Footnotes in Gaza: A Graphic Novel
Ridenhour Book Prize Winner
Eisner Award Winner for Nonfiction
"Sacco brings the conflict down to the most human level, allowing us to imagine our way inside it, to make the desperation he discovers, in some small way, our own."—Los Angeles Times
From one of the leading cartoonists of our time comes an ambitious and timely historical excavation.
Rafah, a town at the bottommost tip of the Gaza Strip, has long been a notorious flashpoint in the bitter Middle East conflict. Buried deep in the archives is one bloody incident, in 1956, that left 111 Palestinians shot dead by Israeli soldiers. Seemingly a footnote to a long history of killing, that day in Rafah—cold-blooded massacre or dreadful mistake—reveals the competing truths that have come to define an intractable war.
In a quest to get to the heart of what happened, Joe Sacco immerses himself in the daily life of Rafah and the neighboring town of Khan Younis, uncovering Gaza past and present. As in Palestine and Safe Area Goražde, his unique visual journalism renders a contested landscape in brilliant, meticulous detail. Spanning fifty years, moving fluidly between one war and the next, Footnotes in Gaza—Sacco's most ambitious work to date—transforms a critical conflict of our age into intimate and immediate experience.
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Community Reviews
This is another pro-Palestine and anti-Israel book. Here Joe Sacco takes a step further compared to his Palestine book. He uses a stronger biased storytelling with a more forcefully constructed bias. Which is a shame as I think it's a step back.
Firstly, let's go over the rebel fighting and attacks on kibbutz and fights between armed units. Some of the biases I spot are that every single terrorist attack is prefaced with "but Israel attacked civilians first that year". The first few times I just thought "man, Israel sure messed up by being evil in this instance". But after he keeps doing it I started to be a tad more critical. Surely Israel didn't force the hand of Palestinian guerillas and terrorists each time? These terrorists were surely not some liberal calm rational thinkers just waiting around. There must have been attacks where they themselves did them in a peaceful period in time. But it's not presented this way here. And I don't know details about these stories from other books so I can't say what the truth is. But Sacco gets his stories from the terrorists themselves and they are surely not unbiased. How true are these stories? I assume all contain facts and nothing is fully made up. But most times the terrorists would want to depict themselves as having worse weapons or no weapons. And Israeli soldiers are presented as evil and powerful. I think the best way to see this comic book is as the Palestinian history as they themselves tell it. And as there is not much evidence for some of this they can tell it their own way. They show some terrorist attacks on kibbutz with killed women and children. And maybe that started some of the counter attacks?
The first big event he seeks out to describe is what happened in Khan Yunis. UN called it an incident and the Palestinian side is defining it as a massacre. The UN report showed 2 conflicting stories. Israelies said it was a gun fight and in this book Sacco shows it as a massacre of civilian men. The gun fight version is not illustrated as he doesn't believe Israeli claims for any story. I would think if Israeli had planned it as a genocide they would aim for women and children, not young men. Here it's just shown happening and we don't get the other side of the story which is a shame as they could explain what the intention was. Was there a goal? If we know about the defense or counter story we can maybe easily figure out who is lying. But the only Israeli story he found that described any crime was from a book where a soldier said someone killed a doctor for no reason. Another Israeli who was there says even this sounds like a fake story. But we needed a bit more from him to see if he can keep his facts straight. The Palestinians couldn't quite keep the story straight. But it's just a very old event so maybe they forgot. One guy claims he was there which sounds false. Other details feel wrong. It's weird as in the Bosnia genocide book where they genocide Bosnian Serbs he makes sure to interview professors so there if there is a big story we see a panel with a professor giving his opinion on the rumors. It makes it feel valid and truthful as even academics are not disputing it. Here because Sacco dislikes Israel he doesn't get an academic side to any of it. But there are plenty of progressive academics in Israel and many are against Israel and are pro Palestine. So it's weird he couldn't find a single one. Many are also Muslim at any rate.
Because of how many false stories Hamas creates today we have to be a tad more critical. During the current war the biggest story by far was when they claimed Israel bombed a hospital and 500 civilians died. The West went in panic mode and Israel received enormous hate. Yet the story sounded off. How could they count bodies in hours? Even in the West it takes some weeks. And then it was uncovered it was a Hamas rocket and it didn't even hit the hospital. Their storytelling can be a bit creative. But even so I for sure think there would have been nasty events ongoing. Maybe even bigger than this that we don't know about. When Bosnian Serbs genocided Bosnian Muslims, in his other book, they were very keen on burying them right away or throwing them into the river. Then getting to the mass graves later to remove evidence. Here Israelies committed a massacre and let the bodies remain in the street? This part I don't believe whatsoever. Unless you think you killed soldiers in a battle you don't just leave the bodies. But what did they think? Why would they leave the bodies behind?
Second story is stronger logically. More people speak and some events did happen for sure as he has plenty of sources for them. Israel again today claims it was a fight with rebels. These old Muslims tells a different story. Unfortunately the lack of explaining WHY Israelies react this way makes it a tad harder to fully jump into with an open mind. And we see the bias issue bite the author. If we truly are to comprehend that they kick civilians around and shoot them then we need to understand their emotional state. Sacco always explains the Palestinian revenge killings only after presenting the initial Israeli ones. So here he can't preface this story with any clear logic as it has to take place before the outcome. Hence the massacre has to happen before any Palestinian does anything evil and it makes it all feel ahistorical and illogical as the Israelis have no reason to do this and no emotional pull to act this way. If he presented it as an outcome it would be way easier to understand and trust as angry soldiers do lash out, that's just a fact.
The whole thing has a small Israel and UN commentary at the end. But the visual story is already told his way at this point.
Overall this is way too long. I think it was a big mistake to have 2 massacres one after another. Even 1 feels very long and macabre. 2 feel like 3 comic books in one and I started to get really bored at the end as he always moves in and out of stories. It's a big step down from Palestine the comic book that I greatly enjoyed. Here I did look up facts online too. But it's all very vague. And I just feel the same way he feels in the comic book at the very end. Confused and in a way I feel like I'm seeing this thought a big Western journalism mindset with a focus on death and the macabre to sell the story. He meets several Palestinian historians and then doesn't interview them. Why? Because it's not macabre enough? I think a comic book is the wrong way to tell these stories. Often in the images we see Israeli soldiers looking pure evil or swing a stick with full force at the Arabs. It looked comedic in the drawings at times. And I have the same issue with Holocaust comic books. It just never looks proper. It always feels like an author drawing his own thing. I much rather have this presented in a proper book.
The young men he interviewed told him to focus on the here and now instead as he did this during a war. So they were running from bullets. And he even befriended many terrorists, one on the run, and many regular people were celebrating American deaths in Iraq. Those parts should have been the main focus. And the massacres left for a proper and more detailed book where we can go over all sides carefully. A personal exploration that focuses on the past feels like a miss. I know this is great and detailed work with plenty of stories. But frankly it feels like it's missing the glory of the Palestine comic book. And even with that book I had similar problems. He focuses on interviewing people in Gaza and overlooks the people they blame. There they blame doctors and soldiers. And he could easily interview current or former workers in Israel to get their view yet never did. And here this part is like 2 pages with only 2 soldiers. And he then blames the soldiers for not saying more. But he's running from tanks and bullets to get his stories here. He can't walk around Tel Aviv with an ice cream to visit happy and safe former soldiers?
Firstly, let's go over the rebel fighting and attacks on kibbutz and fights between armed units. Some of the biases I spot are that every single terrorist attack is prefaced with "but Israel attacked civilians first that year". The first few times I just thought "man, Israel sure messed up by being evil in this instance". But after he keeps doing it I started to be a tad more critical. Surely Israel didn't force the hand of Palestinian guerillas and terrorists each time? These terrorists were surely not some liberal calm rational thinkers just waiting around. There must have been attacks where they themselves did them in a peaceful period in time. But it's not presented this way here. And I don't know details about these stories from other books so I can't say what the truth is. But Sacco gets his stories from the terrorists themselves and they are surely not unbiased. How true are these stories? I assume all contain facts and nothing is fully made up. But most times the terrorists would want to depict themselves as having worse weapons or no weapons. And Israeli soldiers are presented as evil and powerful. I think the best way to see this comic book is as the Palestinian history as they themselves tell it. And as there is not much evidence for some of this they can tell it their own way. They show some terrorist attacks on kibbutz with killed women and children. And maybe that started some of the counter attacks?
The first big event he seeks out to describe is what happened in Khan Yunis. UN called it an incident and the Palestinian side is defining it as a massacre. The UN report showed 2 conflicting stories. Israelies said it was a gun fight and in this book Sacco shows it as a massacre of civilian men. The gun fight version is not illustrated as he doesn't believe Israeli claims for any story. I would think if Israeli had planned it as a genocide they would aim for women and children, not young men. Here it's just shown happening and we don't get the other side of the story which is a shame as they could explain what the intention was. Was there a goal? If we know about the defense or counter story we can maybe easily figure out who is lying. But the only Israeli story he found that described any crime was from a book where a soldier said someone killed a doctor for no reason. Another Israeli who was there says even this sounds like a fake story. But we needed a bit more from him to see if he can keep his facts straight. The Palestinians couldn't quite keep the story straight. But it's just a very old event so maybe they forgot. One guy claims he was there which sounds false. Other details feel wrong. It's weird as in the Bosnia genocide book where they genocide Bosnian Serbs he makes sure to interview professors so there if there is a big story we see a panel with a professor giving his opinion on the rumors. It makes it feel valid and truthful as even academics are not disputing it. Here because Sacco dislikes Israel he doesn't get an academic side to any of it. But there are plenty of progressive academics in Israel and many are against Israel and are pro Palestine. So it's weird he couldn't find a single one. Many are also Muslim at any rate.
Because of how many false stories Hamas creates today we have to be a tad more critical. During the current war the biggest story by far was when they claimed Israel bombed a hospital and 500 civilians died. The West went in panic mode and Israel received enormous hate. Yet the story sounded off. How could they count bodies in hours? Even in the West it takes some weeks. And then it was uncovered it was a Hamas rocket and it didn't even hit the hospital. Their storytelling can be a bit creative. But even so I for sure think there would have been nasty events ongoing. Maybe even bigger than this that we don't know about. When Bosnian Serbs genocided Bosnian Muslims, in his other book, they were very keen on burying them right away or throwing them into the river. Then getting to the mass graves later to remove evidence. Here Israelies committed a massacre and let the bodies remain in the street? This part I don't believe whatsoever. Unless you think you killed soldiers in a battle you don't just leave the bodies. But what did they think? Why would they leave the bodies behind?
Second story is stronger logically. More people speak and some events did happen for sure as he has plenty of sources for them. Israel again today claims it was a fight with rebels. These old Muslims tells a different story. Unfortunately the lack of explaining WHY Israelies react this way makes it a tad harder to fully jump into with an open mind. And we see the bias issue bite the author. If we truly are to comprehend that they kick civilians around and shoot them then we need to understand their emotional state. Sacco always explains the Palestinian revenge killings only after presenting the initial Israeli ones. So here he can't preface this story with any clear logic as it has to take place before the outcome. Hence the massacre has to happen before any Palestinian does anything evil and it makes it all feel ahistorical and illogical as the Israelis have no reason to do this and no emotional pull to act this way. If he presented it as an outcome it would be way easier to understand and trust as angry soldiers do lash out, that's just a fact.
The whole thing has a small Israel and UN commentary at the end. But the visual story is already told his way at this point.
Overall this is way too long. I think it was a big mistake to have 2 massacres one after another. Even 1 feels very long and macabre. 2 feel like 3 comic books in one and I started to get really bored at the end as he always moves in and out of stories. It's a big step down from Palestine the comic book that I greatly enjoyed. Here I did look up facts online too. But it's all very vague. And I just feel the same way he feels in the comic book at the very end. Confused and in a way I feel like I'm seeing this thought a big Western journalism mindset with a focus on death and the macabre to sell the story. He meets several Palestinian historians and then doesn't interview them. Why? Because it's not macabre enough? I think a comic book is the wrong way to tell these stories. Often in the images we see Israeli soldiers looking pure evil or swing a stick with full force at the Arabs. It looked comedic in the drawings at times. And I have the same issue with Holocaust comic books. It just never looks proper. It always feels like an author drawing his own thing. I much rather have this presented in a proper book.
The young men he interviewed told him to focus on the here and now instead as he did this during a war. So they were running from bullets. And he even befriended many terrorists, one on the run, and many regular people were celebrating American deaths in Iraq. Those parts should have been the main focus. And the massacres left for a proper and more detailed book where we can go over all sides carefully. A personal exploration that focuses on the past feels like a miss. I know this is great and detailed work with plenty of stories. But frankly it feels like it's missing the glory of the Palestine comic book. And even with that book I had similar problems. He focuses on interviewing people in Gaza and overlooks the people they blame. There they blame doctors and soldiers. And he could easily interview current or former workers in Israel to get their view yet never did. And here this part is like 2 pages with only 2 soldiers. And he then blames the soldiers for not saying more. But he's running from tanks and bullets to get his stories here. He can't walk around Tel Aviv with an ice cream to visit happy and safe former soldiers?
