From the sketch pad of JTA political cartoonist Noah Bee came images of Moshe Dayan as a modern-day David standing over Goliath after the Six-Day War and Golda Meir exchanging recipes with Richard Nixon on how to direct Israeli-Arab negotiations.
These drawings helped change the way the world viewed Israel, and the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia is celebrating his work with an exhibit, “With Eyes Toward Zion: The Political Cartoons of Noah Bee.” Fifty of Bee’s drawings are on display until the end of August.
Born Noah Birzowski in Warsaw in 1916, he eventually moved to pre-state Palestine. He changed his name to Bee, the initial letters from the Hebrew Ben- Yisrael, or Son of Israel.
Bee’s first cartoons were published for the Palestine Post, which later became the Jerusalem Post, and other publications in Palestine.
In 1943, during the midst of the Holocaust, Bee and his wife, Marian, moved to the United States. It was then, during the Holocaust, that Bee realized the impact his cartoons could have.
“I felt that I should channel my ideas and endeavors to subjects closest to my heart; that of Jewish safety and the survival of our people,” Bee wrote in his 1988 book “Israel at 40: Years of Triumphs, Trials, and Errors. An American Cartoonist’s View of Israel.”
Several of his cartoons were published in the Zionist Organization of America’s first publication, “American Zionist,” among them a famous illustration of a Jewish man walking with open arms toward a rising sun and fertile fields of a sovereign Jewish state.
In 1959, Bee began to draw weekly cartoons for JTA. During a period of 33 years, Bee created almost 1,500 images until his death in 1992.
Bee was not only known for his cartoon commentary on the Middle East, but also for creating the design used on the first paper money circulated in Israel. Bee also created many designs for the Jewish National Fund, including the well- known “blue box,” which brought his artwork and opinions to homes around the world.
Feedback on Bee’s pictorial history exhibit, which chronicles Middle East politics from the 1930s until 1992, has been positive.
“Visitors are very pleased with the exhibit and agree with his point of view,” said Stephen Frank, program director at the Philadelphia museum. “People feel his point of view is very much their own.”
After covering the Arab-Israeli conflict, Bee hoped at the end of his life that political cartoonists of the future would be commenting on a more peaceful Middle East.
“Hopefully, out of the anger and the rage, some semblance of sanity can emerge like Esau and Jacob in the days of old, who after a lifelong hate for each other made peace,” Bee wrote. “So, too, peace can be achieved in this tormented land.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
