What a Country! Dry Bones Looks at Israel

by Yaakov Kirschen, Yossi Klein Halevi (Introduction)

This collection of more than 300 cartoons created over the last twenty-three years, including a dozen up-to-the-moment ones, takes an often witty, always heartfelt, and sometimes biting look at life in Israel. The book shows the flow of Israeli history as it unfolds "hot off the press." Each of the cartoons is published here without the luxury of hindsight - it is Israeli history as the Israelis have lived it. The book is introduced by Israeli journalist and writer Yossi Klein Halevi.

Yaakov Kirschen is the American-born Israeli political cartoonist whose Jerusalem-based Dry Bones comic strip runs in The Jerusalem Report and thirty-five North American newspapers. In addition to his weekly drawing of Dry Bones, he has written three other books. He has been widely interviewed on radio and television, including the major networks, Cable News Network (CNN), National Public Radio (NPR), and the wire services. Kirschen moved to Israel in 1973 and has been drawing Dry Bones ever since. He now lives in Tel Aviv.

For its many fans around the globe, Dry Bones provides a window into what Israelis think, feel, and experience, and the strip is often quoted and reprinted in the world press. Kirschen has received personal accolades from Edgar Bronfman, Admiral Rickover, Malcolm Forbes, former President Jimmy Carter, the former Jerusalem mayor Teddy Kollek, and many more.

Yossi Klein Halevi is a senior writer for The Jerusalem Report and author of Memoirs of a Jewish Extremist: An American Story. He has written for The New York Times and Time magazine and is a frequent commentator on Israeli affairs for The Los Angeles Times.

Genres: Israel, Comics

288 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 1996

About the author

Yaakov Kirschen, Political Analyst, Yale Fellow, Blogger, and Dry Bones Cartoonist.

Kirschen was born in Brooklyn NY in 1938. He studied art at Queens College and became a cartoonist after he graduated in 1961.

In 1971 he moved to Israel, changed his first name from Jerry to Yaakov, and in 1973 began drawing a daily editorial strip called Dry Bones, which has become internationally syndicated and is known as Israel’s Political Comic Strip. Kirschen is a member of both America’s National Cartoonists Society and the Israeli Cartoonists Society.

He was, in parallel with his career as a cartoonist, been an innovative computer game designer and inventor. His company LKP ltd. has done work for major computer and game companies both in Israel and in the U.S.

In 2009, Dry Bones cartoonist Yaakov Kirschen was made a “visiting fellow” and “artist in residence” of Yale University’s Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism and Racism (YIISA).

In 2010, Yale published Kirschen’s ground-breaking working paper entitled “Memetics and the Viral Spread of Antisemitism through “Coded Images in Political Cartoons”. The paper identifies antisemitism as a behavioral virus, isolates its three viral strains, and reveals its use by totalitarian movements in their attempts to conquer the West.

In October of 2010 Kirschen presented his revolutionary findings at Yale in a presentation called “Secret Codes, Hidden War”. The “Hidden War” is the war against free and Democratic societies. The “Secret Codes” are the codified and virally spread anti Jewish libels used in that war. The presence of these codes in political cartoons should be seen as symptoms of a deeper sickness.

He wrote a Dry Bones Blog which he started in 2005 dedicated to combating the willful rewriting of history and fighting the spread of antisemitism.


Biography courtesy of Koren Publishers