Scandinavians are once again reminded that in some parts of the world, freedom of expression is just an expression like “take a walk on the wild side” and “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers”.

Official: Thou shalt not produce cartoons, whether flattering or otherwise, of biblical characters for this is offensive to people of other faiths in other countries.

Even Bill Clinton has chimed in with his two cents’ worth (though he probably got paid more than that) saying that Islamophobia is on the increase in Europe and on par with bygone antisemitism. There again, Jews play the role of societal dipstick, checking if the oil needs a change (no pun intended). How do a few cartoons in the Scandinavian press compare to the systematic defamation of Jews by generations of European Jew-haters?

We could cross-reference these ‘islamophobic’ cartoons with Nazi antisemitic cartoons to see if Clinton even knows what he’s talking about, but we can go one better than that. We can compare the Scandinavian and other Western cartoons with the cartoonery of the Arab press. What you find is a rehashing of European antisemitism - now with Arabic lettering instead of German.

The contradiction running through much of the Muslim grievance is that they’re shocked by such imagery of their prophet Muhammed, but don’t twitch even an eyelash at recycled Christian and Nazi antisemitism in the Arab press. If you can disguise it as Israeli leaders or soldiers, anything’s fair game - including the Blood Libel and the Holocaust.

Bugle Call to the uninitiated: there is a semantical and etymological deathmatch around the term ‘antisemitism‘ itself. You see, Arabs can’t be antisemitic for they are semites. Perhaps Brits can’t be anti-European because they are European. Maybe even psychopaths can’t be inhuman because they are human. Of course, once you remove the euphemism antisemitism and replace it with Jew-hatred, the semitic-Arab gambit disappears and you can get back to addressing the vicious attacks against Jews as a race/religion/people in the Arab - and sometimes Western - press.

So here goes.

Some of the offending ‘Islamophobic’ cartoons can be found here. Compare them to the rehashed blood libel where Ariel Sharon is depicted (left) drinking the blood of those he’s allegedly massacred. We know what happened centuries ago as a reaction to the blood libel: Jews were killed. I wonder what steps to peace the cartoonist intends with rehashing the blood libel in these hotheaded times?

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Then there’s the cartoon which in light of the unrelenting terrorist attacks on Israelis by Arabs in recent years is more a joke on Arabs and their deluded vindication of any crime or wrong-doing.

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And if you thought that it’s only the likes of Sharon or Likudists that get old European antisemitism thrown at them by Arab ‘victim’ cartoonists and journalists, think again. Here’s Ehud Barak, the once Labour Prime Minister who was willing to give up more land than even Yitzak Rabin, being depicted as Adolf Hitler - this time with Arab blood on his hands.

What I take from this is that it’s one thing for Muslims to be outraged and offended at Danish or Norwegian expression, it’s quite another when the same group of people have no qualms about spreading hatred against Jews or reading it in their daily newspapers as if it were as natural and acceptable as the air we all breathe.

I don’t think the Arab press should be censored for expressing itself in the way it does. With the Arab version of free expression, we get to know what the Arab street really thinks and feels. Censorship would do nothing to stop those feelings. We have to deal with the root causes to get to the bottom of it all. It has a huge influence on the Arab public - far more than the effect a few cartoons involving Muhammed in the Scandinavian press has over Scandinavian popular thought, where most, if not all, of it is dismissed as a parody on current events.

Besides, if we stop expressing ourselves for fear of offending someone, somewhere, where do we end up? With a Hamas government probably…