Joe
Sacco's "Footnotes in Gaza": A People's Cartoon History Of
Gaza
29 January 2010By Paul de Rooij
The launch of a new book by Joe Sacco is a major
event, and with considerable expectation a crowd
recently gathered in London to hear the great
Maltese-American cartoonist and author discuss his
latest book: Footnotes in Gaza. [1] Sacco spent seven
years researching and drawing about two sordid events
that took place in November 1956 when Israeli forces
invaded Gaza as part of the joint British-French
attack against Egypt. The Israeli army conducted two
massacres where hundreds of Palestinians were
murdered, and Sacco set out to collate the oral
histories of the Palestinians who witnessed or were
the victims of the events. Sacco engaged in a detailed
investigative work finding the witnesses who could
credibly recollect what happened, sifted through the
accounts to eliminate the factual inconsistencies due
to the deteriorated memories, and then spent four
years bringing these histories to life in his
inimitable style. The book doesn’t only focus on the
past, but the present is also very much part of his
account; in present day Gaza giant armoured bulldozers
flatten houses in Rafah and where the ongoing siege
affects everybody's lives. Sacco says: "… the past and
the present cannot be so easily disentangled; they are
part of a remorseless continuum…"
Contemporary history is usually written by academics
with access to the main protagonists, usually
politicians or military commanders, inert archives,
and press accounts. This history is usually antiseptic
– there are no piles of corpses to embarrass the
generals. It is also imbued with certainty –
historians usually don’t question the politician's
say-so. It is rare for mainstream historians to listen
to victims; their accounts are seldom incorporated
into the victor's history. What sets Joe Sacco apart
is that not only is he a great artist, but also a
peoples' historian who is willing to listen to the
victims; his historiography is imbued with sympathy
and respect for the these victims; their history is
worthwhile recording. Sacco also focused on a
usually-ignored slice of history. In 2001, he
travelled in Gaza with Chris Hedges, the American
journalist, to research an article about the 1956
massacres for an article for Harper's magazine. When
the article finally appeared, the history of the
massacres had been editorially expunged; not all
histories are treated equally. Perhaps it was this
incident that piqued his interest to write about the
neglected massacres.
Sacco quotes Abed El-Rantisi, the Hamas leader who was
subsequently assassinated, saying about the 1956
massacres: "… this sort of action can never be
forgotten… they planted hatred in our hearts." To
understand the Palestinians it is important to take
into account the history that moulded their politics
and social currents; this history should also inform
future discussions about possible solutions. It is
cynically facile for the likes of Shimon Peres, the
Israeli president, to urge Palestinians to "look
forward" and ignore the past. However, negotiations
and a future reconciliation will only be possible if
the victims of the Israeli colonial project are
accorded a modicum of justice and recognition for
their suffering. The future reconciliation will
require a South African-style Truth and Reconciliation
Commission where the massacres at Deir Yassin, Safat,
Jenin 2002, Gaza 2009, … and Khan Yunis and Rafah 1956
are acknowledged.
The massacre
Sacco's images depicting the massacres are haunting.
The men older than 15-years of age were herded along a
road constantly beaten, pushed against walls,
terrorized with over-the-head gunfire, and then forced
to pass a gauntlet at a school entrance where soldiers
with large wooden clubs beat the entrants; those who
passed this deadly hurdle had to jump over rolls of
barbed wire. Thereafter the Palestinians were either
singled out if they were wearing uniforms, if they
were betrayed by collaborators, or merely if they
stood out because of their appearance. In Rafah, some
of the "wanted" men were taken to a side road and shot
or beaten to death; others were loaded onto buses and
taken to prison in Israel. Sacco's images not only
capture the horror of the events, but also the painful
memories, or the conflicting reports. It is a slightly
blurred rendition of history, very much like the
nature of the witnesses' memories.
The tyranny of explanations
Contemporary reportage about Gaza or the Palestinian
condition usually describes the latest barbarity
dispensed by the Israelis, and then automatically adds
an Israeli-justification helpfully provided by the
smooth Israeli military public relations officers.
These are some of the lame justifications: "the men
were killed because they were 'wanted men'"; "the
house was demolished because there were 'militants'
there"; "the wall is being built for security"; "Gaza
was attacked in 2009 to 'stop the rocket attacks'";
and so on. Much of the Israeli rationale provided for
the latest outrage is self-serving and often simply
suggests that there was a justification in a given
action. If there was a rationale, then the killing of
civilians is deemed "understandable" and, the
spokesman will add in an undertone, that the so-called
collateral damage – the civilians killed – is
regrettable, and it was unintentional. Seldom are such
banal justifications challenged.
Providing the Israeli rationale for the massacres
without a wider context is possibly a questionable
part of the book. Sacco inserts Moshe Dayan's
rationale for the 1956 assault on Gaza and it looks
absurd when juxtaposed to the victims' accounts.
Israelis purportedly rounded up the Palestinians to
root out the fedayeen who were conducting raids into
what is considered Israel. Sacco also quotes Mordechai
Bar-On, Moshe Dayan's right-hand-man, to provide this
self-serving justification. However, one only has to
remember what happened a few years earlier, in 1948,
to find a more plausible rationale for the massacre.
Yosef Nahmani, an Israeli witness to the massacre in
Safat on 6 November 1948, described how that massacre
was conducted, and it is eerily reminiscent of what
happened in Rafah 1956 [2]. In both instances, the men
were herded down the streets into a corridor where
they were beaten with wooden clubs and gunned down.
Unlike 1956, the 1948 massacre did not require a
pretext. What unifies both sordid episodes is that
they were part of the means to make the Israeli
colonial project possible, i.e., driving the people
off the land. Maybe some more context is needed to
provide this more accurate understanding of the
massacres.
It is all in a footnote…
What Sacco has done in this book is to rescue the 1956
massacres at Rafah and Khan Yunis from oblivion. The
footnotes, the title of his book, really refer to the
massacres in 1956. The importance of this history,
even if they are only footnotes, is that it puts
current events into perspective. The time frame
explaining what is happening in Gaza doesn’t start
with the rockets fired at Sderot in 2008; taking a
broader context highlights the nature of the mass
crimes perpetrated against the Palestinian people
during many decades. It also shows that for a people
without a future, the past and the present are
compressed; the massacres of the past resonate closely
with the everyday violence perpetrated against the
Palestinians enduring a siege and further
dispossession today.
Sacco has produced much more than a beautifully
crafted book. It deserves to be read and studied by
historians who might seek to transform these footnotes
into a bona fide chapter of history that deserves to
be remembered. Sacco's book is also an act of
solidarity; indicating that if someone's history is
important enough to write about, it suggests that one
is in solidarity with those people today. And that is
something the Palestinians under siege in Gaza today
are in dire need of; never before in history have the
victims of colonial oppression been boycotted and
ostracized by Europeans and Americans. Reading about
their history also reminds us that they have been
treated in this shoddy and barbaric manner for
decades.
--
Notes
[1] Joe Sacco is perhaps best known for his Palestine
(2001) and Safe Area Goražde (2000). Footnotes in Gaza
(2009) was published by Jonathan Cape, London. All
these books are oral histories brought to life in
Sacco's drawings.
[2] Yosef Nahmani was the director of the Jewish
National Fund office in eastern Galilee during the
Nakba and in his diaries he documents the massacres
and ethnic cleansing he witnessed in 1948.
--
Paul de Rooij is a writer living in London. He can be
reached at proox@hotmail.com (NB: all emails with
attachments will be automatically deleted.)
©
EsinIslam.Com
Add Comments