“Now people have started to understand the importance of cartoons; that they’re more powerful than a column; that a good and apt drawing could express much more than words. Visuality is engraved upon the mind and that’s what we intend. There are some peaks, though sad, thanks to which we understand the power of a drawing,” says Internet cartoonist Or Reichert, who has drawn cartoons for major Israeli newspapers in the past and today runs a popular Facebook page.

The distribution of the first issue of Charlie Hebdo after the Jan. 7 massacre in Paris at the publication's office was accompanied in Israel by a small scandal Jan. 25, when the retail bookseller Steimatzky wanted to hold a sales event for several hundred copies. This brought a vocal protest from Muslim elements in Israel, in response to which Avigdor Liberman, the foreign minister and chairman of Yisrael Beitenu Party, called on his activists to purchase “thousands of copies” and distribute them for free, as an act of support of freedom of speech. In the end, Steimatzky canceled the event, and sold the issue only online. The limited number of issues sold out within minutes.

Israeli cartoons have a storied legacy, but in Israel the limits on cartoonists are more restrictive from the outset than those in France. Criminal law in Israel forbids insulting the sensibilities of religion and ethics. While there are ways of skirting these prohibitions, it’s hard to believe that a senior cartoonist in Israel would want to directly insult Prophet Muhammad and that there would be an Israeli publisher who would agree to publish such a cartoon. 

Perhaps here lies the constraint that most limits Israeli cartoonists: the desire to convey criticism in a subtle and implicit way to a public that consumes powerful news every minute. The tragedy of Charlie Hebdo has suddenly drawn public attention to local cartoonists much more than usual.