Review
Palestine
Joe Sacco
Fantagraphics Books: Seattle, WA USA, 1993/2001
Reviewed by
Michael Jaffarian
Coordinator of Research for CBInternational, Richmond, Virginia
Published in
Global Missiology, Review & Preview, October 2004, www.globalmissiology.net
This follows
Sacco’s earlier, and similar, book, Safe Area: Gorazde, about the war in Bosnia, which received much positive acclaim. The
genre is comics journalism. Palestine looks
like a big comic book, but instead of being about a superhero or the like, it
is a very serious work about Palestine, Israel, and the first intifada
of 1987-1992.
Sacco visited Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza for
two months in the winter of 1991-1992. He interviewed many people, mainly
Palestinians who had suffered violence, injustice, torture,
imprisonment, or economic attack at the hands of the Israelis. Through this
book he takes us along on his experiences and those of his interviewees. We
read their words and also, through the
drawings, see their faces, homes, prison cells, wounds, roads, and settings as the stories unfold. This adds a
dynamic punch and sense of reality that text alone cannot deliver. Sacco gives enough historical and political
information to set the context, but the heart of it is this series of
eye-witness accounts. He also shows himself in the pictures and with stark honesty reveals his own reactions and
emotions through the process.
This is a powerful book. It is impossible to come
away from it without a much deeper understanding
of this conflict, and maybe of human injustice and conflict in general. Sacco gives no deep analysis and offers no real
solutions, but here presents the opportunity
to reflect on larger questions of the nature of war, inter-ethnic strife,
oppression, and bigotry in the human experience. Most American Evangelicals are
strongly pro-Israel and
anti-Palestinian. They would do well to add to their understanding by
reading this book. There are two sides to this story, and wise people are
grateful for such opportunities.