Palestine
By Joe Sacco
Jonathon Cape, 2003
286 pages, $45 (pb)
REVIEW BY NICK FREDMAN
A work dealing with the politics of Palestine, in the form of a comic book, might seem an incongruent, even flippant, exercise. How can the immense human suffering, the convoluted histories and the intense ideological debate surrounding occupied Palestine, the State of Israel and the Middle East be done justice by a comic?
Illustrator and journalist Joe Sacco has produced an extraordinary example of what is becoming known as "graphic reportage" or "comics journalism". Collecting in one volume a nine-issue series of comic books published in 1996, Palestine presents, through stark words and images, Sacco's observations and experiences of the first Palestinian intifada (uprising) in the early 1990s.
Sacco is an American of Maltese background who is drawn to the sufferings of imperialism's victims. An earlier book, Safe Area: Gorazde, examines the war in Bosnia. Sacco's graphic journalism on the Middle East has been published in Time magazine and Harper's Magazine. He is reviving the tradition of the pre-photography war artist, but his success may also be partly due to a broader appreciation of comics in recent times.
Palestinian-American intellectual Edward Said, who introduces the book with a typically erudite and passionate essay, argues that comics have often been subversive, but have seldom been taken seriously by adults. Sacco's originality, writes Said, lies in moving "serious" comics from melodrama to a form of political journalism that is committed and humanistic, using drawings that are stylised yet evoke very real events.
One could add that "serious" comics are becoming both more popular and critically accepted, perhaps partly due to the increasing globalisation of cultures in recent decades. The style of Sacco's book bears some resemblance to recent "serious" graphic novels, some of which have been made into fairly grim and melodramatic Hollywood films, such as Road to Perdition and From Hell.
However, in Sacco's work, the darkness is cut through with the energy and humour more typical of the comics Said loved in his youth. It is also in the Japanese anime tradition, with its huge diversity of topics, which is making inroads into US culture, including films (such as the Matrix series' animated spin-off, Animatrix).
With an economy of words, combined with evocative drawings, Sacco chronicles his travels through Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in 1991-92, his interviews and conversations with Palestinians and Israelis, and his observations of demonstrations, street fighting and beatings.
A historical section of Palestine (with more words than the rest) details how British imperialism encouraged the rise of Zionism, and how hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were driven from their homes to make way for the Zionist dream of a Greater Israel.
The daily iniquities of life under Israeli occupation are unsparingly shown: the house demolitions, roadblocks, the destruction of olive groves (which impoverish families and whole villages); unemployment, boredom and the lack of basic services in refugee camps and towns; the constant expectations of violence from Israeli soldiers and the highly armed Zionist settlers who are daily grabbing Palestinian land.
Sacco clearly puts the intifada in this context, and also graphically shows the grim consequences for Palestinians of confronting the Israeli state: imprisonment without trial for months or years on end (euphemistically called "administrative detention"); regular use of legally sanctioned torture ("moderate physical pressure"); and thousands of deaths and injuries. A number of times Sacco ironically reminds us that "Israel is the Middle East's only democracy".
If it all sounds a bit bleak, Sacco also shows the humour and warmth of many of his interactions. Palestinians are not shown as passive victims. Members of the resistance organisations, such as Hamas, Fateh and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, as well as feminist activists, and supporters and opponents of the peace accords then being negotiated, all articulately put forward their views.
Sacco lets his subjects do a lot of the talking, but he rejects the myths of "balanced journalism". His sympathy for Palestinian national self-determination is clear, and he puts forward his own views when appropriate. When a Palestinian woman denigrates all Jews, he points out that many US and Israeli Jews oppose the occupation. Sacco joins an Israeli peace demonstration and portrays it in a positive way, but also highlights a participant who argues that peace was only becoming possible because a "strong Israel" had forced the Arabs to be "ready to negotiate".
While he does not support all aspects of the Palestinian resistance movement, he makes clear in the book's foreword that he is opposed to Israel's occupation: "The Israeli and Palestinian people will continue to kill each other in low-level conflict or with shattering violence, with suicide bombers or with helicopter gunships and jet bombers, until this central fact — Israeli occupation — is addressed as an issue of international law and basic human rights."
Sacco also makes clear that the rights of the millions of Palestinian refugees to land and compensation needs to be addressed, an issue that questions the very existence of the Israeli state in its current, Jewish-chauvinist, form.
Sacco's book is more reportage than polemic or detailed analysis, and he makes no attempt to put forward comprehensive solutions. However, his work is just as committed to showing the plight and aspirations of ordinary people as that of campaigning popular journalists like Wilfred Burchett and John Pilger.
From Green Left Weekly, August 13, 2003.
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