Comics - Cartoons Competition Winners

The winners are announced for Cartoons Competition by the Jerusalem Press Club and the Israeli Cartoon and Comics Museum ...

[Note - I know, I know this probably shouldn't really be on here but, one year on from the brutality of the Charlie Hebdo massacre it is good to see something so positive coming out of it. Here's the press release, as I thought it deserved some coverage. Susan]

The Jerusalem Press Club (www.jerusalempressclub.com) and the Israeli Cartoon Museum launched a competition among high-school students in Israel, for the best cartoons dealing with the issues of how to relate to the Other, to the Different, to the Believer in other religion.

The terrorist attack on the French magazine Charlie Hebdo raised several questions:How to balance between criticism of religious and social institutions and personalities and the need not to hurt religious feelings? Should the freedom of the cartoonists be limited, because of their work by certain audiences? Adults have been debating this heatedly. Maybe children, with their fresh outlook, expressed artistically in cartoons, could come up with surprising ideas.

The competition, titled “Cartoon, Criticism, Care”, with world renowned cartoonists as jury, has resulted in an exhibition in Jerusalem, displaying the best 20 cartoons. The exhibition will open today, the first anniversary of the attack on Charlie Hebdo. The winner cartoon will be offered to leading newspapers all around the world, and will hopefully run simultaneously and reach millions of readers.

 Here are the top prize winners, with their own personal reasons for their cartoons.

First Prize - The Rabbinate (made by Amit Katz, age 17, from Hadera)

"In Israel, people have to marry under the auspices of the Chief Rabbinate, even if they wish to marry in different ways. In order to marry their loved ones, people have to act like marionettes."

Second Prize - Fun at the Beach 2116 (made by Iosefa Jacobovici, 16, Ra'anana)

"This is the "fun" people will have on their beaches 100 years from now. In the spirit of the competition, I chose to shame the results of the pollution, not the people who are responsible for it."

Third Prize - Haaretz Hayom (made by Hava Herman, 15, Jerusalem)

"By pretending to read high-brow elitist Haaretz newspaper while actually reading popular Yisrael Hayom, the man hides from his partner the views with which he really identifies."

Images - Jerusalem Press