Elisha Vermani 
New Delhi: ‘Is it genocide or is it self defence?’ is a question that has come to frame the violence in Gaza. The answer, according to Joe Sacco, is simple: genocidal self defence.
On Monday (November 11), Sacco walked into a hall of about 1,000 people gathered to meet the legendary comics journalist, cartoonist and author – without any of the fanfare one might expect for someone of his stature.
Sacco, considered a pioneer in war reporting through graphics and comics as his medium, is the recipient of several accolades including the American Book Award (1996), the Eisner Award for Best Original Graphic Novel (2010) and the British Eagle Award in 2001. His Footnotes in Gaza won the Ridenhour Book Prize (2010) and the first Oregon Book Award for Graphic Literature (2012).
But what precedes Sacco is his humility, grace and sharp wit.
Joe Sacco in conversation with Seema Chishti. Photo: Siddharth Varadarjan/The Wire.
In response to a question about why he chose to make comics when it would be easier to just write or photograph, Sacco said, “I wanted to be a news writer for a newspaper, but I could never find a job doing that. After two or three years of sort of soul-crushing, semi-journalistic jobs, I just decided to get out of it and fall back on something I’d been doing as a kid – cartooning.”
“There was no theory behind it. I didn’t sit back beforehand and say, this is what I’m going to do. It just happened organically. Later on I became more self conscious [about the process] because people ask me these questions, and then I do have to theorise,” he said, drawing a laugh from the audience.
Sacco’s 1993 book Palestine, a nonfiction graphic novel based on his experience in the West Bank and Gaza, is considered to be ground breaking in its role for capturing the violence in Palestine. “With the exception of one or two novelists and poets, no one has ever rendered this terrible state of affairs better than Joe Sacco,” Palestinian-American academic Edward Said wrote in his introduction to the book.
About the violence besieging the region today and how one processes something like it, Sacco said, “I think the point is [that] we can’t process it. It’s too much to digest really. The sort of information we’re getting, one image after another, I think if we were able to process it, we wouldn’t really be humans. So it’s a human response to have this really stuck in your throat.”
In conversation with The Wire’s editor, Seema Chishti, Sacco discussed his choice to insert himself into his comics and the dangers of neutrality and a ‘both-sides’ approach in journalism.
“Having my figure in the panels sort of signals the reader that you’re seeing this through the eyes of one journalist. I’m not an authority on a subject. I’m a living, breathing human being who is interacting with people and is subject to the forces of conversations and the things around me. I want people to understand that.
The other thing it made me realise is that I don’t really believe what I was taught about an ‘objective’ style of journalism. I sort of jettisoned that and having my figure in the comic books suggests that this is a subjective experience,” Sacco said.
A packed hall at Jawahar Bhavan. Photo: The Wire.
Speaking of the imbalance in treatment of Israeli and Palestinian narratives by Western media, Sacco in a pointed statement said, “The gold standard American journalism that I was taught actually pulled the wool over my eyes.”
He spoke of how, in his younger years, he came to associate Palestinians with terrorism almost through “osmosis” because of what he was hearing on TV and reading in newspapers. “Every time the word Palestinians was mentioned, it was in conjunction with terrorism. So it was ‘Palestinians have hijacked the bus’, ‘Palestinians have hijacked the plane’, ‘Palestinians are firing rockets’. But you never found out what Israel was doing. And you certainly didn’t understand the context in which things were happening.”
Sacco said it was this resentment over being led into a “pit of misinformation” that made him take up the task of finding out what the Palestinians had to say.
“I never really feel that I have to balance this with an Israeli point of view, because the truth of the matter is, especially if you’re over in the West, the Israeli point of view is all you hear,” he said, to a rapt audience.
A panel from ‘The War in Gaza’. Photo: Joe Sacco/The Comics Journal.
In Footnotes in Gaza, Sacco documented the massacres that took place in Khan Yunis and Rafah in November, 1956. His objective was to speak to the older generation of Palestinians that experienced these events. During these interviews, the children and grandchildren of the people Sacco spoke to often sat in on these conversations. The younger ones, Sacco recalled, would ask him why he wanted to know about a historical event when the Israeli army was bulldozing houses 200 metres away from them as they spoke.
“I understood why they were saying those things and why it felt strange to them,” Sacco said. “Because as someone once told me, events [in Palestine] are continuous. It’s not like this event happened in 1956 and everyone could sort of digest and reflect on it. There is no time for Palestinians to digest a thing because something is always coming after it.
So why would they talk about 1956 right now? I can tell you why. Because Chris Hedges and I met a guy named Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi who was one of the founders of Hamas. And his uncle, when Al-Rantisi was eight years old, was taken out by Israeli soldiers, lined up against a wall and shot. And Al-Rantisi said, at that moment, hatred entered our hearts. So that’s why history is important.”
In one of the editions from ‘The War on Gaza’, Sacco’s latest graphic series on the events unfolding in Palestine since October 7 last year, he says “from universities to journalists, one wonders what isn’t a military target in Gaza?”
“I think it seems to be possible to kill anyone if they’re Palestinian. Journalists are a subset, but they’re also killing medical personnel. They’re killing people trying to clear rubble. They’re killing people in safe zones. As a journalist, it really strikes me that this is happening. And of course, as journalists, we have to raise our voice about that,” he told Chishti.
People in queue to get their books signed by Joe Sacco. Photo: Elisha Vermani/The Wire.
On what bearing Israel’s targeting of journalists and their families has on the profession at large, Sacco said, “This is kind of a morbid and special moment. I don’t think there’s ever been a time when journalists have been targeted like this, and have had to work under such horrifying conditions. It’s different when you’re targeted and I think it’s even worse when your children, your wives, your husbands are targeted. That takes it into another realm.”
“I’m stunned by their bravery and fortitude, but they should not have to… they shouldn’t be going through that sort of thing,” Sacco added.
On whether there can be any reconciliation between the completely diverse world views of seeing the situation in Gaza as either self defence or genocide, Sacco simply said, “I don’t think so.”
The event ended with Sacco fielding questions from an enthusiastic audience. But it was the last member who spoke that gave the event a fitting close. Basem Hellis, a native of Gaza and a Palestinian diplomat, had come to thank Sacco. He also thanked “all Indians who had gathered to extend their solidarity with Palestine”. Drawing a huge round of applause from the crowds, it seemed only right that the last words came from a Palestinian.