Joe Sacco has demonstrated – time and again – his commitment to compassionate journalism and has devoted the better part of thirty years to documenting the most troubling parts of our history. His comic series’ Safe Area Goražde (2000) and The Fixer (2001) provide first-hand accounts of the Bosnian war, and his ground-breaking comic Palestine (1996) and Footnotes on Gaza (2009) provide intimate, historical accounts of life under occupation. His latest work, War on Gaza, showcases Sacco’s trademark black wit and honest compassion – even in the face of untold suffering.
Originally published as a series of short web comics and single-panel illustrations, War on Gaza chronicles and satirises the crisis as it unfolds in real time, between January and July 2024. It aims to lay bare the naked immorality of the ‘war’ itself and it’s tragic consequences. Armed with boundless compassion and the darkest sense of humour, Sacco offers an uncompromising account and critique of Israel’s genocide and the complicity of Joe Biden’s United States in the escalating violence.
Although the tragedy of the genocide and its victims are fully centred, Sacco smartly aims his acerbic wit at the US government and its cowering subservience. Drawing parallels between the children of Gaza and American students, he connects the dots of Palestinian oppression and American repression and highlights how the virtues espoused by the United States are – and have always been – conveniently malleable. In Sacco’s eyes, Gaza is the next instalment in a long history of western ‘civilising’, with characteristically violent results.
In one memorable vignette, Sacco depicts himself posting a cheque to the IRS, which is immediately intercepted and delivered straight to the American military and used to purchase the final piece of a bomb. Sacco’s hopes that his tax contribution will go ‘towards helping those people and others’ evaporate as we follow the money – and subsequent bomb – to the point of detonation, culminating in a haunting image that closes a tightly written piece of gut-wrenching satire.
In just 32-pages, Sacco’s illustrations pack an incomparable punch. His charming, cartoonish style is utilised to great effect; depicting the worst horrors of the last 14 months and imagining a 10th circle of Dante’s hell where those responsible might finally face fitting retribution. Heartbreakingly funny, grotesquely brutal, and admirably unflinching, War on Gaza seethes with a rage that will stay with you long after it’s final page. And I doubt it will ever leave.
“Sacco’s novella-length follow-up to 2009’s Footnotes in Gaza sounds a short but sustained scream of despair. … it’s a bracing slap in the face of complacency.” — Publishers Weekly
“A biting comentary…” — Kirkus Reviews
