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02/03/2006:

"Threat to Europeans over 'hostile' Mohamed cartoons"

As the European press asserted its right to publish hostile cartoons of the Prophet Mohamed, anger in the Arab world reached boiling point in Gaza where gunmen converged on European Union offices and gave the Danish, Norwegian, French and German governments 48 hours to apologise.

In the West Bank city of Nablus, a German citizen was seized - and later released - after armed militants roamed hotels threatening to kidnap nationals of European countries in which the cartoons - one of which shows the Prophet wearing a turban in the shape of a bomb with a burning fuse - have been published.

Newspapers in France, Italy, Spain, Germany, and the Netherlands reprinted one or more of the Danish cartoons that have caused the storm.

Yesterday's incidents prompted the EU to review the security of its representatives in the occupied Palestinian territories, where armed militants warned the staff at its Technical Assistance Office in Gaza City that they were demanding that all French citizens leave Gaza.

"Any citizen of these countries [that printed the cartoon] who are present in Gaza will put themselves in danger," a gunman in a Fatah-linked armed unit said at the site.
independent.co.uk

This is not a matter of press freedom or church and state; it's rabid jingoism, 'yellow journalism' as part of the lead-up to a full-on war. Just flip the script: what if al Jazeera published a cartoon of Jesus on the cross with an AK-47?