Satire or anti-Semitism? Looking at Goya

'Exactly as Goya does, Brown accuses a political leader of sacrificing his own children'

Amid the considerable volume of protest and complaint stirred up by Dave Brown's cartoon of Ariel Sharon, there may be discerned some genuine offence rather than lobbying, and it would be wrong to discount that. The image suggests that Sharon is murdering children as part of his election campaign, an accusation that is likely to awaken not just disagreement, but distress. Nevertheless, it may be worth trying to read the cartoon simply as an image, to see if its context and means provide any explanation of so gross an insult.

The image is based on a painting by Goya, the late Saturn Devouring One of His Sons of 1819-23. It is a mythological scene of horrible violence, but in itself it carries a specific political charge. It has always been read as a comment on internecine war, a pendant to the Disasters of War series. The implication of the image is that political rulers are murdering the poor, for whom they ought to bear a parental responsibility. The basis of Brown's image is no less deliberately offensive than his use of it.

The ironic variation of a work of high art is a long-established practice of English satirical art. Hogarth and Gillray routinely parodied old masters and contemporary academic art to make an unexpected point. In this case, however, it is less an ironic variation of an original than a simple restatement. Like Goya, Brown accuses a political leader of sacrificing his own "children".

I think we can start to see a real, substantial point to Brown's argument. The image refuses to accept, as many of the protesters assert, that the Palestinians are not Sharon's responsibility; he is Saturn, devouring his own children. It cuts across the idea of "Sharon's people" against "Arafat's people" and shockingly maintains that the Palestinians are not primarily Sharon's enemies, but his children.

The central plank of the attack on the image is the accusation that it is actively anti-Semitic. That is a difficult question to address, because the history of the caricature of Jewish people is substantially one of anti-Semitism, but it should not, per se, be impossible to produce a caricature of any Jewish person without resorting to anti-Semitic stereotypes. The history of anti-Semitic caricature makes it improper, for instance, to exaggerate the size of a subject's nose, and yet that is one of the standard practices of caricature.

What is apparent to me is that the accusation made by the cartoon, though severe, is one that ought to be within the means of graphic satire. Similar pictures were produced of Mrs Thatcher in her prime. Critics of the image should ask themselves, above all, not whether they agree with it, but how this accusation would be made, with the same legitimate force, by a cartoonist with no anti-Semitic prejudices; because, surely, everyone must concede that criticism of a specific policy of a specific Israeli government need not proceed from racial prejudice. I think the answer is that it would look very much as the cartoon actually does.