Most people find it hard to take cartoons seriously, apart from political satire and that can become a deadly issue, depending on the target. Given the recent Danish cartoon controversy it would seem that comics and religion do not mix well or at least settle well for the believers who see themselves as the target. But what about comic relief for the political struggle between Israel and the Palestinians? Fundamentalist tract artist Jack Chick, whose comic empire is dedicated to winning souls for Christ by drawing on God’s hate, has been using his pen to spread a rather sinister version of the fundamentally reduced Gospel for over 40 years. One of his more recent offerings is called “The Squatters” and it provides a virtual roadmap to apocalypse.

Let’s look at the Palestinian issue the way Jack Chick and Pat Robertson and Franklin Graham and several million other born-again apocalypticists do. If you are not a Bible-belter, I guarantee you will not find what you are about to read very rapturous. First (at least for the first panel of the tract) the ownership issue is easily settled: God created the universe; he has a certain piece of land that he considers “very, very holy” and “it still belongs to God.” Chick as exegete notes that “holy” here means “set aside.” So who was Israel set aside for by its rightful creator/owner? Abraham, of course. But then Sarah, Abraham’s wife (who was well past child-bearing age and barren) messed things up (shades of Eve, perhaps) and encouraged her husband to have sex with her handmaid Hagar, who had a son named Ishmael. But God was not pleased and produced a miracle child named Isaac. Never mind that Isaac almost went up in flames one fine April 1 on Mt. Moriah, Isaac himself had two sons and God decided to love the wrestler Jacob and give him the Holy Land exclusively.

Even though the “12 boys” Jacob sired were a “dysfunctional family” and had to work as slaves in Egypt, they are “God’s chosen people.” The rest is history, mainly a bush-burning God getting really angry and sending plagues on Egypt, then having Joshua go into Canaan and slaughter the evil doers there, then letting Israel’s enemies come in basically at will and either kill the rightful owners of the land or take them into captivity. By the way Solomon’s wives did a number on the righteous King (if you forget about what his testicles were doing when he wrote Canticles), getting him to worship idols.

And imagine this: over time Israel became worse than their enemies. So God just stopped talking with the Israelites altogether until John the Baptist came out of the wilderness. (Note that God chose a Baptist rather than a pope at this crucial moment in history.) Then Jesus came and nobody really believed that God was love, so Chick gives us the new score: “Jesus returned to heaven and set Israel aside. It was a new ball game.”

Now Satan (who lurks around in all Chick’s tracts) comes up with a brilliant plan; he creates the Catholic church, which not only hates and persecutes the Jews (as even Mel Gibson could not disguise with Hollywood passion) but claim to be “spiritual Israel.” All those inquisitions and world wars called secular history were in some way due to the Popes and Jesuits. “After Catholic Germany had murdered six million Jews, God gave the Jews their own nation in 1948,” Chick informs the reader.

And then we discover the real problem of the Palestinians. They made a fateful mistake. Instead of staying home so Israel’s army could protect them, they left fearing “the wrath of Allah,” which Chick lets us know is a “bad choice.” [I doubt Chick thinks Allah is loving and merciful, so there must be another reason for this being a bad choice.] Their Arab neighbors rejected them as trash, and Israel gets the blame for them becoming squatters. These camps produced “Arab gangsters” who are about to launch World War III.

Well, let’s get real here. Satan is pulling the strings and the Catholic Church is controlling the shots. But before this the true Bible believers get air-lifted in the Rapture by Jesus himself (an event which will be a severe blow to Fox News, since few people will be around to watch that channel). So now the Armageddon Bound scenario can continue on dispen[sen]sational course. All hell is let loose and the “Russian and Moslem armies” invade Israel only to get smashed on the mountainsides (at least that is what Ezekiel predicted). Israel survives, of course, signs a pact with the Beastly Goy Catholic church, the Temple (there is only one that counts) is rebuilt, everyone gets AIDs and the armies of the world get ready for the final Mel Gibson climax: Armageddon, the ultimate baptism by blood and brimstone.

For avid gamers, I wish to point out that Chick’s Eternal Warcraft has built-in cheats. Jesus wins, of course, so you are urged to sign onto the winning team before the end game really gets going. The only thing that need be left behind is your brain. No one will need to argue about who owns Israel anymore when the landlord is back. The Creator, in flashy Donald Trump style, has major renovation plans for a New Jerusalem, with all the losers being told they are about to be fired for ever and ever.

There in a nutshell you have one of the reasons the crisis in the holier-than-thou land is not going to be settled soon by a democratic process. Jack Chick says this is what his Bible teaches in plain English. I guess he should know jack, but I think he only knows squat. And that is what makes this comic so tragic.

Daniel Martin Varisco