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Palestine (Palestine #1-2)

4.19 of 5 stars 4.19 · rating details · 5,164 ratings · 340 reviews

In late l991 and early 1992, at the time of the first Intifada, Joe Sacco spent two months with the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, travelling and taking notes. Upon returning to the United States he started writing and drawing Palestine, which combines the techniques of eyewitness reportage with the medium of comic-book storytelling to explore this complex,...more

Paperback, 296 pages

Published January 2nd 2003 by Jonathan Cape (first published 1996)

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Jul 19, 2008 Mona rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: graphic-novels, history, social-justice-human-rights, nonfiction, israel-palestine

Palestine first appeared as a series of nine comic books, but is collected here in a special edition that also includes a foreword by the late Edward Said and an introduction by the author. Sacco writes that he was compelled to visit the Palestinian territories for two main reasons. First, he realized that the taxpayer dollars he paid as an American were being spent in financial aid to Israel, perpetuating the occupation. Second, after pursuing a degree in journalism, he became aware as to the o...more Palestine first appeared as a series of nine comic books, but is collected here in a special edition that also includes a foreword by the late Edward Said and an introduction by the author. Sacco writes that he was compelled to visit the Palestinian territories for two main reasons. First, he realized that the taxpayer dollars he paid as an American were being spent in financial aid to Israel, perpetuating the occupation. Second, after pursuing a degree in journalism, he became aware as to the one-sided and inadequate reporting on the conflict. After falling out of regular journalism, Sacco became a cartoonist, and it is this medium through which he represents his wanderings in the occupied territories during two and half months in the winter of 1991-1992.

Each chapter, which represents the original series of nine comic books, contains a number of "episodes" or vignettes, detailing the stories that Sacco hears through his interviews with various Palestinians, and the experiences he has in the refugee camps. The topics of these vignettes range from the expulsion of Palestinians from their homes and land in 1948, the intifada, jobs, checkpoints and roadblocks, living conditions in the camps, women's rights, and the peace process. The episodes concerning three men's prison experiences in Ansar III are particularly moving. Mentions of Arab/Israeli politics are scarce and often are included only in footnotes. The book is concerned, above all, with Palestinians living day-to-day under occupation.

Sacco's style varies throughout the book. As he notes in his introduction, in the beginning, he was uncomfortable drawing on a daily basis. It shows in the early chapters, where both Palestinians and Israelis appear in a rather negative light, looking almost monstrous. However, in the rest of the book, Sacco seems to have figured out a few things, and his drawings look more like regular people. He also is flexible in his formatting. Some pages follow a panel format, some are nearly taken up with writing, while others consist of half-page or full-page drawings with few words. I found that the most absorbing parts of Palestine are those when there are only a few words or none at all.

Sacco notes in his introduction that the biggest criticism leveled against his work is that it is too one-sided. But he explains that was his purpose:

"My contention was and remains that that the Israeli government's point of view is very well represented in the mainstream American media and is trumpeted loudly, even competitively, by almost every person holding an important elected office in the United States...My idea was not to present an objective book but an honest one."

Most of the book takes place in the West Bank or Gaza, and most of the Israelis represented are those seen most often through the Palestinians' eyes: the settlers and the soldiers. The exception is in the very last chapter, when Sacco visits Tel Aviv. His drawings and conversations with two Israeli women there provide a stark contrast to the rest of the book.

Overall, this book turned out to be a very effective and interesting (if somewhat depressing) portrayal of the Palestinians' plight. In fact, I was surprised at how effective it was, but in a way, it makes sense. Politics and social justice issues in general can be complex and confusing, but a medium like the comic is often viewed as instantly understandable. The drawings - what Sacco calls "comics journalism" - provide a relatively easy avenue by which to access and develop an understanding of the Palestinians' concerns. Several years have passed since Sacco first visited the occupied territories and published these comics in their original form, but they are still highly relevant and comprise a significant piece of work. Highly, highly recommended. (I also highly recommend reading Sacco’s introduction for those who are unfamiliar with graphic novels or who are interested in learning about his methodology.)

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Mar 28, 2008 Miina rated it 3 of 5 stars

I had a hard time getting through this graphic novel. It was a tough read due to the subject matter. I also wasn't fond of the art on a personal level.
I did immensely appreciate Joe Sacco's motivation for writing this graphic novel. In an interview with Al Jazeera, Joe Sacco said:
"I grew up thinking of Palestinians as terrorists, and it took a lot of time, and reading the right things, to understand the power dynamic in the Middle East was not what I had thought it was... And basically, it upset...more

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Dec 20, 2008 Sharm Alagaratnam rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

My last recommendation was Joe Sacco's 'Palestine', an illustrated collection recounting his two month trip to the area between 1991 and 1992. Sacco travels to various refugee camps and interviews many of its residents, detailing their stories and grieviances in painful detail.

I have to say the book made for uncomfortable reading to start with, with its stark images and severe telling of the Palestinians' every day lives and troubles, including graphic descriptions of torture and imprisonment by...more

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Aug 01, 2011 Dan rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2011

pretty much a masterpiece on every possible level.

first off, because sacco wisely lets the people he encounters do the talking. it's a warts-and-all first person account of people's lives in palestine, and almost all embellishments and social commentaries come from the mouths of the people he talks to, rather than from things he learned reading edward said or whatever.

at the same time, he allows his own story to weave throughout. we are privvy to his own frustrations and fascinations along the...more

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Jun 18, 2010 oriana rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: read-2010, books-with-pix

(book two for Jugs & Capes, my all-girl graphic novel book club!)

Really, really devastating book. Part of the problem (and obviously part of the point) is that it is relentlessly awful, with story after story after story of death, destruction, skirmishes with soldiers, dead sons, dead husbands, maimed daughters, displacement, oppression, poverty, and pain. It's so painful, honestly, that you start to get a little jaded; or that's not what I mean exactly, but the stories begin to lost their p...more (book two for Jugs & Capes, my all-girl graphic novel book club!)

Really, really devastating book. Part of the problem (and obviously part of the point) is that it is relentlessly awful, with story after story after story of death, destruction, skirmishes with soldiers, dead sons, dead husbands, maimed daughters, displacement, oppression, poverty, and pain. It's so painful, honestly, that you start to get a little jaded; or that's not what I mean exactly, but the stories begin to lost their power to shock, to devastate. I understand this was originally published as many small pieces, not a big collection like this, so perhaps if each story was standalone, giving you time to fully process before moving on to the next, they would each wield as much sorrow as they were meant to. I don't know.

I feel like I should say something intelligent about the art, since this is after all a graphic novel. So here: Sacco has an incredibly chaotic style, which really helped to create an immersive feeling as I was reading. That said, though, there's practically just as much text as pictures, and I admit I wondered why he chose to make this a graphic novel, rather than just prose. There were some illustrations that were particularly affecting, and some times when the images did enhance the stories, but for the most part I think it could have been text-only without losing a whole lot.

I talked a lot about this book with my Zionist-leaning mother, and it was pretty difficult. Like so many impossibly polarizing issues, it's tough to even find the language with which to locate a middle ground. She would say, "The Gazans have no electricity because they dig up the pipes to use as weapons against the Israelis." And I would say, "Well, at least according to this book, the Gazans have no electricity because the Israelis cut it off all the time, at random, just to keep them unstable." And she would say, "Why do the Palestinians keep asking Israel to give them jobs? Why can't they just make their own industry?" And I would say, "How can they do that? Israel controls the water, the power, the supplies, the land, the permits, the transportation, and everything else. From what could they possibly make industry?" And she would say, "Israelis are ready to discuss peace, but most Palestinians won't even acknowledge Israel's right to exist." And I would say, "This has been going on for decades. Imagine if you were a teenager in Gaza and all you had ever known was relentless humiliation, oppression, and poverty? How would you feel about your oppressors?" And then we would have to change the subject, because where could we go?(less)

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Jul 10, 2010 Ken-ichi rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: comics, politics, journalism

Joe Sacco is a comics journalist, or as he describes himself in this book, an "action cartoonist," entering areas of political turmoil to make documentary comics. Despite some occasional dips into free-wheeling personal anecdote reminiscent of Kerouac or Crumb, Sacco is predominantly a documentarian, not terribly concerned with narrative, but more focused on recounting the individual stories of the people he interviews. And there are a lot of interviews, conducted over countless cups of teas in...more Joe Sacco is a comics journalist, or as he describes himself in this book, an "action cartoonist," entering areas of political turmoil to make documentary comics. Despite some occasional dips into free-wheeling personal anecdote reminiscent of Kerouac or Crumb, Sacco is predominantly a documentarian, not terribly concerned with narrative, but more focused on recounting the individual stories of the people he interviews. And there are a lot of interviews, conducted over countless cups of teas in innumerable Palestinian homes, usually with groups of people seemingly eager to recount tales about the oppression and injustice they suffer under the Israelis every day. These range from the petty (police forcing a kid to stand in the rain while they question him under the shelter of an awning), to the horrific (soldiers shooting a mother's son, then her other son, then refusing to release the bodies until the dead of night, then giving the family no more than 15 minutes to mourn over the body), to the dystopian (myriad tortures including stress postures held for days, ball point pen tubes inserted into genitalia, etc). It's rough stuff, and the very few bright spots, like a curious child asking about America or a translator's efforts to help disabled kids, just make it worse by contrast.

Sacco intentionally does not tell the story of the Israelis, because, as he says, that's the side we usually get in the West. All I really knew about the conflict when I started reading was that both sides seemed culpable, so I found this approach a little frustrating, because now, of course, I feel like the Palestinians are the most shat upon people on Earth, forced from their homeland by powerful Europeans, and living under Orwellian conditions forced upon them by powerful Israelis and their oil-hungry American financiers. Sacco introduces a few sympathetic Israelis, those who don't believe in the settlements, those who acknowledge the injustices met out to the Palestinians, but even they seem petty and ineffectual under the massive weight of Palestinian suffering. I guess I'm a little better educated about the situation after having read this, but also more depressed. This was written in the mid-90s, after all, and things don't seem much better in 2010.

Stylistically, Sacco's approach is interesting. His layouts are creative and diverse, his pacing and illustration skillful enough that I frequently found myself skipping the text and following the images. As I said, Sacco's a documentarian, and most of his illustration is realist, possibly copied and assembled from his photos. His linework is orderly but weatherbeaten, which suits the slums and warzones he visits. His humans, however are rendered with some degree of cartoonish abstraction, usually with exaggerated mouths and lips that gives them an ugly, demanding look. He's either unable or unwilling to depict young women and children with the smooth and unlined faces they usually possess. He seems to both respect his subjects and value authentic representation, so I'm tempted to chalk this up stylistic peculiarity or lack of ability rather than an intent to depict humanity as hungry, babbling, and debased.

His depiction of himself is also worth considering, both visually and personally. He draws himself with small, opaque glasses, giant lips, and a scrawny, hunched figure. Kind of a mole-carp-mantis. He frequently describes himself quailing before violence, fleeing in taxis at the first sign of violence, and predominantly self-interested, constantly reminding himself that he's collecting stories and experience for his own comic. Judging from his photo in the back of the book, he's not nearly as ugly as his cartoon, and it's hard to believe a cartoonist would make a book like this if he didn't sympathize with the Palestinian's plight, so I don't think his own character in the book is strictly accurate. It could be that he's the kind of prat who uses excessive self-deprecation to unconsciously solicit sympathy (I am often that kind of prat, and we recognize our own; see I'm doing it now!), but he might also be deliberately creating a pitiful and ineffectual avatar for the reader to suggest how difficult (or impossible) it is for the West to help resolve or even understand Middle Eastern conflict. Or maybe he's just flawed and human like the rest of us and he was striving for realism again.

Certainly recommended reading for anyone who's never read non-fiction comics, or anyone with an interest in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.(less)

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Jun 27, 2007 Firman Widyasmara rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: comicsgraphicnovels

ah sadis... Joe Sacco benar-benar membuat buku ini jadi masterpiece untuk disimpan di kepala. gambar yang detail, cerita yang netral dan story telling yang mengalir nyaman membuat paket bukunya sendiri menjadi menarik untuk terus diikuti sampai habis dan pastinya, ingin tambah!

bercerita tentang perjalanannya menelusuri jalan-jalan Palestina dan mewartakannya dalam gambar-gambar membuat keaslian cerita di dalamnya tak terelakkan. nafas Palestina yang bergejolak juga kuat dirasakan, juga berbagai...more

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Mar 21, 2009 Louis rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

So a comic book based on the life of Palestinian refugees. Not the lightest reading.

Sometimes you like comics because they're fun, fast, and page turners. Sometimes you read comics because they're pretty or visually interesting. And sometimes you read comics because they're thought provoking, or you feel like you should.

This one is definitely in the later group. It took me a while to get through, frankly it's hard to listen to story after story of the woes of the Palestinian refugee life and the...more

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Mar 17, 2013 Joseph R. rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: comics-graphic-novels, history, read-2013

In 1991 and 1992, Joe Sacco spent two months in Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip gathering stories from the Palestinians living there. He met hundreds of people and visited camps, prisons, schools, homes, markets, etc., documenting the conditions he found and the stories he heard. He returned to America where he published a nine-issue series of comics telling the tales he'd gathered from the Palestinians living under Israel's government. This book has the entire collection in a single v...more In 1991 and 1992, Joe Sacco spent two months in Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip gathering stories from the Palestinians living there. He met hundreds of people and visited camps, prisons, schools, homes, markets, etc., documenting the conditions he found and the stories he heard. He returned to America where he published a nine-issue series of comics telling the tales he'd gathered from the Palestinians living under Israel's government. This book has the entire collection in a single volume.

The book is not an easy read. The people's descriptions of their hardships, including incarceration and abuse from Israeli soldiers, is shocking and depressing. He meets with a group of men, one of whom is ashamed because he'd never been arrested or imprisoned just for being a male Palestinian, like the other eight men in the room. A mother describes how her son was shot in the head and died forty hours later because the ambulance could not get him to a hospital where he would be admitted and treated. It makes a very grim picture that is not seen in most Western media. Only the riots and the terrorism (which certainly happen and assuredly are wrong) get time on news shows. People organizing schools and activities for their children while in a relocation camp; providing hospitality to their guests like all civilized people do; quickly celebrating an upcoming wedding before the curfew starts; all the things normal people would do under such circumstances isn't noteworthy to the media but shows the humanity of an oppressed people.

The book does present one side of the story, but it is well recorded and mostly unheard in the English-speaking world. Sacco explains the history from 1948 to the present and fills in the details by talking to young and old alike. The book is a striking testament to the resiliency of the Palestinian people and the the unsure future that they face. The final few pages show Sacco's bus ride to the airport. The bus gets lost as it tries to avoid dangerous areas on its way to the Egyptian border. They get directions several times but still can't find the right way forward. It's a great summary of the frustration and seeming futility of the Palestinian/Israeli situation.
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Nov 17, 2012 ratri kendra rated it 5 of 5 stars

"Teh mulai dituangkan dan begitu pula kisah Palestina..."

Tertegun, menyesak, marah, menangis dalam hati, sakiit, merenung sesaat, diam, lalu lama kelamaan datang rasa kebal setelah menutup halaman belakang. Emosinya 'pekat'. Merah campur hitam. Marah campur sedih, tapi lalu bisa apa.

Seakan tersirat, mereka tak butuh tangismu, atau bahkan uang. Mereka butuh negaranya. Kemanusiaannya. Mau bilang apa ketika kau diberikan sebuah gergaji mesin untuk membabat habis pohon zaitunmu, yang sebagian sudah...more

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Oct 29, 2012 Bob Hartley rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is a classic. It's definitely the wordiest graphic novel I've come across. It makes me think maybe he should have just written a book with some illustrations, not a book of illustrations with accompanying text. Having said that, the grammar isn't brilliant. He misuses commas and does that thing where he should use a colon but uses a question mark instead. There's a part where he quotes Ben Gurion and writes (sic) after a clause with no mistakes in it, suggesting he thinks the wording was di...more

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Oct 18, 2012 Darran Mclaughlin rated it 4 of 5 stars

Outstanding. I put off picking this up for a while as it looked a bit grueling. I was right. This is an exploration of the Palestinian situation and it is relentlessly depressing. Nothing I have read or seen has presented this situation to me as vividly. Palestine is a police state in which the Palestinians are made to suffer by the occupying Israeli forces in conditions as bad as any colony or occupation you care to suggest, and it's been going on for over 50 years. As long as this situation is...more

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Jan 31, 2012 Dale rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

An important piece of "comic book journalism"

Published in 2007 by Fantagraphics books.
320 pages.

Joe Sacco headed off to to the Palestinian refugee camps with a few bucks in his pocket, a sketchpad, a little training in how to draw comic books, a rarely used camera (film was too expensive) and a curious mind. Sacco interviewed Palestinians and asked them about all sorts of aspects of their lives: jobs, the intifada, women's rights, Land for Peace, and much more. Sacco turned those interviews into...more

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Sep 20, 2011 Patrick McCoy rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: graphic-novels

In the graphic comic novel Palestine by Joe Sacco, Sacco goes to Israel (the West Bank and the Gaza strip circa 1992) to find inspiration for a comic series based on his interviews of Palestinians in order to get the other side of the Israeli-Palestine problem. He adds his personal commentary and shows himself warts in all, he has little trouble accepting the hospitality of refugees who invite him into their home and feed him. But I feel as though he loses part of his argument since he doesn’t p...more

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Feb 18, 2011 Mark rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Joe Sacco travels to Palestine to see what it's really like, hoping to see and hear of lots of tragedy. He gets what he was searching for and then some. This graphic novel features loads of interviews with Palestinians about all of the terrible things the Israelis have done to them.

This is a graphic novel so it bears mentioning that the art didn't do much for me - it was very cartoony and didn't effectively convey the gravity of the situations. And he has an annoying habit of chaining together s...more Joe Sacco travels to Palestine to see what it's really like, hoping to see and hear of lots of tragedy. He gets what he was searching for and then some. This graphic novel features loads of interviews with Palestinians about all of the terrible things the Israelis have done to them.

This is a graphic novel so it bears mentioning that the art didn't do much for me - it was very cartoony and didn't effectively convey the gravity of the situations. And he has an annoying habit of chaining together sentence fragments with exclamation points: "Tea! Seriously sugared! Hospitality measured by the lump!" (pg 4). "Democracy! A demonstration! A counterdemonstration!" (pg 18). "He's got company! mostly teenaged boys and girls! flags are out! a banner! they're chanting!" (pg 120). You get the idea.

The author doesn't represent himself well throughout the novel - he really seems to relish people's suffering, always eager to find someone with a horror story, never failing to aks 'How did it feel when they beat you?' I couldn't tell if he was unaware of how that made him sound or if he was playing it up as white guilt.

The homogeneity of the suffering of the Palestinians wore on me but didn't often effect me. However, there were a few stories that made me cringe. One man spends time imprisoned in a tiny room with 13 others and spends his night gasping at the small airhole in the wall until he passes out from exhaustion for a few hours. Another man is shot by IDF soldiers who later come to the hospital room and beat him in hopes that he'll admit his name ("If they know our names, they can arrest us" (pg 199)).

The most interesting part of this book is the author's all-too-brief time in Israel. After reading hundreds of pages of the IDF's oppression it was fascinating to see what citizens of Tel Aviv had to say: they are against the settlements, regret the things being done to the Palestinians, but also feel genuinely concerned about their security. One of the women is against peace, citing historical examples where an Arab nation made peace with Israel only to have the next ruler declare war.

Peep this out if you have any interest in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. (less)

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Jan 05, 2011 Anna rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I read this whole book and knew the whole time that it was from the early '90s, but when I finished it and went on to reading other things about Israel and Palestine, I still felt sort of Rip Van Winkle-y -- like it was surprising that so much has changed, and also surprising (truly, simply surprising, even though that sounds like a naive word to use in both cases) that basically none of the problems have been solved. I enjoyed Edward Said's introduction mostly because it gave me the new and fun...more

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Jul 14, 2009 Michael Scott rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: comics, non-fiction, politics, dystopia, travelit

Palestine focuses on a topic that invites more to flaming than to commentary: the struggles of the Israeli and the Palestinian peoples to coexist, summarized as "they want this land, we want this land" towards the end of the book. Palestine is strangely factual for its topic: using pictorial interviews, Sacco presents--by his own account--a biased, cynical, and dirt-digging view of the dire conditions of the Palestinians living in and around Israel at the beginning of the 1990s; there is however...more

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Jul 25, 2011 Tim rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I was never much into graphic narratives or “comic books” as a kid. I’ll show my age by mentioning the ones that I DID read, so maybe its best that I hold something back. I always enjoyed “regular” books, you know, the ones with little to no pictures or illustrations. It seems that from a very young age, I put a certain stigma on the graphic narrative as being in the same category as cartoons (which I will tell you were before the days of the adult cartoons such as South Park). In other words, I...more I was never much into graphic narratives or “comic books” as a kid. I’ll show my age by mentioning the ones that I DID read, so maybe its best that I hold something back. I always enjoyed “regular” books, you know, the ones with little to no pictures or illustrations. It seems that from a very young age, I put a certain stigma on the graphic narrative as being in the same category as cartoons (which I will tell you were before the days of the adult cartoons such as South Park). In other words, I didn’t take graphic narratives very seriously.

Well, years later I return to the graphic narrative and I am starting to regret the stereotypes that I’ve put on both graphic narrative readers and authors. The activist that awakened me to the power of the format is Joe Sacco, a brilliant journalist who has mastered the art of associating images in different configurations to convey tension, dialogue, intense situations and the unmistakable art of drilling an image into your memory. I’m sure that those of you who have read many more graphic narratives than I are familiar with all of this already.

The book that I read from Sacco was Palestine: The Special Edition, which included a total of nine individual narratives in one hardbound collection. If you’re a bit of a dork like me and you just like the feel of a book, then this will be aesthetically pleasing to you.

Sacco is to be commended for taking upon himself the immense task of documenting the effects of the first intifada (from 1987-1993) from on the ground. He spent time in both the West Bank and Gaza and delivered an incredibly honest and often humorous account of his culture shock and attempts to deal with the atrocities that the Palestinians face daily.

Sacco portrays himself (for better or worse) as human, and not always sure of what to say or even if he had the compassion and sacrifice within himself to help those in need. To me, this is exemplary of so many currents in the discourse surrounding the solidarity with the Palestinians. The Arab nations, the activists in the U.S. and around the world all talk good rhetoric, but are COMPLETELY unfamiliar with what happens daily to those suffering. Even worse, they don’t know how to deal with the minute by minute, hour by hour events when they arrive with the intention of contributing to the cause. Much of this is due to the idea of “benevolence”; It’s due to the underlying feeling of superiority that the more enlightened are helping the have-nots.

There was dissonance and impatience, as Sacco honestly illustrates that he was scared to death at times. He was often conflicted as to what to say to those who asked him “What difference will it make that you are here?” and “What can you do for us to get the message out to the West?” The Palestinians have been understandably cynical as to what effect dissent in respect to mainstream media will have upon the day to day conditions of their lives. Some of those exchanges became so intense that he was honest enough to state in the narrative that he just wanted to leave the conversation.

What stuck out to me from Sacco’s artistry was his masterful touch at making the images HUMAN. You can not escape that these are a suffering people and not just a conglomeration of human lives that are constantly portrayed as terrorists. They have fears, they live in poverty and misery, and they simply want to be recognized as equals.

At the end of the book, Sacco runs into two Israeli women, who he portrayed as typical Westerners, both in the United States and Israel. They had that sense of entitlement, the Zionist conviction that this land was there’s. However, Sacco also admitted that he had not allowed himself the opportunity to see the Israelis in any other light than soldiers and murderers. He did not immerse himself into dialogue with those Israelis who face their own form of dissonance as to justice when it comes to Palestine. His purpose was to document the untold stories of the Palestinians that we never hear about in the face of constant Zionist propaganda in the West. To that extent, he is brilliant in making the book feel as if you are in the middle of the action along with your friend Joe. It is a PERFECT book to introduce someone to the conflict. I can not wait to follow up this reading with Sacco’s newest book Footnotes in Gaza. (less)

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Aug 24, 2012 Elisa rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: comics-and-graphic-novels, bios-and-memoirs

Luin juuri äsken tämän liki kolmesataasivuisen sarjisdokkarin suomentajan Juhani Tolvasen jälkisanat yhtäältä huojentuneena siitä, että kirja vihdoin loppui ja pääsen pois sen ahdistavasta maailmasta ja toisaalta hyvillä mielin siitä, että tunnen saaneeni jälleen erään näkökulman kautta palestiinalaisten tilanteesta astetta aiempaa monipuolisemman kuvan. Edward Said tätä aikanaan kehui erittäin todenmukaiseksi kuvaukseksi palestiinalaisten oloista Länsirannalla ja Gazassa 90-luvun alussa. Tuollo...more

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Feb 03, 2012 Laura Cushing rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This work of comic journalism explores the situation in the much disputed territory of the Gaza strip. Joe Sacco goes out among Palestinians in a variety of locations- but their stories are all eeriely similar. They've been jailed, they've been beaten, they've been shot, they've lost a home or had their property destroyed. They've all lost relatives to violent deaths.

Many of them have been tortured.

There's no funds for education. The curfews and permission problems keep them from finding jobs-...more

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Mar 14, 2009 James rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Sacco pushes graphic novel journalism to the limits: this is a very effective account of Sacco's time in the Occupied Territories, written and drawn with buckets of empathy and slightly fewer buckets of self-awareness. What works best is not the almost-numbing repetition of horror stories, but the minor relationships he forges with his guides; it's only in these panels that the Palestinians are really humanized, and, as Sacco knows, the simple "Israelis are terrible" stories he hears from most p...more

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Feb 28, 2013 Usama Albastaki rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: comics

There are 2 different stories of the same middle east crisis. The palestinian story belived by people in Islamic and Arab world. The israeli story believed by most of the rest of the world. We both have been told the story as it reached us through the media.

Joe Sacco told us the story as he lived it through the streets of arab cities and refuge camps as Tel Aviv. He provided us with the living story told to him by the average man/woman who lived the story and facing the crisis daily, not by a po...more

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May 06, 2012 Evelyn rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: from-library, history, must-buy-a-copy, non-fiction, palestine, politics, religion, graphic-novel, all-time-favourites, read-in-2012

There is that old saying that a picture is worth a thousand words and that really rings true with Sacco's Palestine, a graphic novel which depicts the lives and struggles of Palestinians during the early 90s. I've read a couple of books about the occupation of Palestine and each one has been disturbing, shocking and ultimately depressing, as you can only imagine when one group of people hideously oppresses another group of people through physical and mental torture every day of their lives, AND...more

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Oct 31, 2011 Paolo Pietropaolo rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The Israel-Palestine conflict is one of those things that we hear so much about, and have heard so much about for so many years, that I usually choose to willfully ignore the news reports. What new information can they possibly contain? We know there's a conflict, we know it appears to be for all intents and purposes insoluble, and we know it's complicated.

However, Sacco's comic book made me care more than any news report could. It's journalism at its strongest and noblest: honest, inquisitive,...more

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Apr 27, 2011 Jon Purkis rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: graphic-novels

Palestine tells some captivating stories and does a great job of teaching the reader about the Israel/Palestine conflict and giving them an insight into the life of Palestinians and the awful human rights abuses that they suffer. In that respect I'm glad I read the book, it has educated me.

However, Palestine is a very inconsistent book. For all the interesting stories, there are even more boring, poorly told or irrelevant ones. For me, the fault of the book is the fault of the format. There is n...more Palestine tells some captivating stories and does a great job of teaching the reader about the Israel/Palestine conflict and giving them an insight into the life of Palestinians and the awful human rights abuses that they suffer. In that respect I'm glad I read the book, it has educated me.

However, Palestine is a very inconsistent book. For all the interesting stories, there are even more boring, poorly told or irrelevant ones. For me, the fault of the book is the fault of the format. There is nothing that ties together the series of disconnected stories. Joe Sacco attempts to give it some through narrative by placing the stories within the timeline of his visit to Palestine, with the when, why and how he met each character. It doesn't work. His "journey" is painfully dull, and the repetition of pleasantries such as always being given tea, Sacco obviously thinks add a personal aspect to the story, but for me, it just drags everything out, and detracts from the real stories, the reason we're reading this book. I can understand why Sacco has included himself in the book, he's the equivalent to a documentary filmmaker that is involved in the story, like Louis Theroux, and at times his thoughts and reactions are useful, but he isn't Louis Theroux, and more often than not I found him annoying.

The brilliance of The Complete Maus and The Complete Persepolis is that they teach you of the Holocaust and the Islamic Revolution through the eyes of a character which we get to know and love. In Palestine each character is so short-lived and their story so truncated that we can never have that connection. Personally, I think the story would have been more effective if it focused on the complete story of one man, or one family, so that we can develop real empathy for them. Even a fictional story, which gets across the same factual truths would work better. (See the TV series The Promise for a great example of showing the Israel/Palestine situation through a fictional human story).

The artwork is certainly impressive, there's a real attention to detail with the street scenes. But the character art isn't really to my taste. I was annoyed by Joe Sacco's insistence to draw himself as a hideous caricature, which struck me as pretentious self-deprecation, and was a constant annoyance seeing as he's on most every page. For a "documentary" book which is dependant on realism, it was off-putting to have his cartoonish character amidst the realistic faces.

Another problem that book suffers from is too much text. He crams as many words into each frame as possible, which seems to go against the point of the comic format. Furthermore, these extra words are often unnecessary, Sacco is in desperate need of a more assertive editor. The worst bit is when he decides to break format entirely and print huge blocks of text for 9 pages! I assumed that the section would be jam-packed with important historical fact or backstory, but it just more uncessary waffling that has no place in a graphic novel. Either this part should be told in comic form, or taken out of the book altogether. I'd go for the second option.

And, amazingly, despite all of those vicious complaints, I am glad I read Palestine. It is very flawed, but it does meet its basic purpose, to give a voice to the Palestinians. I came away enlightened, and that is surely an accomplishment.(less)

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Jul 06, 2009 Sarah rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: graphic-novels, religious-spiritual, journalism

This was the book that introduced me to graphic novel journalism, a genre that I had previously been oblivious of. It gives a historical background to the Israel-Palestine situation up to the early 90s and an account of Joe Sacco's visit to the Occupied Territories and Israel. I found it to be a very visually interesting account of perspectives: that of the Palestinians Sacco met, the few Israeli's he met, and his own perspective as an outsider as well.

In all fairness it should be said that Sac...more

1 like · like · see review

May 01, 2008 Anne rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Non fiction readers, graphic novel lovers

For the love of God everyone needs to read this book. Americans are so ignorant when it comes to the struggles of the Isralies and Palestinians. THis is something we need to know about and Sacco presents it in a real person to person manner that will leave shocked and horrified, as you should be. If more people read this book the world would be a better place, because people would have to stand up and fight!

4 likes · like · see review

Feb 20, 2012 Eric rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: graphic-novels

Harrowing account of an oppressed and marginalized people. Told in a seemingly endless series of interviews and personal anecdotes, Palestine brings the often all too abstract idea of Israeli atrocities and institutional callousness into sharp relief. Deeply moving. It is troubling to know that this work is 20 years old, yet could have been written yesterday.

Suffers from slightly too much meta navel-gazing about the nature of comics journalism. Also, the art is a bit of a problem. Sacco has a g...more

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Jul 02, 2008 Justin rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book changed the way I looked at the world forever. I think that as I was raised in a small town environment, the traditional mental handicaps set in until I read Sacco's Palesitine. After reading this my eyes were opened to the suffering of the world's citizens and the ways in which the narratives I was told about global history was much more multi-faceted than I could have ever imagined.

1 like · like · see review

Jan 25, 2013 Katie rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: middle-east, male-author, graphic-novels

In this graphic novel, Joe Sacco recounts the time he spent in Palestine in the early 1990s. He traveled to the area because he felt that journalists were doing a poor job portraying the Palestinian side of the conflict and he wanted to hear their side of the story. In the novel he depicts horrific stories of imprisonment and the injustices suffered by the Palestinian people. I suppose it is a valuable piece of journalism, but I didn't like it very much.

I didn't like the illustrations at all. I...more

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About Joe Sacco

Joe Sacco was born in Malta on October 2, 1960. At the age of one, he moved with his family to Australia, where he spent his childhood until 1972, when they moved to Los Angeles. He began his journalism career working on the Sunset High School newspaper in Beaverton, Oregon. While journalism was his primary focus, this was also the period of time in which he developed his penchant for humor and sa...more

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Books by Joe Sacco

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Quotes from Palestine

“I don't remember when exactly I read my first comic book, but I do remember exactly how liberated and subversive I felt as a result.” — 25 people liked it

“Some of the world's blackest holes are out
in the open for anyone to see....” — 7 people liked it

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