ABSTRACT
Editorial cartoons provided a unique visual window into public opinion in two different communities campaigning for control of Palestine in the years between the Palestinian Revolt of 1936-39 and the Nakba. Both Palestinians and Jews were in the process of imagining and reimagining their respective nations, a drama that unfolded in each group's press, especially through the medium of editorial cartoons. They linked the fate of the Jews to the fate of free peoples everywhere, establishing Jewish nation as part of the community of democratic nations. Cartoons in the Arab press during this time illuminated the atrocities of Hitler's establishment of a continental empire, which needs to be read as a critique of Zionist settler colonialism in Palestine. The Jewish press passionately argued for British decolonization and for Jewish people to be left to determine their own destiny. The creation of the state of Israel in 1948 and subsequent ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from within its borders were never predestined.
