Graphic intifada

Comic book "Palestine" by journalist Joe Sacco about the Arab-Israeli conflict

“Palestine” is the fruit of Sacco’s two qualifications. After graduating from the Faculty of Journalism, he got a job in the eighties at the publication of the National Association of Notaries of the USA, but found journalism an “extremely boring” profession and devoted himself entirely to his hobby - comics. Education nevertheless made itself felt: observing the development of the Arab-Israeli conflict, Sacco came to the conclusion that the American media gave a one-sided picture, by default showing the Palestinians as terrorists and aggressors. And when the first intifada broke out, he decided to figure it out himself: “I didn’t have any plan. I just felt like I needed to go there and see it for myself, and I thought, I can’t go there as some kind of tourist adventurer, but maybe I can draw a comic about it.”

In the early nineties, Sacco spent two months in Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, conducting more than a hundred interviews, mostly with Palestinians, but also with Israelis. At first, he behaved quite meekly: he wandered around East Jerusalem for several days in a row, not understanding how to get to the refugee camps, and was afraid to tell new acquaintances that he was drawing a comic book about the intifada, fearing that they would laugh (this happened several times). But for a journalist who had never covered events in hot spots, Sacco quickly became skilled. Speaking to a Palestinian family about Jews opposing the occupation and facing a wall of misunderstanding (“Jews are dogs”), the reporter firmly sums up: “I’m not here to negotiate anyway. And let’s be honest, the sales of my comics depend on the conflict: you can’t feed yourself with a truce.” Finding himself in Ramallah for a rally that escalated into clashes between Palestinians overturning trash cans and setting fire to tires, and an Israeli patrol responding with machine gun fire, in the thick of the unrest, the author, sweating and trembling, mutters to himself: “All for the sake of a comic book. All for the sake of a comic. All for the sake of a comic."

Sacco is opposed to Palestine being called a “graphic novel”—it is precisely a reportage to which the comic book format has given unexpected scope. What catches your eye is the emphatically cartoonish style, which at first glance contradicts the tragedy of the Palestinians' stories: endless interrogations with torture, Israeli police indiscriminately wielding batons, pre-trial arrests of innocent people and deaths in every family. Paradoxically, a comic book provides much greater immersion in the narrative and solidarity with the characters than a newspaper publication or television story. The last thing you expect from a medium that is immediately associated with colorful fantasy, superheroes and geeks is serious documentary, but it is precisely this outlandish play of form and content that “Palestine” fascinates. Traditional media are too familiar to the eye to capture the reader’s attention as strongly. Sacco's work laid the foundations for a whole trend of journalism in comics, which has already taken root in the West over a quarter of a century.

The author admitted that he was hostage to the cartoon style, the only one he owned at the time of his arrival in Jerusalem. He deliberately tried to portray the respondents more realistically, but throughout the entire book his alter ego remained as if he had stepped off the cover of Charlie Hebdo - with exaggerated facial features and frosted glasses. Another caricatured inhabitants of “Palestine” are children with completely unchildish faces, adult facial expressions that convey the same fatigue or anger as their parents. This illustrative device serves Sacco's observation that appears regularly throughout the book: Palestinian children have no childhood. The intifada has captured everyone, from old people who remember the exodus of Palestinians from their lands during the Arab-Israeli war of 1947-1949, to schoolchildren who run to throw stones at Israeli patrols instead of studying. A prison sentence has replaced a graduation certificate for teenagers - a 16-year-old boy shows off to Sacco his green ID card, indicating his recent imprisonment:

"Green Card: Intifada!" - says my friend, waving his ID card... “Orange card: no intifada!” - he takes his friend’s card... Blushing from ear to ear, the orange card retreats, and the green card glows with pride.”

Because Palestine purports to be journalism, it demands relevant assessment—and Sacco's sympathies for the Palestinians inevitably turn out to be a point of contention. Several Jewish websites accused him of almost calling for Jewish pogroms, and the publisher received threatening letters. Of course, in the preface he takes a strictly pro-Arab position: "Israelis and Palestinians will continue to kill each other with suicide bombers, attack helicopters and attack bombers until the cause of it all - the Israeli occupation - is examined from the perspective of international law and basic human rights." . In the interview, he directly says that all his life he has observed exclusively pro-Israeli journalism in the States, so his task was to give a voice to the other side for the first time. And yet, it is impossible to convict him of violating professional ethics: one of the chapters of the comic is entirely devoted to the opinions of Israelis regarding the conflict, and Sacco himself is far from delighted with the participation of children in liberation movements, the subordinate share of women, civil strife between different factions, brutal reprisals against collaborators and other customs of newly made Palestinian friends who make up the everyday background of the intifada. Most accurately, Sacco’s position was summed up by the translator of the book, Vasily Shevchenko: “The author is on the general humanitarian side.”

Sacco performed journalistic functions to the extent that he was able to report in detail about the oppressed and disenfranchised victims stuck in an absolutely futile uprising for their fatherland. Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir once said that there was never any Palestinian people, something Palestine clearly refutes.