Cartoonist Joe Sacco on Gaza: Is this land ground zero for the apocalypse?

"Civilising has always been the West's default burden and mass murder the shiniest tool in its box. The Americans had their 'manifest destiny', the French had their Algeria, the British had their Kenya, the Australians had their Tasmania and the Germans..."

"And now together they have Gaza."

A lot has changed in historic Palestine since Joe Sacco first published his groundbreaking comic book series of the same name between 1993 and 1995, later collected as a graphic novel in 2001.

Much has stayed the same.

When he first arrived in December 1991, the First Intifada was still underway, the Palestinian uprising that first alerted much of the world to their plight in the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza.

By the time the series finished publishing in 1995, the Oslo Peace Process was underway, the Intifada was over and the establishment of the Palestinian Authority (PA) had given Palestinians a nominal degree of autonomy for the first time in history.

Despite concerns and criticisms, the time was one of optimism for many who believed the outcome of the peace negotiations could be an independent Palestinian state, a secure Israel and peace in the Middle East.

Twenty years later, the peace process has long collapsed, the PA is seen as little more than an arm of Israeli security, and Gaza has been reduced to rubble in an assault that left more than 60,000 dead, millions displaced and Israel facing charges of genocide.

Sacco's latest work, War on Gaza, is a self-admitted attempt to "say something" about the horrors that have unfolded since 7 October 2023, a response to a request from a friend in Gaza to "raise the voice up against these crimes".

Speaking to Middle East Eye, Sacco noted that the areas he had visited for his previous novel, Footnotes in Gaza as well as Palestine, were rubble.

"I don’t know the specifics of what has happened in Khan Younis or Rafah, but every photo or aerial image I have seen leads me to believe that the neighbourhoods I know and the streets I walked have been completely obliterated," he said.

'There is a fair chance that no one will be held accountable for what Israel - and the United States and much of Western Europe - have done to Gaza'

- Joe Sacco

Footnotes in Gaza was an attempt by Sacco to uncover the details of two massacres carried out in 1956 by the Israelis in Khan Younis and Rafah, which left hundreds dead, in what the Palestinians said were extrajudicial killings of male villagers and refugees.

During the writing of the novel, he spoke with Palestinians who were present at the time of the killings in an attempt to get the facts straight, while contrasting the events of 1956 with the death of American activist Rachel Corrie in 2003, the ongoing bulldozing of Palestinian homes and the fallout from the Iraq war.

"No one was ever held accountable for the massacres of 1956," Sacco told MEE.

"And there is a fair chance that no one will be held accountable for what Israel - and the United States and much of Western Europe - have done to Gaza. But let’s see."

'Joe, they will shoot us'

A recurring theme of Sacco's work has been his self-consciousness as an outsider in Israel-Palestine and his self-deprecation of his own instincts and insights into the conflict.

Early on in War on Gaza, Sacco portrays himself - drawn as always in exaggerated, typically self-deprecating style with a round head, big lips and blank glasses - lecturing the Palestinians on what they ought to do in Gaza.

"They ought to take a page from Gandhi's book - as a great mass, they ought to march peacefully to the Israeli barrier enclosing Gaza so the world would laud their non-violence and shame the Israelis into ending their oppression," he writes.

In response, his friend in Gaza "looked at me like I was dipped in shit".

"'Joe, they will shoot us.'"

The following panels portray the Great March of Return of 2018 and 2019, in which tens of thousands of Palestinians marched to the separation fence with Israel to protest against the ongoing siege and occupation. In response, hundreds were shot dead, while thousands were injured in what Amnesty International said were Israeli attempts to purposefully inflict "life-changing injuries".

Afterwards, Sacco writes, "the world yawned and moved on...after that I had no more suggestions for what the Palestinians ought to do".

But the war in Gaza has been on another level, and despite the attempted indifference by many officials in the West, the anger and disgust at the images flashing up on screens on a daily basis has spurred hitherto unheard-of levels of mobilisation, protest and direct action.

Sacco said attitudes had definitely "shifted" in the US compared to his first time in Palestine when Americans' sympathies overwhelmingly lay with Israel.

'The collaboration came about because we are good friends and we were drinking a bottle of wine talking about Gaza - and I thought what Art had to say was worth hearing'

- Joe Sacco

"I think the younger generation, particularly students, has been shocked by the images coming out of Gaza and they have taken the time to learn some of the history," he explained.

"Their outrage has been so potent that school administrations and the federal government are resorting to punishments and threats to shut down the new narrative, which they fear and cannot control."

History and censorship will also play key roles in another new work by Sacco on Gaza, a collaboration with fellow comic book artist, Art Spiegelman.

The announcement of the collaboration raised a few eyebrows in some quarters, as Spiegelman's Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel Maus - which reimagines the Holocaust using cats and mice - remains inarguably his most well-known work, and the author admitted he faces the risk of being "cancelled by everyone on the planet" over the new project.

Sacco, however, said no one he knew had expressed any concerns about the collaboration.

"The collaboration came about because we are good friends and we were drinking a bottle of wine talking about Gaza - and I thought what Art had to say was worth hearing," he explained.

The collaboration, released in the New York Review of Books, portrays a discussion between Sacco's avatar and one of the mice from Maus, depicting Spiegelman.

"I think people are genuinely interested in what Art thinks about what has been taking place in Gaza," said Sacco.

In the work, the Spiegelman mouse says he never made Maus to "teach anyone anything".

"And I do not want Maus to ever be used as a recruiting poster for the Israeli army," he adds.

"So are you a self-hating Jew," asked the Sacco character.

"Naw! I'm a self-hating atheist," replies Spiegelman.

The final panel depicts the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse as a text box wonders: "Cease-fires or not, are the Biblical prophecies right? Is this land ground zero for the Apocalypse?"

"Y'know, Art, it may take bigger brains than ours to find a just solution," suggests Sacco.

"Yeah, a just solution would be way better than a final solution," replies Spiegelman.