Look a Book: Graphic Gaza

Palestine
Joe Sacco

Israel, as a country, and Gaza, as a battleground, have always left me feeling out of my depth. When it all kicked off in the winter of 2008/2009, I was coincidentally reading a book called 'Palestine' by Joe Sacco. The book focuses on the stories of the Palestinian people that Joe spent time with in 1991-1992.

Palestine is a graphic novel that makes learning about Gaza accessible. Now, when I read the news about Gaza, it fits. It only took one book.

Joe, bespectacled and with foibles, is hungry for a story. He puts himself in danger to get it. Joe has a graphic novel to write.

Joe does not seem brave or fearless. His manner is unassuming, attentive and gracious. He befriends those he meets and, to some extent, he lets his hosts guide him, make connections for him and lead his way. Over time, the stories become the same and Joe’s hunger grows, while his enthusiasm tires.

Stop me, oh, stop me. Stop me if you think that you’ve heard this one before. No one wants to stop. This is the story of their lives. To each person telling it, the story is theirs. The story is unique and it must be heard. The story goes on. Reading the news today, it’s hard to believe that so little has changed in seventeen years.

Joe’s images of a cramped populous living under curfew, throwing stones at Israelis, drinking tea and talking politics from dawn to dusk is striking. The images depict generations of Palestinians, some who have lived other lives, in other places or at other times, and some who haven’t. Now, together, they’re caught in a battle over territory and there is no happy end in sight.

Read the book, see the images, learn the story.

In the meantime, here are some tasters. I have chosen the following excerpts because they include long streams of dialogue, which make sense in non-graphic format. Joe interviews people of all ages and sexes. His drawings truly enhance the story, so beg, steal or borrow to view them. This is just the start.

Excerpt 1:
"Weeks later, in Jabalia refugee camp, I met an old Palestinian who told me about the home he fled in 1948 after Israel declared independence and the Arab armies invaded...

Elder:
The Jews came and occupied the village and arrested everyone left behind, including my father, who was an old man and couldn't move. I walked with my wife, who was pregnant, for four days... The Egyptian army refused to take us in trucks... The Jews bombed us... Even the ants ran after us.
It was a black day when I left my land.

He returned, as it were, a few years ago. He got a permit from the Israeli authorities. For a few hours he could leave the Gaza strip... He would cross into what is now Israel to visit his home village.

Elder:
I took my family to see my land... Where my house was and my school... Some people are paralyzed after they have a chance to go back and see. They destroyed everything. There is no sign that we ever lived there."

Excerpt 2:
"As a rule of thumb, I avoid groups of teenaged boys... I figure, why chance getting on the wrong side of some 17 year old's testosterone secretion when I can cross the road instead. And it's always safest to give kids with Uzis a wide berth... HEBRON.

Not to bad-mouth a settler based on his personal arsenal, y’understand... not out loud, anyway, and not here in particular... This has been a cruel town to Jews... in the Arab riots of 1929 upwars of 60 Hebron Jews got massacred... in ’36 the small Jewish community got run out of town all together.

Fortunes change... Israel nabbed the West Bank in the ’67 war and settling biblical Judea and Samaria has been a religious imperative for fundamentalist Jews ever since... Their policy’s been: Settle first and Israel government approval will come follow (and eventually the Messiah)... Such audacity got them the nearby (like one kilometre nearby) Kiryat Arba settlement in ’72... but that wasn’t enough... in ’79 Gush Emunim zealots squateed Hebron proper downtown... and they’re here to stay, you better believe it, with their finger on the trigger in case some unruly “Canaanite” gets other ideas..."

Excerpt 3:
"Someone in the Gaza Strip once told me, “When you are under interrogation you forget the name of your father”. Me? I wonder how long I’d last getting the business behind a closed door... Not long I bet, but I’m a Pussy First Class... a harsh word and a dirty look and I’d be screaming for Amnesty Int’l.

I meet a Palestinian woman about my age, though, who is one tough cookie. Two years ago she did 19 days in Jerusalem's notorious Russian Compound, courtesy of the Shin Bet... And still she’s bitter about the guys who squealed on her, who named her for something she says she didn’t do – under writing nationalistic pamphlets...

Some of them were arrested in the morning and denounced in the afternoon... They couldn't tolerate one day of pain... Not only were their bodies weak, but their minds were weak, their commitment to the national cause was weak...

And in the Russian Compound the Shin Bet stood her up in the “coffin” half a day after she’d undergone a liver biopsy.

It's a small closet, you stand up in it, it's 80x60cm, two meters high, very dark... I had lumps in my legs, I couldn’t stand up, I was still feeling the anaesthetic... It was cold... I fell unconscious...

And they tied her and hooded her – the Palestinians call this technique... They made her sit straight with a metal bar pressing down the centre of her back, she says, they hit her when she leaned against the wall... But worst of all was isolation, her cell, which was besmirched with filth, she ways, and where she was left without toilet paper and sanitary napkins. She longed for the interrogations, when she’d have someone to talk to... ”I’d have fun with them”... she says she'd figured out the Shin Bet...

The Shin Bet reckoned they could play the twin cards of gender and Arab culture against her... They implied a long imprisonment would ruin her marriage prospects... And they threatened rape, she says... they accused her of using a trip overseas to find sexual partners. Once she'd made clear they couldn't intimidate her sexually, the Shin Bet abandoned that tack – and eventually the interrogation itself..."


Excerpt 4:
Family of a youth shot dead by settlers:
"It was 9p.m. We were in the house. We heard a bulldozer. Some settlers had come to demolish water pipes in the village... There was a confrontation. My brother went out the back door on this small roof with our cousin to see what was going on... NOT to join in. A settler shot him from the road down there. Our cousin died immediately. My brother was shot in the abdomen, and he made it back into the house. The soldiers put a curfew on the village, and we couldn’t leave the house to take him to hospital. He was with his mother and father. He bled to death in three hours. He was 21. My cousin was 17."

Excerpt 5:
Visiting the elderly uncle of a guide.
"I want to know about 1948. 1948: for the Palestinians, The Catastrophe... Yes, he was one of more than 20,000 who escaped to Gaza... The Zionist forces were relatively well armed, well trained... The Palestinians in the other hand had been forcibly disarmed by the British a decade before... Mostly, they pinned their hopes on the intervening Arab armies.

Elder:
We had five guns in the village. We had them hidden but they weren’t enough... The Jews came... I escaped with my family, with the clothes I was wearing, with some flour... The Jews destroyed the village. Now it is farmers’ fields. I walked through it four or five years ago.

Okay, but what about before 1948? How did Jews and Palestinians get along then?

The Jews and Arabs lived together. Yes, I had Jewish friends... A Jew used to visit my brother. They would drink coffee together... Black coffee.

Ah... now that's a pleasant image... a delicate one, granted, and perhaps on the idyllic side, but one wishes mountains from such molehills... I remind myself that was long ago. Ammar's uncle has had to live in this bog upwards of four decades... So what's his take on the chance for peace now?

The Jews are like a dog that has got ahold of some meat... There won't be any peace until you kill the dog."


Fabpants Recommends: Let's start off with a topical film, eh?

Closed Zone by Yoni Goodman, Director of Waltz with Bashir

Art Brut aspires to making a song that makes Israel and Palestine get along. If the were to play a gig in Gaza, I bet it would do the trick. Whenever I see them, and I have very recently, I want to form a band. I can’t sing or dance and I have absolutely no sense of rhythm, but Eddie Argos sure knows how to put a fire in the belly.


Download MP3: Art Brut – Formed a Band




As for more recent tunes, today I've enjoyed the following:

Download MP3: Super Furry Animals – Helium Hearts (courtesy of loftandlost.files.wordpress.com)




And if you thought the Furries sometimes get weird, check out this chaos in a tin can:

Download MP3: Micachu - Vulture (courtesy of newyorkrockmarket)




Download MP3: Micachu - Calculator (courtesy of weeklytapedeck.com)