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Footnotes in Gaza

4.26 of 5 stars 4.26 · rating details · 1,239 ratings · 126 reviews

From the great cartoonist-reporter, a sweeping, original investigation of a forgotten crime in the most vexed of places

Rafah, a town at the bottommost tip of the Gaza Strip, is a squalid place. Raw concrete buildings front trash-strewn alleys. The narrow streets are crowded with young children and unemployed men. On the border with Egypt, swaths of Rafah have been bulldoz

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Hardcover, 432 pages

Published December 22nd 2009 by Henry Holt and Co. (first published 2009)

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Nov 11, 2011 Seth Hahne rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: comics, graphic-novel-book-club

Let’s be honest for a moment: the only thing I know about Willard Quine, the 20th century Harvard philosopher, is a tacit understanding of his idea of recalcitrant experiences. And, having picked it up in a casual conversation at a Thanksgiving party more than a decade ago, I may not even have that right.

The idea is 1) that each person has created a complex web of beliefs that fit together in such a way as to support their perception of the world and 2) as new pieces of information are assimilat...more

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Apr 05, 2011 Paul rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: history-will-teach-us-nothing, graphic-novelly-stuff

Graphic novels – for me, first there was Maus, then there was American Splendor and latterly there was Persepolis. (Somewhere in the middle of that there was Fluffy - yes, really). I love the collision and the collusion of the trivial and the serious in these, in some ways it's an essentially silly form, why not take photos and write a journal or just make a documentary, these autobiographical/political/journalistic graphic novel hybrids are quite odd, but they're getting everywhere and they're...more Graphic novels – for me, first there was Maus, then there was American Splendor and latterly there was Persepolis. (Somewhere in the middle of that there was Fluffy - yes, really). I love the collision and the collusion of the trivial and the serious in these, in some ways it's an essentially silly form, why not take photos and write a journal or just make a documentary, these autobiographical/political/journalistic graphic novel hybrids are quite odd, but they're getting everywhere and they're intriguing. They’re very personal, slangy, in your face, importunate, tugging on your sleeve – this way, come on, not down there, everybody’s been there before, no, this way. There’s a graphic novel & comix shop in Nottingham called Page 45. I go there infrequently and I step inside and I get intoxicated – I’d like to buy ten of the best ones immediately. (But they’re so expensive.) Anyway, I got two big ones last week and this was one.

This book is all about Gaza, where those Palestinians live. You’ve heard all this woebegone Palestinian stuff before, too many times. What a benighted people they are, either victims or terrorists, that’s all they ever seem to be, and this big book reinforces that stereotype on every page. It’s about Joe Sacco’s one-man research mission into two atrocities committed by Israeli armed forces in 1956 - yeah, very worthy. Joe was offended that these two massacres had been simply beneath the notice of every writer about the period. It wasn’t that they’d been airbrushed out of history, they'd never managed to get into history to be airbrushed out. They just hadn’t ever been mentioned, apart from one truncated UN report which no one read. So Joe takes himself to Gaza in 2002 and 2003 and tries to interview all the old men and women who were there back in 1956.

So this painfully earnest book is about

- Joe’s dogged attempts to find, interview and understand the survivors of these atrocities
- Joe’s reconstruction of events of 1956

and bursting brutally into everything Joe does

- the shit that was going down all around Joe as he treks around Rafah with his Palestinian mate Abed. Demolitions, bullets flying, people being killed, day in, day out. Not unreasonably, some people Joe meets tend to say things like “What the (something untranslatable) do you want to bother with 1956 for, are you crazy? They just bulldozed my house and my mother’s house! Write about that!” (The stuff Joe encounters includes Hamas demonstrations featuring balaclava'd guys wearing fake suicide bomber jackets and holding up pix of their hero Saddam Hussain.)

I don’t deny that this book is one long festival of misery and tears and you do get inured to all these scenes of horror. Occasionally something gets through and jolts the reader’s composure, like the taxi driver who suddenly freaks out and yells “They killed a pregnant woman yesterday AND THEY SAID THEY WERE SORRY! Let’s do what WE need to do and then WE CAN SAY WE’RE SORRY!”

I remember my own mother, watching the tv news about Palestine, this was years ago, and she would sometimes say “Why do they treat these people like that? The Jews of all people should know what it’s like.” But the way I see it, the abused child does not grow up to be a saint, quite often the opposite happens and the abused becomes in turn the abuser. Israel, Palestine, Gaza, the West Bank, Hamas, Hezbollah, settlements, Netanyahu, Abu Hamza – the whole thing makes me think of the Lou Reed song, not so much a song as a catechism

You can’t depend on your family
You can’t depend on your friends
You can’t depend on intelligence
you can’t depend on god
You can only depend on one thing
You need a busload of faith to get by

You can’t depend on the goodly hearted
The goodly hearted made lamp-shades and soap
You can’t depend on no miracle
You can’t depend on a wise man
You can’t find ’em because they’re not there
You can depend on cruelty
Crudity of thought and sound
You can depend on the worst always happening
You need a busload of faith to get by, ha, watch it! Busload of faith!
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Jan 23, 2010 Laura rated it 5 of 5 stars

Joe Sacco's whole career has been leading up to writing this book. He's documenting a massacre that's been little-known except by its survivors until now, and also writing about the problems of documenting a particular trauma from 50 years ago in a place saturated by layer after layer of trauma, where fresh and current traumas keep interceding. It's brilliant. But not exactly a light read.

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Sep 06, 2012 Darryl rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: history, comics

Author Joe Sacco spends several weeks in Gaza in 2002 and 2003 trying to get to the bottom of what happened in the settlements of Khan Younis and Rafah in November 1956. According to United Nations figures quoted in the book, Israeli forces killed 275 Palestinians in Khan Younis on 3 November 1956 and 111 in Rafah on 12 November 1956. During the weeks Sacco is tracking down eye-witnesses, Israeli armoured budozers are crushing houses, Israeli Apache helicopters are straffing streets, and Israeli...more

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Mar 26, 2012 Antoine rated it 5 of 5 stars

Joe Sacco strikes again ! L’auteur de Palestine est de retour dans les territoires occupés. Ce terrible conflit sans fin et sans espoir, fait de drames quotidiens, est devenu quasiment banal pour ses habitants et, plus largement, pour les audiences du monde. Quand la violence aveugle répond à la violence aveugle, même les borgnes peinent à voir pour voir ce qui se passe autour d’eux. Joe Sacco, lui, a les deux yeux bien ouverts et la plume acérée. 386 pages de témoignages, de récits, de vies mut...more Joe Sacco strikes again ! L’auteur de Palestine est de retour dans les territoires occupés. Ce terrible conflit sans fin et sans espoir, fait de drames quotidiens, est devenu quasiment banal pour ses habitants et, plus largement, pour les audiences du monde. Quand la violence aveugle répond à la violence aveugle, même les borgnes peinent à voir pour voir ce qui se passe autour d’eux. Joe Sacco, lui, a les deux yeux bien ouverts et la plume acérée. 386 pages de témoignages, de récits, de vies mutilées, perdues pour reconstruire un « incident » de 1956, quand l’armée israélienne profita de la crise du Suez pour ramener, discrètement à l’ordre, d’une manière plus que musclée, les habitants de Khan Younis et Rafah dans la bande de Gaza. Âmes sensibles s’abstenir, curieux de comprendre pourquoi, bienvenus.

Pour réaliser cet album passionnant, il a fallu à l’auteur presque dix ans et plusieurs voyages dans une des zones les plus dangereuses de la planète. Il s’agit, tout d’abord, d’un minutieux travail de journaliste, une enquête longue et difficile pour retrouver les différents témoins de cet évènement vieux de cinquante ans. Tâche titanesque quand on connaît les conditions de vie de la population palestinienne parquée dans ces camps de réfugiés « provisoires » depuis 1948, et quand on sait que le passé n’intéresse que très peu ces individus en prise avec une réalité autrement bouleversante. Bon an mal an, Sacco remonte la piste des survivants, souvent des vieillards meurtris à la mémoire chancelante, recoupe les témoignages, trace des cartes, fouille les archives – celle de l’ONU à New-York, d’autres, israéliennes, à Tel Aviv – pour tenter de dresser, du mieux possible, une image cohérente de ces évènements. Face au mutisme des israéliens et au langage hermético-diplomatique des sources onusiennes, son récit pourrait être taxé de partisan. Évidemment, les témoignages sont ceux des palestiniens, des victimes. L’auteur évite néanmoins de stigmatiser l’un où l’autre des protagonistes. Il fait, réellement, le métier de journaliste : relater des faits réels et avérés.

Même si le sujet de l’enquête est 1956, il est impossible de faire abstraction du présent, surtout quand les balles sifflent au-dessus de votre tête. Comme à son habitude, Sacco se met en scène sur place. Assisté de plusieurs traducteurs-facilitateurs (voir The Fixer), il sillonne Gaza et est témoin du désespoir quotidien des palestiniens. Ce témoignage est à la fois des plus éclairants et, malheureusement, désespérant pour le genre humain.

Et la BD dans tout ça ? Gaza 1956 est également un excellent album. Le journaliste, maintenant dessinateur, est à la hauteur de la tâche. Il varie à l’infini la construction de ses planches : cases ouvertes, moule à gaufre, panoramiques, incrustations, textes narratifs « flottants ». Cette mise en page de haute de tenue reste toujours très lisible. Heureusement, car la quantité d’informations est imposante - il ne s'agit pas d'un livre lu en un quart d’heure. La caractéristique la plus marquante du dessin se trouve dans la manière dont l’auteur dépeint ses personnages. Seul ou perdu dans une foule, chaque individu possède une identité graphique propre. Ce soin apporté à la description physique des protagonistes renforce la profonde sincérité de la démarche narrative de l’auteur.

Joe Sacco, par son travail exemplaire à tous points de vue, prouve une fois de plus la force évocatrice et narrative de la bande-dessinée. Gaza 1956 est indispensable.(less)

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Mar 21, 2010 Wayne rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book was so big and dense that it took me an entire day, with a couple of sanity breaks in between to finish it. A truly amazing book from start to finish. I truly respect Joe Socco for undertaking a book like this. Years of work for one incredible story. This book mainly centers on a particularly bad year of the forever war between Israel and Palestine.The year was 1956. I'm not qualified to comment on the accurateness or facts from this time. All I know is Socco did his homework and it sh...more

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Mar 13, 2010 Lars Guthrie rated it 5 of 5 stars

History is usually written in broad strokes. Historians appreciate nuances and contradictions as they try to make sense of events, but to explain or even just to retell, they must generalize. And to generalize they must edit.

Beneath any retelling are incidents of kindness and cruelty, justice and injustice, that are lost in that retelling. To focus on a single story would mean missing the larger story, so those individual tales become footnotes, only valued if enough of them accumulate to indic...more

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Dec 03, 2009 Tony rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: nonfiction, graphic-storytelling

The genre/form known generically as "graphic novels" has exploded across the publishing industry over the last five years or so. While most of this is fiction, there is a rich vein of autobiography, and a few other experiments with history and biography. What Joe Sacco has been doing since well before this trend emerged, is graphic journalism. He is a foreign correspondent, albeit one who works in cartoon panels rather than the pure written or spoken word.

This latest book of his is his biggest a...more The genre/form known generically as "graphic novels" has exploded across the publishing industry over the last five years or so. While most of this is fiction, there is a rich vein of autobiography, and a few other experiments with history and biography. What Joe Sacco has been doing since well before this trend emerged, is graphic journalism. He is a foreign correspondent, albeit one who works in cartoon panels rather than the pure written or spoken word.

This latest book of his is his biggest and most ambitious. His first book, Palestine, came out around 15 years ago and was an astonishing look at the lives of Palestinian life in the occupied territories and back into the start of the first intifada, with flashbacks to 1948. He then spent some harrowing time in Bosnia in the mid-1990s, resulting in his books Safe Area Goradze and The Fixer, which are vividly raw look at the horrors of that conflict. In 2001, he returned to Gaza with fellow journalist Chris Hedges (War is a Force Than Gives Us Meaning), looking into a reported massacre from the time of the 1956 war that he had seen mentioned in another Noam Chomsky's The Fateful Triangle. A few lines in a U.N. Report from the era subsequently sparked his interest in another incident in Gaza, so he returned in 2003 to try and track down the truth of that incident and see what role, if any, it played in the collective memory of the town.

What results is a sprawling, complex, multifaceted work that demands attention and engagement from the reader. Broken up into short sections/chapters/scenes of a few pages, it tells the story of the 1956 Suez Crisis, the Khan Younis massacre and "incident" in nearby Rafah at the same time, and Sacco's own contemporary quest to trace survivors of both and record their oral histories, against a background Israeli army destruction of Palestinian houses along the border of Gaza. It's a challenging mix of his own observations, quotes from historical documents, eyewitness accounts, and more -- all of which combine into a sad story of how quickly time can erase the past.

Unfortunately, whether or not you find the book compelling probably depends on your existing views toward Palestinian-Israeli relations. Readers sympathetic to the plight of Palestinians will find in the book yet further evidence of past Israeli atrocities and contemporary Israeli brutality. Readers sympathetic to Israel will seize upon discrepancies in the memories of those recalling events 50 years past, the lack of an irrefutable paper trail, and Sacco's positioning the story from the Palestinian point-of-view, to dismiss the work as a smear job. Of course, neither reading is complete, and part of the whole point of the book is to demonstrate how time takes its toll objective truth.

Personally, I'm not sure what steps Sacco could have taken to placate those demanding the "Israeli side" of the two incidents: perhaps placed a newspaper ad saying "Were you involved in massacring Palestinians in Gaza in 1956? If so, please contact me so I can make your involvement a public part of the historical record." However, it does seem a little odd that he doesn't give the unit numbers or anything like that for the Israeli army forces involved. There are also one or two points in his recreation of the story where some officers and possibly foreigners take steps to mitigate the brutality, and I wished that more archival detective work had been done to try and track down these figures. It's not clear to me whether he tried and the IDF archives just didn't have that material, or what. However, ultimately, it seems pretty clear that some despicable actions were taken against unarmed civilians, including murder. It's telling to me that at the time, a few opposition members in the Knesset attempted to raise inquires into the incidents and were blocked.

Graphically, the book is another Sacco masterpiece -- from detailed facial portraits of those he interviewed, to several stunning two-page spreads of sweeping scope from a raised perspective. The ramshackle feel of the towns and refugee camps of the 1956 period stands in stark visual contrast to hustling, bustling, built-up modern Gaza. Sacco's hand-lettering isn't the easiest to read, and here it's chopped up into so many small boxes that it can be a bit of a chore to read. But this is a minor quibble for a book that is so amazingly immersive. I've lived throughout the Middle East and have been to the West Bank, Gaza, and Israel, and Sacco captures the urban and natural landscape wonderfully. The one disappointment is the cover, which is very bland and doesn't give much of a sense of the contents.

If you have any interest in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or the present-day situation in Gaza, I definitely recommend picking this up and challenging yourself to grapple with it. The format and discursive style offer a different lens on events and issues that will always be controversial. Even if you disagree with the approach or perspective, I think there's a lot of humanity display in the pages, and that alone is worth engaging with.(less)

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May 28, 2012 Mejix rated it 4 of 5 stars

Impressive but problematic on many levels. I am fascinated by the power these images have and how effectively they can tell a story like this. The drawings are excellent and at moments extraordinary. I think the story could've been more focused and told in half the length. The incident it explores is horrific but we don't get a clear idea of the historical significance, specially given the violent history of the region. Sacco keeps being asked why he is dwelling on this incident (and why 385 pag...more

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Jun 27, 2011 Tabitha rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I love a certain kind of graphic novel. There is a lot of crap out there in book form, but finding griping, informative, inspiring and/or compelling graphic novels can be difficult. After reading Fun Home and Persepolis, I went in search of more graphic novels of the same caliber. This was a difficult task. I knew that I had found another gem, however, after only a few pages of Footnotes from Gaza.

Joe Sacco traveled extensively in Gaza on assignments, and in doing research for this book, which f...more

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Jan 27, 2010 Sheehan rated it 5 of 5 stars

Joe Sacco is not only a great illustrator, he is the Studs Terkel of war reporting, interviewing his many subjects, and compiling a history of two ignominious events in the Gaza Strip during 1956-7.

I have read Sacco's other two books, Palestine and Safe Area Gorazade, both also insightful treatments of genuinely heart-wrenching daily living circumstances; and based on a solid foundation of Sacco's experience investigating the stories and the people whom service grand narrative structure.

The onl...more

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Nov 02, 2012 Andrewormston rated it 4 of 5 stars

I really like reportage and really like good illustration so this should be right up my street. Raemaeker's WWI cartoons remain, I think, some of the most powerful images ever. Sacco's graphic novel format suits the almost unbelievable atrocities and cruelties that were carried out in Gaza in 1956. The device of showing us the Gaza of today and its many similarities to what went half a century before is effective. The wickedness is the same, the technology has moved on. It also links us to the s...more

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Nov 30, 2011 Michael rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: comics

Sacco's feat in Footnotes in Gaza is to present a more full and compelling depiction of the conflict in Palestine than we are able to get from more traditional news sources. His images are more riveting, oddly, because he has acquainted us with these people in a way that a 60 second news brief never can.

Notes:

Palestinian history since 1948 is wrought in a clear manner, without the political complexity of the media and official accounts. It's odd to see a comic book getting closer to the heart of...more Sacco's feat in Footnotes in Gaza is to present a more full and compelling depiction of the conflict in Palestine than we are able to get from more traditional news sources. His images are more riveting, oddly, because he has acquainted us with these people in a way that a 60 second news brief never can.

Notes:

Palestinian history since 1948 is wrought in a clear manner, without the political complexity of the media and official accounts. It's odd to see a comic book getting closer to the heart of the Palestinian resistance than any book, film or traditional news report ever has. The Israelis are shown to perpetrate the same kind of gruesome genocide the Jews endured in Europe during World War II. Sacco doesn't ignore the inconsistencies between the different accounts in Khan Younis, but this does not lessen the impact of the tragedy.

The rendering of the bull and the details of the split of the meat for the feast, reveal a culture with a strong sense of community and interdependence. The portraits of Palestinians here are so much more human than the nightly news reports, the de-contextualized photos and videos of the mainstream media. "The Day of the School" is an intense narrative and brings forth some of Sacco's most striking images. Though the images are powerful, the scary, brutish faceless Israeli soldiers are not fleshed out as characters. They are stereotypes of soldiers, with no sort of apprehension.

The many points of view, those of the women, the black Palestinians, the children all create a very clear and coherent narrative of a very confusing and complex event. The layering of the comic book page is much more instant and spatial than the layering of a documentary film. You wonder about the toll all these atrocities take on the survivors, the mistrust, anxiety and hatred all this violence breeds. In the end, Sacco shows the perspective of a man marching into the violence of the school and this is one of the most powerful sequences in comics history.(less)

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Mar 21, 2010 Laura Engelken rated it 4 of 5 stars

Joe Sacco utilizes his practice of "visual journalism" to detail his investigation of the 1956 massacre of Arab Palestinians in Rafah. In doing so he chronicles current life in the Gaza Strip as he reviews historical documents and speaks with survivors. Sacco's intention is clearly to give voice to the Palestinian people who have been systematically terrorized and murdered by Israeli government forces.

Sacco's graphic novel was an engaging and infuriating introduction to the recent history of Is...more

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Aug 23, 2012 Dave Riley rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: comic-journalism, history

Rarely -- so very rarely -- do you read something that changes your perspective on the world. While I've been a long term supporter of the Palestinian cause these past 40+ years , what Joe Sacco does inFootnotes on Gazais confront me with the brutal front line reality -- rather than serve up what so often can be an abstraction or simply 'another news item'.

You want to understand Gaza? You want to fathom why Zionism is a racist doctrine and why Israel is a colonial settler state? Then start her

...more

Rarely -- so very rarely -- do you read something that changes your perspective on the world. While I've been a long term supporter of the Palestinian cause these past 40+ years , what Joe Sacco does in Footnotes on Gaza is confront me with the brutal front line reality -- rather than serve up what so often can be an abstraction or simply 'another news item'.

You want to understand Gaza? You want to fathom why Zionism is a racist doctrine and why Israel is a colonial settler state? Then start here with Joe Sacco's Footnotes on Gaza.

The Palestinians have no other choice but to resist by any means necessary. You want to challenge that? Then go read Sacco.

No choice.

The world over what happens in Palestine follows the same game plan that all colonial settler states have used to displace and destroy indigenous populations.

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The word 'genocide' is a relevant usage. So too is 'state terrorism' against a whole population....

While Sacco's focus is to investigate and record the details of a massacre -- the graphic storyline keeps shifting between the now of 2003 -- and the then, almost 50 years previously. So the tangible reality of Gaza -- of how a disenfranchised and brutalized population is terrorized and cooped up is explored in almost 400 pages of superb line drawings.

In this concentration camp -- and thats' what Gaza is albeit one engineered for contemporary spin-- Sacco enlists the voices of those who have been sentenced to struggle day in day out, over years and decades because they have committed the insufferable crime of being Palestinian -- born on land the thieves want (and have already taken).

Footnotes on Gaza is indeed just a footnote to all that. Just another dirty incident in a long war.

But here, the intimacy of the record is almost unbearably poignant.

Loss...and survival.

There are few voices of protest that can match the articulation rendered here in ink. For a 'comic' this is another level all together. I think it serves the story telling better than straight journalism because it is so dense and the episodes so rewarding...and so human.

The voices rule the story. All the so many of them.

You can hear the voices as though you are listening to Sacco's tape recorder -- You too are in the room, in the Gaza streets....amongst all that living pain and suffering...and the overriding imperative that these people have no other choice but to resist otherwise they loose all.

(less)

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Sep 08, 2010 Kristen rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: graphic-novels-etc, make-you-put-a-gun-in-your-mouth

Having read Palestine, I must say Footnotes was probably even better in some ways, it certainly is more focused and the artwork is greatly improved (the cityscapes in Footnotes were mesmerizing.) That said, it's a little too much of the same and all these tales of woe do become rather exhausting after awhile. Also the book is based almost solely on personal accounts of events that happened over 50 years ago, so the nature of human memory is a reoccurring theme. Sacco goes out of his way to remin...more

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Jun 06, 2010 Arpan rated it 4 of 5 stars

even after avidly researching the arab-israeli conflict for the greater part of my adult life through books, newspaper articles, university courses, documentary films, and various blogs & other internet sources, i was stunned by the vividness with which the palestinian world is depicted in this graphic novel. gaza comes to two-dimensional, monochromactic life in both the historical events of 1956 (the book's primary concern) and contemporary events in the region's southern tip (to which the...more

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Oct 04, 2012 Mike rated it 4 of 5 stars

A heavy but level headed journalistic investigation into two specific atrocities, overlooked to the point of being considered "footnotes", in a place where atrocities seem to indistinguishably blend into one another over the decades. A basic understanding of the Arab-Israeli conflict is probably helpful in understanding the historical context of the events in the book, but what's really on display is the intense array of emotions of the individuals caught up in these events as well as the fuzzin...more

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Aug 09, 2011 William Holm added it

This was one mighty read. I do not think that I have ever spent so much time reading a graphic novel. With this book Sacco takes the form of comics journalism to new heights. Reading some of his earlier work I sometimes felt that balance between pictures and text was lacking. In this case it works very good. The story comes across much more clearly in this form than in the hand-held camera documentaries to often produced to describe the (so far) never ending conflict between Israelis and Palesti...more

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Jun 01, 2010 S.D. rated it 5 of 5 stars

An engaging, enraging, and finally heartening exploration of history’s winners, losers, and the state in which we find the closest thing we can to “truth.” Sacco’s graphic recounting of two little-reported incidents in the history of Israeli-Palestinian relations (how many more are there, one asks?) may surprise readers in its approach, which is at once highly personal and unflinchingly objective, a rare combination of journalistic integrity. Under its historical narrative, Footnotes in Gaza pre...more

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Apr 11, 2010 Darryl rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: graphic-novels

This book illustrates two historic massacres in Palestine in the mid-20th century and goes back and forth between them and the difficult day-to-day life in modern Palestine during the most recent intifada. Mr. Sacco tells the historical tales partly through snippets of interviews with those who suffered through the massacres or their direct relatives. This technique shows how difficult it is to get reliable data from eye witnesses and how a historian must make tough judgment calls to decide wha...more

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Jun 23, 2010 William Reichard rated it 2 of 5 stars

In general, I'm a fan of good graphic books, and I expected to like this one more than I did. The illustrations are amazing, and the story is complex and Joe Sacco handles the back and forth through history aspect of the narrative very well. I was frustrated by two things. 1. The very biased perspective: I know he's trying to tell another side of an under-reported story, but Sacco is a journalist, and I expected at least some sense of balance. He does give a nod to the Israeli perspective on occ...more

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May 17, 2010 Jamie rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: adult, graphic-novels, historical, war

Sacco's greatest work since Safe Area Gorazde, which is one of my top 5 favorite books ever.

In both books, he captures the HUMANITY of what we tend to think of as a mass ("Palestinians") while never letting you forget the mass either. Through one-on-one interviews, he is recreating an event, little covered in journalism, in 1950's Gaza that will bring to mind so much of what you've read about the Holocaust it should make you ferociously angry. He captures the spirit of "through this all, life mu...more

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Aug 25, 2012 Margot rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: graphic-novel-comics

What use is a culture's history when houses are being bombed and bulldozed Right Now? This question confronts Joe Sacco repeatedly during his travels through Palestine unearthing 50-year-old stories of slaughter and destruction unleashed by Israel. Sacco weaves past and present narratives seamlessly together in a tapestry of despair, resentment and mutual destruction. Sacco takes us along on his investigations and interviews with his interpreters by his side, unearthing long-buried memories from...more

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Mar 11, 2011 Jason rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: graphic-novels, history, non-fiction, more-literary, war

This is Joe Sacco's most sophisticated work to date, a dual narrative about the 1956 Suez crisis and semi-contemporary Gaza. He takes pains to demonstrate the fallibility of the eyewitness account, but dozens of eyewitness accounts form a terrible gestalt here as he ferrets out the details of a massacre in 1956 Rafah. I've always loved Sacco's illustration and rigorous attention to detail, and it is on full display here. Many of the pages are breathtaking. His accuracy is maniacal - when I saw I...more

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Dec 06, 2010 Tori rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: mideast-arabic-islam, history, graphic-novel

Wow. This narrative was absolutely fabulous. Great art and great storytelling. On top of that, Sacco draws attention to a forgotten piece of the history of the Israel-Palestine dispute. I never knew that things like those in this book happened. Of course, the Israelis tell a completely different story, but reading second-hand accounts of Palestinians who saw entire families and homes destroyed makes it hard for me to imagine that anyone would be on the side of the Israelis after reading the nove...more

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Feb 19, 2010 Chad rated it 4 of 5 stars

I'm always impressed with a Sacco book--thoroughly detailed, scrupulously researched, relentlessly intricate. I can't tell if there are too many characters or I'm just not as familiar (or paying attention) as much as I should, but this was definitely the most complex story he's told as of yet. Drawings are busy, so it's sometimes hard to get a clean-read on the story, as things are interwoven so densely on the page. I think I'm more of a fan of "The Fixer" or "Safe Area Gorazde" but this one rea...more

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Dec 20, 2011 Emma rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: graphic-novels

so only made it about a third of the way thru this epic graphic novel... the illustrations are brilliant and the novel's purpose and task - to uncover a largely forgotten massacre in Gaza in 1956 by seeking out and having conversations with the people who lived through it, pushing through many layers of trauma - demonstrates amazing and personal historical research. however, i found reading it a bit disjointed and the format made me feel a bit disconnected, however this also may be because the c...more

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Apr 30, 2010 Schuyler rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: library-books

This book primarily focuses on one event in November of 1956, in a town in the Gaza Strip called Rafah. In this particular event, hundreds of young, unarmed men, mostly of military age, were rounded up in a local school yard by the Israeli army. Most were severely beaten on the head as they entered the yard. They were questioned. Held all day, they were made to sit in their own piss. Some rubbed sand in their wounds to stop the bleeding. Suspected soldiers were imprisoned or killed on the spot....more This book primarily focuses on one event in November of 1956, in a town in the Gaza Strip called Rafah. In this particular event, hundreds of young, unarmed men, mostly of military age, were rounded up in a local school yard by the Israeli army. Most were severely beaten on the head as they entered the yard. They were questioned. Held all day, they were made to sit in their own piss. Some rubbed sand in their wounds to stop the bleeding. Suspected soldiers were imprisoned or killed on the spot. After all the soldiers had been weeded out, the rest were released, sent home. Later, families ran into the night, looking for their husbands, their fathers, their brothers, their sons. They found them dead in the streets, slumped against walls, face down in the dirt, or piled with others on the outskirts of town. 50. 60. 70 corpses, tossed together like fish. The families carried them off using blankets. They brought them to the local cemetery, buried five, six bodies in preexisting graves. They had no time. They were already breaking curfew.

So this is the terrible subject of Sacco's book but he finds it hard to stay on topic, as he is researching in present day Rafah and present day Rafah is an exceedingly violent area. Every day something new is happening. Every day, Palestinian homes are being bulldozed by the IDF (Israeli Defense Force). The IDF claims they are being fired upon by these houses, snipers on the rooftops. Possibly, though not likely, and hardly a reason to bulldoze someones home, displacing an entire family. But such is the power of the IDF, whose power is all but total in Palestine.

So we call Palestinians terrorists. They hate America. They loved Saddam Hussein. They hate Jews. But what if we step back for a second and examine why we think these things. Well, most of it has to do with because that is what the US government and the Israeli government and the media want us to think. But think about it this way, with a little empathy.

We have tanks and high powered rifles and night vision and Kevlar and helicopters and jets and bulldozers and jeeps and uniforms and money and power and we call ourselves an army of soldiers. They have few guns and fewer soldiers and fewer weapons and virtually no money and we call them terrorists. We call them terrorists because...they use suicide bombers, killing untold amounts of innocent victims? No one can support that. I do not support terrorism. What is the difference between terroism and the army? Isn't the IDF guilty of atrocities perpetrated against innocent Palestinians? But all Palestinians are terrorists so it doesn't matter, right? What I'm saying, if we think about it a little differently and think, well what is the alternative? How else are the Palestinians to defend themselves? And at this point, it's a quagmire, it's just eye for an eye stuff. 5 Palestinians killed one day, 3 Israelis killed as retaliation. And on and on and on.

But do Americans understand any of this, question any of this? Do we know about this displacement, these bulldozed homes? What if you lived in an area where at any moment, your home could be bulldozed by the government? Living under curfew, sniped at from towers at night? Do we understand this type of life? If we were faced with death, every day, faced with displacement, every day, what would we be compelled to do? Would you hate your oppressor? Would you cheer those that helped you? Curse those that funded your enemy? So then, how can we judge what we don't know for certain. How can we judge what we do not understand?

Everything is gray.(less)

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Mar 15, 2010 Jake Forbes rated it 5 of 5 stars

This was a tough book to get through and really hard to rate. Sacco's first comics reportage on Palestine was a truly eye-opening -- absolutely one of the best comics works I'd ever read. Whereas Palestine is a patchwork portrait of 90s Palestine as experienced by the artist, Footnotes in Gaza focuses on one incident in one city that took place 50 years ago. Sacco skillfully weaves together eye-witness accounts to recreate the atrocities in Rafah in 1956, which he intersperses with his journey a...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

Safe Area Goražde: The War in Eastern Bosnia, 1992-1995

War's End: Profiles from Bosnia, 1995-1996

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