Leon Hadar has pointed me to a racist cartoon of Barack Obama that appeared in Ma'ariv, an Israeli newspaper, showing Obama painting the White House black.

Hadar writes that the cartoon is a further effort by Israelis to question whether "Obama is good for the Jews." I think it's worse. The black paint is a kind of "schwarzer" joke, to use the Yiddish word for blacks that I grew up hearing. It isn't funny.

In its way it is reminiscent of the racist cartoon of Condoleezza Rice that appeared in the Palestinian press after she declared the Lebanon war to be the "birth pangs" of a democratic Middle East.

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The cartoon showed Rice pregnant and giving birth to a monkey. Ugly. Palestinians and Israelis are the Shi'ites and Sunnis of their particular sectarian corner of the Middle East. They hate each other and are diminished by the hatred, and think in racial terms. Not for us; Obama is helping the U.S. get way past that...