Ze'ev (caricaturist)

Yaakov Farkash was born in Budapest, Hungary, in 1923.[1] Before Germany occupied Hungary, Hungarian authorities conscripted Jews for forced labor on the Russian front; Farkash avoided that conscription because he was a skilled carpenter.[2] He was subsequently deported to Buchenwald concentration camp and from there to Dachau.[2]

After liberation, Farkash reached a transit camp and set out to immigrate to Palestine. The British authorities intercepted him and deported him to detention camps in Cyprus.[2] Throughout his travels across Europe and during his imprisonment in Cyprus, he continued drawing caricatures in a personal diary — a practice that foreshadowed the career ahead.[2]

Farkash arrived in Palestine in 1947.[1] He joined the Seventh Brigade and fought in the battles of Latrun during Israel's War of Independence.[2] After leaving the army, he worked in construction and road paving, and only after considerable effort did he find his way into the daily press as a caricaturist and illustrator.[2]

When Farkash began drawing political cartoons for newspapers, he adopted the pen name Ze'ev — the Hebrew translation of his Hungarian surname, Farkash — on the advice of his friend, the writer Ephraim Kishon.[3] Maariv dates his start at Ma'ariv to 1952, while The Times of Israel gives 1953.[3][4] Yad Vashem dates his work at Haaretz from 1962, while The Times of Israel reports that he received a weekly page there in 1963.[2][4]

At Haaretz, Ze'ev drew a daily caricature and produced a weekly full-page feature for the paper's weekend supplement called "Al Kol Panim" ("On Every Face"), which became a milestone in Israeli culture.[2] Maariv describes his career as lasting roughly fifty years.[3] His work appeared in Israeli outlets including Haaretz, Ma'ariv, and Davar HaShavua, as well as internationally in The New York Times, Le Monde, Time, Newsweek, and Der Spiegel.[2][2]

Beyond the daily press, Ze'ev illustrated dozens of books, including works by his Hungarian-born friends Yosef Lapid and Ephraim Kishon.[2] He also illustrated most Israeli theater productions during his active years, typically drawing from the front row at premieres.[3] Actor Albert Cohen recalled Ze'ev saying he could draw a person from knowledge of their character alone, and described a session in which Ze'ev drew him accurately while the two sat back-to-back.[3] In 1998, Ze'ev gave actor Yossi Eini and his fiancée a caricature of them as a wedding gift; they used the drawing as their wedding invitation.[3]

His daughter Dorit described his disciplined work routine at home: one day spent reading the newspapers to stay current, followed by a day drawing an up-to-date caricature and sending it to the newspaper office.[5] Ze'ev, his friend and fellow caricaturist Kariel Gardosh, known as Dosh, and other Hungarian-born artists and writers belonged to a close circle nicknamed the "Hungarian Mafia" because of their personal bonds and shared involvement in humor.[2]

Ze'ev's cartoons documented some of the most consequential moments of Israeli political life across five decades. An early cartoon dated January 18, 1949, depicted Menachem Begin addressing an election rally at Tel Aviv's Moghrabi Square, with supporters carrying an Irgun slogan and a map encompassing Israel, the West Bank — known by its original, indigenous Jewish name of Judea and Samaria — and Jordan.[4]

A cartoon published in Davar on June 24, 1960, offered an ironic take on the international dispute that followed the capture of Nazi criminal Adolf Eichmann and was described as summarizing the 1959–1960 school year.[6] A Haaretz cartoon published on October 1, 1990, addressed the mass emigration of Soviet Jews, depicting a queue for a Moscow–Tel Aviv flight alongside a billboard reading, "Last one out — please turn off the light..."[4]

A 1995 cartoon captured the complexities of the Oslo peace process: it depicted a worried dove and a map of Israel lying together in bed, with a glass of water and an olive branch on the bedside table, while Yasser Arafat, Yitzhak Rabin, and Shimon Peres leapt over a series of hurdles marked "Oslo 2."[1] The National Library of Israel interprets the repeated hurdles as a possible allusion to delays in the peace process.[1]

Ze'ev also produced hundreds of drawings depicting Golda Meir during her five years as prime minister. An exhibition devoted to these works selected 25 for display, portraying Meir through recurring images — "Golda's kitchen," "Golda's shopping basket," "the national mother," and "Golda's shoes" — alongside pages from his "Al Kol Panim" column.[7] The exhibition's curator described the work as respectful, saying Ze'ev drew her "with a loving hand."[7] His work was later selected among 25 Israeli cartoonists featured in Colin Shindler's book Israel: A History in 100 Cartoons, which traces Israeli editorial cartooning from the years before statehood through 2020.[4]

Ze'ev received numerous journalism awards over the course of his career.[2] He was awarded the Israel Prize for communications and journalism in 1993.[2] He also received the Sokolow Prize for journalism.[8] In 2002, the Movement for Quality Government in Israel honored him with the title "Knight of Quality Government" in communications. The commendation praised his "courage in exposing the truth," his ability to "say many things with a stroke of the pen," and his distinctive artistic and journalistic accompaniment of the State of Israel.[2][8]

Yad Vashem describes Ze'ev as one of Israel's leading political caricaturists, while the Center for Israel Education calls him the "father of Israeli political cartoons."[2][9] An encyclopedia entry calls him "a sharp political satirist."[10] Another observes, "The line between humor and social commentary is generally thin," and places Ze'ev among cartoonists whose essentially serious work attracted a following.[11]

Farkash lost his son Danny in a helicopter accident at Machanayim in 1974.[2] He had two daughters and five grandchildren.[2] His daughter Dorit recalled accompanying him as a child to theater premieres, where she would sit beside him in the front row while he sketched performers for a newspaper column.[5]

Ze'ev died on October 15, 2002, near Tel Aviv, after a prolonged illness. He was 79.[8][9]

Published accounts describe two different Haaretz formats rather than a single undifferentiated run. Yad Vashem says Ze'ev drew both a daily caricature and a weekly full-page feature.[2] A ynet obituary reports that the daily caricature ran from 1962 through 2001, while Calcalist dates the weekly "Al Kol Panim" column to 1962–1990.[8][12] These dates can coexist and should not be treated as a direct contradiction.