There's No Excuse for the Failure of This Anti-Terror Campaign (Save for the Abject Timidity of Those Who Created It)

In an effort to launch the equivalent of a "see something, say something" campaign on the London transit system, British Transport Police tread extra carefully. They didn't, for example, feature a photo of a potential jihadi terrorist packing heat in a rucksack because, as they explained, they wanted "to avoid singling out any group or part of the community."

Walking on eggshells  so as to avoid "offending" anyone will only get you so far when, for example, you employ illustrations that allude to Nazi iconography of Jewry. FYI, the campaign which took pains to avoid giving offense ending up giving plenty of it by using this illustration



which some say is strangely reminiscent of this illustration:



My thoughts: Perhaps the similarity between the two images is entirely accidental. Then again, maybe the Jew-hate in the U.K. is so deep-seated and yet so unconscious that when a British illustrator wants to depict a dangerous "other," he can't help but come up with an image that may or may not be Naziesque, but that is decidedly Shylockian.

Also--a campaign intended to raise peoples' vigilance has now completely backfired and has ended up Muslims, once again, look like the victims here. (Which, I have to say, would likely never have happened had the Transit Police had the cojones to depict those who are the actual threat. Failing to do so has the result, instead, in turning Muslims into the victims.)