Palestine: The Special Edition

Sacco, J. (2007). Palestine: The Special Edition. Seattle: Fantagraphics Books. ISBN 978-1-56097-844-2 (Originally published in serial comic-book format between 1993 and 1995)

Why read this book

Many people believe that the “war on terrorism” will not end until the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians is finally resolved. For a Palestinian view of the conflict, check out Joe Sacco’s graphic journalism in Palestine.

Plot summary

With little prior knowledge of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, Joe Sacco traveled to Israel in late 1991 to find out for himself what was going on in the Occupied Territories, the Gaza strip and the West Bank regions then governed directly by Israel but large populated by Palestinians. Many Palestinians were still living in refugee camps that the United Nations established after Israelis created the state of Israel and expelled Palestinians from their homes in the region in 1948. When Sacco arrived, the people of the Occupied Territories had been conducting an intifada (armed resistance) against the occupation since 1987.

Sacco based himself in Jerusalem for more than two months but spent much of his time in Gaza and the West Bank. He witnessed the intifada as it played out on the streets and interviewed dozens of Palestinians about their lives since 1948. Sacco published his reports in comic-book format between early 1993 and late 1995. The nine comic books were first published together in book form in 2000. Sacco structures the narrative around his investigative process, drawing himself into the story as he explains the historical background to the occupation; the material deprivations of Palestinians, especially those living in refugee camps; the political divisions among Palestinians; women’s attitudes toward their particular circumstances; the role of young people in the intifada; the imprisonment of large numbers of Palestinians, mostly men; and the barriers to economic development that the Israelis have imposed on the Occupied Territories. In the last chapter he reports on an extensive conversation with two Israeli women, including a visit to Tel Aviv, where they live.

Critical evaluation

As Edward Said, the late Palestinian-American intellectual and political activist, writes in the introduction to Palestine, Joe Sacco’s reporting helped fill an important vacuum in American journalism, both because of the voice it gives Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories and because of the unique graphic format. Sacco’s work is also distinguished by his decision to place himself in the narrative, which demystifies the reporting process. The reader is allowed to understand the circumstances of Sacco’s investigation, such as how he found his informants and how much time he spent with them, which gives us more information to evaluate the reliability of the reporting than we usually receive from journalists. I often found Sacco’s voice distracting, however, as his frank discussion of his motivations reveals the opportunism that drives much journalistic investigation. Sacco sometimes confesses excitement when a confrontation occurs because the action will make his comics more salable. More often he is moaning about his personable deprivations – such as the cold and mud, since he was in Palestine during the winter – which makes him seem less than heroic, especially in the context of the painful stories he is reporting.

I think that Sacco’s decision to organize his narrative around the chronology of his investigation also diminishes the power of his reporting. As he says himself in the introduction to this edition of Palestine, the narrative is “jerky” and “episodic” (p. xxi). Since he conducted his interviews in late 1991 and early 1992 but didn’t begin publishing his reports until early 1993, it seems that he had the time to organize them in a more coherent, thematic manner. It’s true that the reader’s ability to share Sacco’s journey of discovery adds an interesting dimension to the narrative, but it also means that he repeats many topics from chapter to chapter and there is no clear dramatic arc to the narrative. Perhaps if he had chosen to focus his reporting of his own role in the story less on his emotional reactions and more on intellectual and professional issues (when and how does he break through his sources' sloganeering to get to deeper truths?), the narrative might be more compelling for the reader.

About the author

Joe Sacco was born in 1960 in Malta, lived with his family in Australia from 1961 to 1972, and then moved to the United States. He studied journalism at the University of Oregon but did not find conventional journalism to be very interesting. After living in Malta in the early 1980s and writing alternative comics in the United States in the mid 1980s, he moved to Europe. While in Europe he developed an interest in the Palestinian situation. Visiting there for two months in late 1991 and early 1992, he developed his findings into Palestine, a pioneer work of graphic journalism that won the 1996 American Book Award (Joe Sacco, 2009). He has since published Safe Area Gorazde (2000), about the conflict in Bosnia; The Fixer (2003), about a man who connects foreign journalists with local sources during the war in Bosnia; Notes from a Defeatist (2003), a collection of his early alternative comics; War’s End: Profiles from Bosnia (2005); and But I Like It (2006), a collection of stories based in his experiences with music groups in the early 1990s. His latest work is Footnotes in Gaza, a Graphic Novel, which explores the massacre of 111 people in the Palestinian town of Rafah in 1956. It will be released later this month (Footnotes in Gaza, n.d.).

Genre: Contemporary non-fiction, Crossover, Graphic non-fiction, International

Curriculum ties

• Although Sacco’s reporting dates from the end of the first intifada in the early 1990s, and there have been many developments in Israel and Palestine since then, the graphic format and the author’s first-person narration make it a good resource for a unit on the Middle East in an international relations course or a contemporary world history course.

• Sacco’s introduction to this edition, which includes an explanation of how he converted his field notes, drawings, and photographs into a graphic publication, could be useful in an art class.

Book-talking ideas

• Project the marvelous two-page, bird’s-eye-view of a refuge camp (p. 146-7) and invite students to speculate about where it is and what’s going on. Then explain the image and invite them to learn more by reading the book.

• Project pages 196 through 198, the beginning of 15-year-old Firas’s story of how he became involved in the intifada. End with the text at the bottom of page 198, which reads, “What happened the time you were shot?” and invite students to learn the rest by checking out the book.

• Project some of the pages in Sacco’s introduction where he explains how he converted his field notes into images and text to tell his story. This insight into the creative process might capture the attention of students who have thought about creating a graphic publication of their own.

• Show excerpts from Sacco’s lecture at the Walker Art Center in which he talks about incidents he reported in Palestine.

Reading level/interest age

The graphic format makes this work accessible to both middle school and high school students, but I think the complexity of the topic overall means that older teens are more likely to pick up the book than younger teens. Five public high school libraries and one public middle school library in San Francisco include Palestine in their collections.

Challenge issues

Challenges to Palestine will most likely center on the book’s nearly exclusive focus on the Palestinian view of the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis.

Responses

• Remind the challenger of the policy (in the case of the San Francisco Public Library) to present “all points of view on current and historical issues. Materials should not be proscribed or removed because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval.”

• Note Sacco’s own defense on the point of focusing exclusively on the Palestinian perspective: He originally became interested in the topic because he had learned almost nothing about the Palestinian perspective from the mainstream media in the United States. He began his investigation because of his curiosity, not because of a particular political bias.

Why I chose to read this book

A high school history teacher whose classroom I visited said she uses Palestine and other Joe Sacco graphic journalism with her world history students, so I decided to check it out.

References

Footnotes in Gaza: A Graphic Novel (Hardcover). (n.d.) Amazon.com. Retrieved December 6, 2009, from http://www.amazon.com/Footnotes-Gaza-Graphic-Joe-Sacco/dp/0805073477/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpi_1

Joe Sacco. (2009, November 29). Wikipedia. Retrieved December 6, 2009, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Sacco