Palestine
Prior to Safe Area Gorazde: The War In Eastern Bosnia 1992-1995--Joe Sacco's breakthrough novel of graphic journalism--the acclaimed author was best known for Palestine, a two-volume graphic novel that won an American Book Award in 1996. Fantagraphics Books is pleased to present the first single-volume collection of this landmark of journalism and the art form of comics. Based on several months of research and an extended visit to the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the early 1990s (where he conducted over 100 interviews with Palestinians and Jews), Palestine was the first major comics work of political and historical nonfiction by Sacco, whose name has since become synonymous with this graphic form of New Journalism. Like Safe Area Gorazde, Palestine has been favorably compared to Art Spiegelman's Pulitzer Prize-winning Maus for its ability to brilliantly navigate such socially and politically sensitive subject matter within the confines of the comic book medium. Sacco has often been called the first comic book journalist, and he is certainly the best. This edition of Palestine also features an introduction from renowned author, critic, and historian Edward Said (Peace and Its Discontents and The Question of Palestine), one of the world's most respected authorities on the Middle Eastern conflict.
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Community Reviews
I've read 3 of his other books. Canadian natives, Bosnia war, and sequel to Bosnia war. Obviously he's a great storyteller though very biased. He always supports the minority as he defines them by applying progressive values. So Canadians are the big bullies, the Canadian natives are the struggling few getting the short end of the stick. With extremely high alcohol and drug abuse rates and most not working and don't care to work as Canada is just paying them for doing nothing. All blamed on Canadians and what happened 50 years ago. In the Bosnia war he supported the Muslims and the Bosnian Serbs are the evil people raping and mass genociding whole villages. UN are the clueless uncaring guys. Basically, minority good and powerful outsiders bad.
This book is quite different because while he in the other books took a side while acting fairly fair to everyone here he outright tells you right away what side he supports and what bias this book will have. There are no 2 ways about this it's a personal propaganda book not a deep critical exploration. I think this case for him is something he feels so intensely about he can't remain unbiased at any point. He supports Palestine and is anti-Israel. In the other books he carefully follows a few people at work. So he observes everything carefully and interviews friends to check up on stories. Then follows them over months. You understand what is true and what may be a tad creative retelling. And everything lines up. Here the Palestinians in the West Bank pull him into a hospital showing him individuals who have been shot. Just push him from bed to bed with new sob stories and absolutely zero critical exploration. I'm not sure he even looks at criminal records. This leans more towards the outrage storytelling structure than progressive biased overview like the Canada book. In the hospital a little girl tells him that she threw a rock at soldiers and they shot her. It's well-known that Israeli soldiers are bombarded with rocks daily and that they first fire warning shots then shoot back if they are in danger. So you wonder how each event actually happened. Maybe he's more inexperienced here or maybe it's just how Palestinians go about their one-sided messaging. With zero paper trails shown. With questionable source checking where there is only 1 side of the story. I would have loved him to interview prison guards and Israeli soldiers. Some are super progressive and would readily admit to any harm or bullying they spotted. We are talking about Israelis so progressive they likely would see Sacco as right-winger. They are not really hiding what they see. They support Palestine over Israel and often hate Israel. But even if he only finds conservative Israeli police officers it would still tell us if they are lying. One can spot this. Instead he only sees them from afar always drawing them as mean bullies. Which they may very well be I just don't think this book proves the point.
One thing to note is that this is early 90's West Bank where there was way more violence and more terrorist attacks. Before the wall was built that shut down terrorist attacks in Israel from several times a week to once a month. Back then Palestinians could travel into a big city and suicide bomb a target or plant a bomb easily. Israel has closed down roads and checks IDs which diminished violence everywhere. One could ask a lot of questions about what is going on and what Israel could do. But our new experiences finally answer it. With comparisons to the October 7 Hamas attack, Hamas taking over Gaza and their government funding all being used to strike Israel, and then mainly the Afghanistan failure and the new more calm West Bank. It all reveals patterns we couldn't know back then where it seemed like Israel created all violence and that peace and self-governance would finally make it all settle down. Now Afghanistan reveals a new image. Unless you are patrolling the street daily violence will appear naturally and especially women will be in serious danger from the radical Muslims. I think Gaza vs. West Bank anno 2025 pretty much tells us everything we need to know about what was happening all along and what choices we have. And what would happen if West Bank gets to run itself without any oversight. We also have extreme Muslim immigration to Europe now and these Muslims again show culture clashes that are exactly the same as we see in West Bank, but just more controlled as Western cops have greater control in their own countries while West Bank is sorta independent. He visits women in the West Bank claiming they can't do anything about domestic violence as Islam and some Islamic groups fight against them so they have no woman movement.
He travels to Gaza and man this doesn't look good at all. All women wear hijab. He keeps asking them why and every single person claims it's voluntary. Yet every single woman wears one so are they free to choose? He sees thousands of people in that time and didn't spot a single woman who doesn't make the choice to not wear it. Indeed Hamas is in control. Gazans are poor. Israel allows some trade, but there are a ton of papers to fill out. Gazans depend on Israel for water and electricity and even wages. The ones who can travel there for work do it even if it takes 4 hours each day and transportation eats half of your wages. I keep asking myself why? Imagine if Israel depended on Syria to give them electricity and then most didn't even pay for it. Where are the Gaza powerplants and factories? It's not even that they are poor and not working. Some use a hole in the ground as a toilet and many don't have watertight roofs. All this isn't offensive in any way as people have a right to live as they like. Not all have electricity and not all countries are building powerplants - the West should not force people to pick a lifestyle they want for them. But the lack of dignity is what really gets me. All women lying about their rights and all Gazans talking about Israel instead of looking at their own industry and their own leadership. This is extremely creepy. The obsession with looking outside your group instead of taking responsibility. I must admit I am extremely weird this way and always blame myself and then my group, never outsiders as that's a waste of time. So to me living this way as a society seems insane. It goes counter all my moral values as a person. I would be mocking Gazans left and right if I ever went there. I already do this in my country imagine seeing this 10-fold. I'd likely get shot in a day.
A Gazan talks about not being allowed to travel to West Bank without Israeli papers. And claims his travel is restricted. I wonder what passport he has? And why would he need Israel for anything? Basically all Islamic nations support Palestine and are against Israel. They recognize Gaza as a nation alongside West Bank. Why would he not be able to make a deal to settle in Egypt or Turkey to get his degree? Why look towards Israel, a nation that's not even Muslim. They also mention and attack Japan, Germany, USA etc. Why bring up Japan as a guilty party before Egypt that borders them? Egypt could easily open the border and let them travel for work in Egypt. Yet they refuse. But instead of questioning this they question only the border to Israel. A country they attack and fight with. I'm perplexed. They only talk about working in Israel or USA. No one says he wants to move to Egypt or Turkey - Islamic nations. Again, just weird as they themselves claim they choose to wear hijab so why not choose to go to a nation with other Muslims? Something is off in their stories.
Hamas and other terrorist groups have taken over Gaza here. They tell boys not to go to school and to only think about war with Israel. They throw stones at Israeli soldiers and try to get weapons. They take great pride in attacking Israeli soldiers and having done prison terms for it. This reminds me of Muslim ghettos in Western Europe. Palestinians are throwing rocks at cops, ambulance crew, and firefighters. Ambulances in some places are not allowed to go there without police escort. Yet it's not just Palestinians, it's overall Muslims though to a smaller degree. Crime rate is extremely high, unemployment rate higher. And women often don't work. The culture doesn't really seem to change based on subjugation levels as it's democracies and they moved here from Muslim nations voluntarily so why would they hate firefighters in Sweden? Picking Christian nations over all Muslim nations in the world. Even stopping in Turkey and then continuing on to Sweden. Of course the American author mainly stayed in Gaza and West Bank and then did critical interviews with Israelis only. Asking for opinions, not histories, from Israelis. So you get a one-sided point of view. He interviews people who had sad stories and then traveled to Israel to attack Israeli civilians with the stories and no one really had a good reply. Because the only good reply would be to tell him to explore further. Go to Syria and see how Muslims live on their own. Go to Yemen, Egypt, Libya. Go to ghettos in EU. And most importantly interview soldiers, lawyers, politicians, and judges in Israel. I think this is lacking as all these Palestinians tell him how the law works. How prisons work. How Israeli soldiers act. Yet he never once actually asks anyone on the other side about what they do and how things work. I assume some of the Palestinian stories are straight up impossible and couldn't have happened as the Israeli rules are quite clear. These war crimes are something regular voters in Israel would not accept if it was filmed or had clear unbiased eyewitness accounts or maybe a whistleblower. Yet he never once looks into any claim or story so we only have these biased translated eyewitness accounts. A guy just walking out to help people who were just tear gassed makes little sense to me. One side throws rocks at the other side has guns. And the guns are likely already aimed or even being fired, how come you go out into this street to "help" people with something that doesn't even hurt that bad and subsides in half an hour by itself? It seems absolutely insane and only something a fool would do yet this is the story we are told. I have a hard time believing an extraordinary story without extraordinary evidence. And a hard time accepting this Palestinian victim was so clueless about conditions that he made this choice. Other stories are way more believable. There are stories with people admitting they threw rocks or Molotov cocktails at soldiers and then were shot at. At least that's logical from both sides and nothing feels off. No one just happened to wander into a gun fight by mistake. The question is if the response is fair. But there are reasons for everything. Houses are torn down if a terrorist lived there. It makes sense. One has to ask if it's fair to punish the whole family for what 1 son does. But you see why it happens and what they can do to stop it as most parents support such attacks.
One can say that post the Gaza independence, that made the area 10 times worse, the book has not aged well morally and I can only use this fake quote to explain the book:
"This comic book is Dedicated to the Brave Hamas Fighters of Gaza"
Yet the stories are what they are and have not aged badly. Even though I only believe about half of them. I think the lack of investigation is a bit off. Clearly his critical sense is intact as it's used in every single interview with the Israelis. In Bosnia, right after the war, he made sure to carefully read over the history and claims even disputing stories that didn't fit with real life evidence. Here he is uncritical. Even though they tell him the names of hospitals he never visits them to find out if this really happened. He never interviews a single doctor or nurse in Israel despite sob stories being about what happened in the hospitals with Jewish doctors. It's a one-sided book. I like the history lesson, but personally I need a professional investigation into any personal claim. If an Israeli soldier told a story I would feel exactly the same way. Yet I have never read a pro-Israel comic and have never seen one. So one can't compare.
This book is quite different because while he in the other books took a side while acting fairly fair to everyone here he outright tells you right away what side he supports and what bias this book will have. There are no 2 ways about this it's a personal propaganda book not a deep critical exploration. I think this case for him is something he feels so intensely about he can't remain unbiased at any point. He supports Palestine and is anti-Israel. In the other books he carefully follows a few people at work. So he observes everything carefully and interviews friends to check up on stories. Then follows them over months. You understand what is true and what may be a tad creative retelling. And everything lines up. Here the Palestinians in the West Bank pull him into a hospital showing him individuals who have been shot. Just push him from bed to bed with new sob stories and absolutely zero critical exploration. I'm not sure he even looks at criminal records. This leans more towards the outrage storytelling structure than progressive biased overview like the Canada book. In the hospital a little girl tells him that she threw a rock at soldiers and they shot her. It's well-known that Israeli soldiers are bombarded with rocks daily and that they first fire warning shots then shoot back if they are in danger. So you wonder how each event actually happened. Maybe he's more inexperienced here or maybe it's just how Palestinians go about their one-sided messaging. With zero paper trails shown. With questionable source checking where there is only 1 side of the story. I would have loved him to interview prison guards and Israeli soldiers. Some are super progressive and would readily admit to any harm or bullying they spotted. We are talking about Israelis so progressive they likely would see Sacco as right-winger. They are not really hiding what they see. They support Palestine over Israel and often hate Israel. But even if he only finds conservative Israeli police officers it would still tell us if they are lying. One can spot this. Instead he only sees them from afar always drawing them as mean bullies. Which they may very well be I just don't think this book proves the point.
One thing to note is that this is early 90's West Bank where there was way more violence and more terrorist attacks. Before the wall was built that shut down terrorist attacks in Israel from several times a week to once a month. Back then Palestinians could travel into a big city and suicide bomb a target or plant a bomb easily. Israel has closed down roads and checks IDs which diminished violence everywhere. One could ask a lot of questions about what is going on and what Israel could do. But our new experiences finally answer it. With comparisons to the October 7 Hamas attack, Hamas taking over Gaza and their government funding all being used to strike Israel, and then mainly the Afghanistan failure and the new more calm West Bank. It all reveals patterns we couldn't know back then where it seemed like Israel created all violence and that peace and self-governance would finally make it all settle down. Now Afghanistan reveals a new image. Unless you are patrolling the street daily violence will appear naturally and especially women will be in serious danger from the radical Muslims. I think Gaza vs. West Bank anno 2025 pretty much tells us everything we need to know about what was happening all along and what choices we have. And what would happen if West Bank gets to run itself without any oversight. We also have extreme Muslim immigration to Europe now and these Muslims again show culture clashes that are exactly the same as we see in West Bank, but just more controlled as Western cops have greater control in their own countries while West Bank is sorta independent. He visits women in the West Bank claiming they can't do anything about domestic violence as Islam and some Islamic groups fight against them so they have no woman movement.
He travels to Gaza and man this doesn't look good at all. All women wear hijab. He keeps asking them why and every single person claims it's voluntary. Yet every single woman wears one so are they free to choose? He sees thousands of people in that time and didn't spot a single woman who doesn't make the choice to not wear it. Indeed Hamas is in control. Gazans are poor. Israel allows some trade, but there are a ton of papers to fill out. Gazans depend on Israel for water and electricity and even wages. The ones who can travel there for work do it even if it takes 4 hours each day and transportation eats half of your wages. I keep asking myself why? Imagine if Israel depended on Syria to give them electricity and then most didn't even pay for it. Where are the Gaza powerplants and factories? It's not even that they are poor and not working. Some use a hole in the ground as a toilet and many don't have watertight roofs. All this isn't offensive in any way as people have a right to live as they like. Not all have electricity and not all countries are building powerplants - the West should not force people to pick a lifestyle they want for them. But the lack of dignity is what really gets me. All women lying about their rights and all Gazans talking about Israel instead of looking at their own industry and their own leadership. This is extremely creepy. The obsession with looking outside your group instead of taking responsibility. I must admit I am extremely weird this way and always blame myself and then my group, never outsiders as that's a waste of time. So to me living this way as a society seems insane. It goes counter all my moral values as a person. I would be mocking Gazans left and right if I ever went there. I already do this in my country imagine seeing this 10-fold. I'd likely get shot in a day.
A Gazan talks about not being allowed to travel to West Bank without Israeli papers. And claims his travel is restricted. I wonder what passport he has? And why would he need Israel for anything? Basically all Islamic nations support Palestine and are against Israel. They recognize Gaza as a nation alongside West Bank. Why would he not be able to make a deal to settle in Egypt or Turkey to get his degree? Why look towards Israel, a nation that's not even Muslim. They also mention and attack Japan, Germany, USA etc. Why bring up Japan as a guilty party before Egypt that borders them? Egypt could easily open the border and let them travel for work in Egypt. Yet they refuse. But instead of questioning this they question only the border to Israel. A country they attack and fight with. I'm perplexed. They only talk about working in Israel or USA. No one says he wants to move to Egypt or Turkey - Islamic nations. Again, just weird as they themselves claim they choose to wear hijab so why not choose to go to a nation with other Muslims? Something is off in their stories.
Hamas and other terrorist groups have taken over Gaza here. They tell boys not to go to school and to only think about war with Israel. They throw stones at Israeli soldiers and try to get weapons. They take great pride in attacking Israeli soldiers and having done prison terms for it. This reminds me of Muslim ghettos in Western Europe. Palestinians are throwing rocks at cops, ambulance crew, and firefighters. Ambulances in some places are not allowed to go there without police escort. Yet it's not just Palestinians, it's overall Muslims though to a smaller degree. Crime rate is extremely high, unemployment rate higher. And women often don't work. The culture doesn't really seem to change based on subjugation levels as it's democracies and they moved here from Muslim nations voluntarily so why would they hate firefighters in Sweden? Picking Christian nations over all Muslim nations in the world. Even stopping in Turkey and then continuing on to Sweden. Of course the American author mainly stayed in Gaza and West Bank and then did critical interviews with Israelis only. Asking for opinions, not histories, from Israelis. So you get a one-sided point of view. He interviews people who had sad stories and then traveled to Israel to attack Israeli civilians with the stories and no one really had a good reply. Because the only good reply would be to tell him to explore further. Go to Syria and see how Muslims live on their own. Go to Yemen, Egypt, Libya. Go to ghettos in EU. And most importantly interview soldiers, lawyers, politicians, and judges in Israel. I think this is lacking as all these Palestinians tell him how the law works. How prisons work. How Israeli soldiers act. Yet he never once actually asks anyone on the other side about what they do and how things work. I assume some of the Palestinian stories are straight up impossible and couldn't have happened as the Israeli rules are quite clear. These war crimes are something regular voters in Israel would not accept if it was filmed or had clear unbiased eyewitness accounts or maybe a whistleblower. Yet he never once looks into any claim or story so we only have these biased translated eyewitness accounts. A guy just walking out to help people who were just tear gassed makes little sense to me. One side throws rocks at the other side has guns. And the guns are likely already aimed or even being fired, how come you go out into this street to "help" people with something that doesn't even hurt that bad and subsides in half an hour by itself? It seems absolutely insane and only something a fool would do yet this is the story we are told. I have a hard time believing an extraordinary story without extraordinary evidence. And a hard time accepting this Palestinian victim was so clueless about conditions that he made this choice. Other stories are way more believable. There are stories with people admitting they threw rocks or Molotov cocktails at soldiers and then were shot at. At least that's logical from both sides and nothing feels off. No one just happened to wander into a gun fight by mistake. The question is if the response is fair. But there are reasons for everything. Houses are torn down if a terrorist lived there. It makes sense. One has to ask if it's fair to punish the whole family for what 1 son does. But you see why it happens and what they can do to stop it as most parents support such attacks.
One can say that post the Gaza independence, that made the area 10 times worse, the book has not aged well morally and I can only use this fake quote to explain the book:
"This comic book is Dedicated to the Brave Hamas Fighters of Gaza"
Yet the stories are what they are and have not aged badly. Even though I only believe about half of them. I think the lack of investigation is a bit off. Clearly his critical sense is intact as it's used in every single interview with the Israelis. In Bosnia, right after the war, he made sure to carefully read over the history and claims even disputing stories that didn't fit with real life evidence. Here he is uncritical. Even though they tell him the names of hospitals he never visits them to find out if this really happened. He never interviews a single doctor or nurse in Israel despite sob stories being about what happened in the hospitals with Jewish doctors. It's a one-sided book. I like the history lesson, but personally I need a professional investigation into any personal claim. If an Israeli soldier told a story I would feel exactly the same way. Yet I have never read a pro-Israel comic and have never seen one. So one can't compare.
