boy? You see a cat in the inkblot?”)

Here’s something Americans are doing for their pets that some won’t do for themselves: buying health insurance.

Of course, despite all the pampering and care, our pets will eventually succumb to old age. When they pass, a whole industry is ready to assist.

There are doggie funeral ceremonies and eulogies now. (”Rover was a good shepherd, he shall not want, as he lies down in green pastures …”)

Pet deaths are announced in pet obituaries. (”Buster is survived by his emotionally distraught owner and his favorite toy, Squeaky.”)

And let us not forget another growth industry: pet cemeteries, complete with pet headstones. (”Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, if only Rover had seen that bus.”)

And now tax deductions for pet owners?

Davi argues that pets are good for us. They bring down our blood pressure and lift our spirits. A tax deduction would encourage pet ownership.

He says the deduction would be good for the economy. People would spend more on their pets — a needed boost to retail spending.

It is true, too, that the recession is causing animal shelters to see decreases in budgets at the same time they see a surge in surrendered pets — a deduction might cause more people to adopt.

These are all fair considerations, but they miss the larger point: We have to stop letting our emotions rule our heads where public policy is concerned.

Look, our tax code is an incredible mess precisely because well-intentioned people got their special breaks added in.

Now it takes a case of bourbon and a busload of CPAs to file our taxes every year.

Our emotions, skillfully exploited, have brought us all kinds of government programs that have bloated the budget and exploded the deficit.

If we have any hope of staving off a fiscal nightmare, we’ve got to keep our wits about us — we’ve got to put logic and reason back in charge.

Speaking of nightmares, when your dog’s paws twitch as he sleeps, he isn’t having one.

What is a dog nightmare anyway, asks comedian Gary Shandling.

Your dog dreams he’s drinking out of a toilet bowl and the lid falls on his head?

©2009 Tom Purcell. Tom Purcell, a humor columnist for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, is nationally syndicated exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. For more info contact Cari Dawson Bartley at 800 696 7561 or email cari@cagle.com. Visit Tom on the web at www.TomPurcell.com or e-mail him at Purcell@caglecartoons.com.

RESTRICTIONS: “Tom Purcell’s column may not be reprinted in general circulation print media in Pennsylvania’s Allegheny, Beaver, Butler, and Westmoreland Counties. It may appear only in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and its sister publications.

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One fun thing about being an editorial cartoonist is that I sometimes get invited to strange places as a cartoon celebrity. I just finished a week in Algiers at their second annual comics festival. Algeria is a huge country, a former socialist member of the Soviet block and a former French colony in North Africa.

The people here like to be thought of as more European than Arab, and they seem relieved that their country has recently emerged from many years of internal violence. There was an ugly civil war here in the 1990’s that has wound down to the point where Algiers is pretty safe, but there are military guards with machine guns everywhere, and we can’t drive very far without going through armed checkpoints. That is probably why it is safe.

Here’s one photo that I saved before my camera disappeared, of a typical apartment building covered with satellite dishes. A satellite dish is a necessity here as the three channels of state run broadcast television seems to be despised by everyone. Even the tiniest hovel has a satellite dish.

There was another American cartoonist here, Jan Eliot, who draws the syndicated strip, “Stone Soup.” We had an interesting day at the “Casbah,” the old Ottoman Empire part of Algiers that is a giant bazaar. The streets in the Casbah are too narrow for cars. The bustling Casbah is filled with tiny shops and tables with every kind of stuff - except tourist junk, because there are so few tourists here. Algeria isn’t an easy place for a tourist to visit, so we don’t see Algiers t-shirts or snow globes; I saw no Starbucks and no McDonalds.

The language here is a strange mix of French and Arabic, where the locals take French verbs and conjugate them like they are Arabic verbs, making an incomprehensible mish-mash. The economy is a mish-mash too; Algeria seems to be a work in progress for a government that still has its head stuck in a Socialist past. Under a new law, consumer credit is banned in Algeria. Any business in Algeria must be 51% owned by Algerians, driving foreign investment away. Getting anything done here is a quest. People don’t show up on time and don’t seem to have much concern about productivity. There is a lot of confusion. The economy is sustained by oil revenue.

Since emerging from the violence there seems to be a yearning for a cultural renaissance here, and the cartoon arts benefit from that. Algerians like a strange mix of Arabic manga and euro-style storytelling comics, but the star cartoonists are political cartoonists. The most famous cartoonist here is Ali Dilem, the cartoonist for the French language newspaper “Liberte.”

Algerian cartoonists struggle under pressure from the government. I’m told that Ali Dilem, who now lives outside of Algeria, faces 25 lawsuits from government officials he has insulted in his cartoons. The threat of civil suits may keep some cartoonists from criticizing the government, but the cartoonists I met seemed eager to continue pushing the limits. They were all very interested in what the limits were for American political cartoonists, expecting that we had similar problems with the government.

There was an exhibition of the work of a famed Algerian cartoonist named “Slim,” who has drawn socially conscious newspaper comic strips for decades here, and saw some of his cartoonist colleagues killed in the violence of the 1990’s. Slim likes making fun of Algerian women who wear veils; he draws the veils much like the beak of a bird, and has the women walk around looking like ducks.

Most women here dress like Europeans.  I’m told that the teenage girls, when they want to rebel and annoy their parents, will often take to wearing the veil – which is quite disturbing to parents who rebelled against their own parents to reject the veil.

Le Hic is another star political cartoonist I met here; he draws in a more traditional political cartoon panel style for the big French language daily L’Expression, and we hope to add him to our site soon.

I had a great time here with a cartoonist named “Baki” who draws for the huge Arabic language daily, “The Sunrise,” which has a circulation of 850,000. Baki and I went to a school for troubled children and drew a mural on a big wall on the street, which the children quickly jumped in to paint. It was pretty crazy, and I had a lot of great photos of the event – before I lost my camera. Very frustrating. I was planning on posting a lot of photos in the blog. Baki and I drew a cartoon together for his newspaper and I toured their offices. I was impressed. It looks like newspapers are still thriving here.

The Festival invited cartoonists from all over the world to attend; names I’d never heard of from strange places, and from all over Africa. In many countries, editorial cartoonists are still the most important cartoonists, and there were quite a few editorial cartoonists here – a candy store for me. I may have a few exotic cartoonists to add to the site soon. I met up with my cartoonist buddy, Tayo, from West Africa, who will also probably be blogging about the Festival. That’s me with Tayo at the right, before I lost my camera. The festival was really very nice.

My first event at the comics festival was a panel discussion about “Comics and Cinema.” I don’t really know why they wanted me to talk about that, since I don’t work in the entertainment industry, but from their perspective, I live in Hollywood and I used to work for the Muppets, so what the heck. I’ll talk about anything. It turned out to be pretty funny. I showed up when the seminar was scheduled to start, and there was no one there – I thought I was in the wrong place. No. Everyone shows up late here; they started filtering in a half hour later. Another cartoonist pontificated the whole time in French and I ended up not saying much at all.

I gave another seminar all by myself, about my own cartoons and political cartoons in America. This one went pretty well, but was also a funny Algerian experience. My translator apparently didn’t please the crowd, who understood my English well enough to know that they didn’t like the translation, calling out their objections. I said that the audience for our web site, like most Americans, is not very interested in cartoons about events around the world, and is more interested in celebrities. I pointed out that Janet Jackson’s boob was the most popular thing ever on my web site site. The translator couldn’t bring himself to say, “boob,” leading a young cartoonist in the audience to draw the cartoon below.

Here’s another take on my translator, given to me by a cartoonist in the audience.

A question I got a lot was, “Have you drawn any cartoons about Algeria?” I haven’t. It is hard to think of when Algeria was in the headlines in America. The only time I ever read about Algeria is when Algerian President Bouteflika is quietly hanging with his more vocal buddies Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales, affirming their coalition against evil America.

President Bouteflika won re-election recently with an unbelievable 90% of the vote. One Algerian told me that even the Prophet Muhammad himself couldn’t really get 90% of the vote.

Maybe I’ll draw a cartoon about Algeria. We’ll see.

The festival was really very nice and I should thank the organizers for inviting me. It was great fun.

Next I’ll be doing a couple of workshops in Cairo, then I’m off to Jerusalem and a session with Palestinian cartoonists in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

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“I actually sold more comics [at the The San Francisco Zine Fest] than I did at SPX–perhaps in part because it was free,” says recently laid-off independent cartoonist Susie Cagle.

“Ten bucks for the privilege of even setting foot in the exhibit hall is a little steep in this economy: that’s a movie, or a meal (or if you’re like me, two). It’s not a price one would pay were they interested in taking a chance on something new, and that creates a relatively closed economy when, in a city as big and diverse as D.C., and in a medium as marginalized as comics, we should be doing all we can to invite newcomers to the scene.”

[THE DAILY CROSSHATCH]

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Thanks to my loyal assistant, Stacey Fairrington, for putting together this excellent cartoon slideshow for MSNBC.com, telling the story of the financial crisis of the past year.

I do a Week in Political Cartoons slideshow for MSNBC.com that goes up every Friday morning. The newest slideshow can always be seen on our archive page with all the past weekly slideshows.

I’m a big fan of Sandy Huffaker; we used to syndicate his work but Sandy retired when Obama was elected, telling me he had lost his inspiration when he didn’t have President Bush to kick around anymore.  Sometimes Sandy still gets inspired and sends in a cartoon, like the Glenn Beck cartoon below that I put into the latest weekly slideshow. It looks like Beck really made Sandy mad.

I’ve noticed a recent pattern where nutty conservatives are inspiring cartoonists to draw fart jokes.  There was a time when drawing a fart cartoon insured that your cartoon wouldn’t be reprinted in newspapers, but I noticed this Pat Bagley conservative/fart cartoon (below) in my local paper this week.

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