Joe Sacco's Palestine

Comicbook journalism, or more spesificly comicbook travelouges like Guy Delisles "comic" portrayal of his two months in North Korea is a sub genre I'm getting more and more intrigued by. On the recomendation of virrvarr I've just checked Joe Saccos early ninties Palestine - a not-so-funny comicbook or an illustrated indebth feature report. 

It's a stark portrayal of the sufferings of the Palestinian people, and I guess a good introduction to the horrors of their lives if you're one of those people who just can't get WTF the Palestinians are so angry about.

Sacco's story is a simple story. In one episode about the Israeli concentration camps/internment camps/jails he briefly touches by how new Israeli immigrants from the east (this is just a few years after the wall went down) are beeing conditioned to view the Palestinians as less than human in their mandatory military service. If it was my story I would use the opportunity to muse on how a common enemy can keep a people together; and how Israelis with their mixmash of cultures, 'races', economic and educational stratas most certainly migth need a little artificial glue to keep it all together. If I was feeling moral, as Sacco often does, I might even point out that thats even more psycopatic than anything the germans ever did and that Kant, Jesus and Jahve would be really really angry about that.

But, then, mr. Sacco never pretends to be a philosopher or social scientists - he is a journalist using the comic medium to tell his stories - or rather give his reports.