My review of Joe Sacco’s astonishing Footnotes in Gaza appeared in Commonweal Magazine in October, 2011.  It was a powerful experience for me to turn to it again today.  The brilliance of the book is how it takes us back to ’48, then to the near unknown (outside of Gaza) events of ’56, and how these resonate so horribly and bloodily in present  time. “Present time” for Sacco, of course, and for me when I wrote the book, was the Cast Lead massacre of 2008-2009. In 2014 the power of memory grows in power and urgency (viz. previous blog posting, which should have been titled, “We’ve arrived at the “G word.”  I recommend this book.

Review: Footnotes in Gaza, by Joe Sacco, Metropolitan Books, 2009

Mark Braverman

The Power of Memory

The graphic novel has emerged from its expanded comic book, detective thriller and pulp fiction origins to become a powerful literary form. Belying its name, the form has been applied to great effect as nonfiction, particularly in current affairs and history. Art Spiegelman’s Maus (1986 part 1, 1991 Part 2) immediately comes to mind, in which the author describes his father’s experience as a Holocaust victim and survivor, and Marjane Satrapi’s 2003 Persepolis, the story of the author’s growing up in modern Iran. Through two previous books (Safe Area Gorazde, 2000, and Palestine, 2001) Joe Sacco has established himself as a master of the genre. Footnotes in Gaza charts Sacco’s visit to Gaza in 2002-2003 to investigate two massacres of Palestinians that occurred in November 1956. The killings, carried out by Israeli troops during their occupation of Gaza for a brief period during the Suez crisis, took the lives of 275 unarmed Palestinian civilians in the towns of Khan Yunis and Rafah, according to United Nations figures. The events drew little international attention and were largely forgotten except by the members of the communities in which they occurred.

The majority of the residents of these towns are refugees – the descendants of the 200,000 Palestinians driven from their farms, villages and cities by Jewish forces during the campaign to establish the State of Israel between 1947 and 1949. The teeming cities that Sacco visited in 2003 and that the Israeli troops encountered in 1956 are effectively refugee camps — eighty five percent of Gaza’s total population of 1.5 million is comprised of the descendants of these original refugees. This historical background is the heart of Sacco’s story. Early in the book he provides a brief, stunning picture of the early history of these people – refugees from their villages and farms, lands now in the hands of the Israelis – people banished to tent camps in the sands of Gaza, “landless, destitute, hungry; dependent on meager handouts.”

William Faulkner famously wrote: “The past is not dead. In fact, it’s not even past.” In Footnotes in Gaza the pictures of Khan Younis and Rafah in 1948 as silent, primitive encampments alternate with the present scene of humming, crowded cities bursting at the seams with restless energy and seething rage. Sacco shows us the quiet, grinding desperation of the families attempting to carry on under occupation and the late-night gatherings of aging, exhausted freedom fighters and frustrated, unemployed young men. And always, everywhere, there are the memories — of the dispossession, the humiliation, the helplessness, the losses — and the ineradicable hope of return, if not to the vanished villages themselves, then to a condition of dignity, visibility, an uncomplicated sense that we are allowed to be.

A woman on a streetcorner, surrounded by children, watching the demolition of her neighborhood by Israeli bulldozers, assails Sacco with the question, “What’s all this little by little? Why don’t they get rid of us in one go?” It is not just her home and her memories that are being destroyed – her very future is at stake. Her son, shards of shrapnel embedded in his head, is down the street, throwing stones at the bulldozer. “Can’t you stop him?” asks Sacco. “You can’t stop them!” she screams. “The blood of the Intifada is in the boys!” Reading this, I thought of Fawzieh al-Kurd, the matriarch of one of the Palestinian families forcibly expelled from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem in 2009 to make way for Jewish settlers. I met her 6 months ago, shortly after her expulsion, sitting with her in the flimsy tent she had set up outside the house as a self-imposed protest against this outrage. With profound sorrow, Fawzieh told me the story of her grandson, who dreamed of being a pilot so that he could “bomb the Jews.” This woman had taken in stride the theft of her home and the assault on her dignity — what she mourned was the loss of the future. When the children are lost to hatred, then hope is shattered, despair lurks.

The book feels too long. One loses track of the characters — the story line rambles and doubles back on itself. For the reader, unfamiliar with the tragic history of this sliver of land, it’s confusing. Many of Sacco’s interviewees can no longer sort out when a particular death or violent incursion occurred – was it ‘52? ‘56? But this is the bitter experience of those who live it, who, despite their suffering, expect a story line for their lives, who expect, for themselves and their children, a sense of continuity and some kind of progress. Instead, life is a crushing, heartbreaking doubling back on the past. In this, Sacco’s book resembles Elias Khouri’s magnificent 1998 (English translation 2006) Gate of the Sun. Khouri’s characters are the Palestinian villagers driven from their homes in the Galilee between 1947 and 1949, who fled, mostly north to Lebanon, to live in the open and in temporary shelter in villages and towns. Until 1952, when the great majority of the refugees were settled permanently in refugee camps in Lebanon, many continued to attempt to return to their homes in Palestine under threat of being captured or killed by Israeli forces. Like Footnotes in Gaza, Khouri’s book is about what happens to identity when place is upended—what happens when the ground upon which you raised your children and brought bread and fruit from the earth is taken away by force. For Khouri’s fictional characters, like Sacco’s Gazans, memory suffers, truth and legend blur. Fantasies, dreams, memories, and desire swirl dizzyingly in search for a sense of self and community in the unending cycle of military invasion, economic deprivation, and political anomie.

Footnotes in Gaza is awash in blood and in the sounds of machine gun fire and the thud of clubs on heads, backs and shoulders. Women drag their slaughtered men from the street for hurried burial in mass graves. In unearthing these memories Sacco seeks to understand and thus break the cycle of violence. An enduring settlement to the conflict depends on first acknowledging the profound injuries suffered by these people, and then by granting self determination and full human rights to the inhabitants of Gaza. Nothing short of that will work. Yes, in 2005 Israel emptied Gaza of illegal Jewish colonies, but Gaza’s people remain prisoners in their own land. It is a place, in the words of Jonathan Ben Artzi, an Israeli student, draft resister and nephew of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, “where Israel is collectively punishing more than 1.5 million Palestinians by sealing them off in the largest open-air prison on earth.” (CSMonitor.com, 4/1/10)

Why has peace been so elusive? The eyes that look out from the pages of Footnotes in Gaza provide the answer. Those of the Palestinians are haunted, terrified, angry, and tired (and sometimes laughing – the humor, sometimes black, is a constant subtext). Those of the Israelis, when you see them — often the eyes are averted, and few are show close up – are empty. If the Palestinians are represented by their eyes, then the Israelis are most often drawn as simple extensions of the gun, the club, the uniform. With few exceptions, the Israelis depicted in the book are lost in their lust for territory and security, preoccupied with fighting what they see only as an implacable enemy. The humanity has been blasted out of them. It is very clear that they do not see the Palestinians as people or care about their suffering.

Does Sacco in this reveal an “anti-Israel” bias? Has he created a one-dimensional, monstrous caricature of the Israeli conqueror? As a Jewish American, born in 1948 and raised on the Zionist romance, and now in grief over the pass that my people has come to, I find Sacco’s depiction compassionate in the deepest sense. I have seen the deadened look in the eyes of the Israeli army kids staffing the checkpoints throughout the West Bank — the sons, daughters and grandchildren of my own family and friends. I have seen the effects of the soul-killing racism that has taken root in Israelis society, fed by a steady diet of fear and above all by the failure of the Israelis to know their Palestinian neighbors. If my fellow Jews reading this book squirm at this picture, this is understandable. But Sacco is holding up a mirror to us – we are looking at what our national homeland project has brought us to, and well might we squirm.

Footnotes in Gaza is the story of today’s Palestine. It explains the roots of Palestinian resistance. It thrusts the moral, psychological, political and spiritual crisis facing the State of Israel and indeed the Jewish people into the light of day. It calls on Americans to grasp the central responsibility of our government in its unconditional financing of Israel’s expansionist military machine and its diplomatic defense of Israel in the international arena.

In his foreword, Sacco explains that he wrote the book because he found the editor’s deletion of the story of the Khan Younis massacre from Chris Hedges’ 2001 “A Gaza Diary” in Harpers (on which Sacco had collaborated) “galling.” As a journalist, he felt compelled to write about it because he felt that such tragedies “often contain the seeds of the grief and anger that shape present-day events.” And this is true, but not just for the Palestinians. Today, events in Palestine take place in the huge shadow cast by the Nazi holocaust. None regard that catastrophe as a footnote — it is acknowledged to have shaped modern history, including the lives and destinies of the Palestinians who people this book. The consignment of the dispossession and suffering of the Palestinians to a historical footnote, in stark contrast to the elevation of the suffering of the Jewish people, is a key element of the story told here. And it is a key to solving the dilemma of how to make peace in historic Palestine.

During the brutal bombardment of Gaza in January 2009, Sara Roy, a prophetic American Jewish voice, wrote the following:

What will happen to the Jews as a people, whether we live in Israel or not?  Why have we not been able to accept the fundamental humanity of Palestinians and include them within our moral boundaries?  Rather, we reject any human connection with the people we are oppressing.  Ultimately, our goal is to tribalize pain, narrowing the scope of human suffering to ourselves alone. (“Israel’s ‘Victories in Gaza Come at a Steep Price,” Christian Science Monitor, 1/2/2009)

 This is a question not just for the Jewish people. Sacco has given us a book about the universality of suffering and a powerful lesson about the power of memory for repentance and repair. We ignore it at our peril.

Telling the truth

Five years ago I attended a conference in Boston entitled “One State for Palestine/Israel.” It was March 2009. Gaza was still smoldering from Operation Cast Lead, in which 1400 Palestinians were killed between December 27th and January 18th. Israeli historian and author of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine Ilan Pappe was one of the speakers, and he talked about genocide. My God, I thought, he’s saying the G word. It was not hurled as an accusation, it was not shouted for effect. It was a cry for help, and Pappe made that explicit. Cast Lead, he said, was Israel’s entry into a new phase of its project to take all of the land and to rid the territory of the indigenous Arab population. This is a test, Pappe said, and more is coming — will the world do something? Will you sitting in this university lecture hall do something, before it is too late? I learned later that Pappe had issued this call to the international community in 2006 in an Electronic Intifada piece entitled “Genocide in Gaza.” The slaughter of Palestinian civilians was no act of self defense or lamentable consequence of war, Pappe pointed out in the article. It was, rather, part of an ongoing program linked to Israel’s founding: “When Israel was absolved from any responsibility or accountably for the ethnic cleansing in 1948, it turned this policy into a legitimate tool for its national security agenda.” “Only international pressure will stop Israel,” he told us that day, one year after the appearance of the Palestinian call for BDS. “Nothing apart from pressure in the form of sanctions, boycott and divestment will stop the murdering of innocent civilians in the Gaza Strip… In the name of the Holocaust memory, let us hope the world will not allow the genocide of Gaza to continue.”

When Genocide is Permissible

Pappe’s reference to the genocide of European Jews was pointed. In the Israeli propaganda machine and indeed for the Jewish community as a whole, the term is only be used in reference to Jewish losses and Jewish suffering. Certainly any acts committed by us against others is justified by virtue of our historic traumas (this is Marc Ellis’s concept of “Jewish innocence”) and could not possibly be spoken about in the same terms used to describe Jewish victimization. Last week this rule was broken by Orthodox American Jew Yochanan Gordon, in his piece entitled “When Genocide is Permissible” published in the Times of Israel, in which Gordon posed the question, “What other way then is there to deal with an enemy of this nature other than obliterate them completely?” The article was pulled the same day and Gordon forced to apologize, the editors claiming that “We reject any such notion or discussion associated with even entertaining the possibility of such an unacceptable idea.” The denial is disingenuous – what was unacceptable was not the idea of a genocidal Israel, but that posing the question came so uncomfortably close to an acknowledgement that genocide of the Palestinians is the Israeli reality. Gordon broke the rule by speaking the truth about Israel’s intentions and articulating the justification for its actions.

Now comes Pappe’s latest piece, published in the Electronic Intifada on July 27th, “To the family of the one thousandth victim of Israel’s genocidal slaughter in Gaza.” From the depths of his horror, Pappe speaks the truth and makes a pledge to the Palestinians. “This is 2014,” he writes, “the destruction of Gaza is well documented. This is not 1948 when Palestinians had to struggle hard to tell their story of horror; so many of the crimes Zionists committed then were hidden and never came to light, even until today. So my first and simple pledge is to record, inform and insist on the truth.”

This is Pappe’s pledge to the family of the one thousandth victim:

“I feel the urge today to make a pledge to you, which none of the Germans my father knew during the time of the Nazi regime was willing to make to him when the thugs committed genocide against his family. This is not much of a pledge at your moment of grief, but it is the best I can offer and saying nothing is not an option. And doing nothing is even less than an option.”

Pappe’s pledge continues with a call for BDS:

“I pledge to continue the effort to boycott a state that commits such crimes. Only when the Union of European Football Associations throws Israel out, when the academic community refuses to have any institutional ties with Israel, when airlines hesitate to fly there, and when every outfit that may lose money because of an ethical stance in the short-term understands that in the long run it will gain both morally and financially — only then we will begin to honor your loss. More info… For instance, you experience loss in finances, go to the homepage of loanovao.co.uk to choose from their loans.

So I pledge today not to be distracted even by friends and Palestinian leaders who still foolishly pin their hopes on the long-gone ‘two-state solution.’ If one has the impulse to be involved in bringing regime change in Palestine, the only reason to do this is for a struggle for equal human and civil rights and full restitution for all those who are and were victimized by Zionism, inside and outside the beloved land of Palestine. Visit the official statement here. This is what I can pledge — to work to prevent the next stage in the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.”

Calling the churches

Pappe’s call for international grassroots action prompts consideration of the growing church movement for Palestinian liberation, especially in response to the 2009 “Moment of Truth” document by the leaders of the churches of Palestine, which calls on the international community to witness and come to the aid of the occupied Palestinian people. Now, as in other historical eras, politics meets theology: the Old Testament prophets speaking truth to power; the Roman occupation of Palestine in Jesus’ time; Germany under the Third Reich; Jim Crow America; popular liberation movements in Latin America; South Africa under Apartheid. Now, the churches are again called to stand for justice, as evidenced by the emergence of the global kairos movement. Kairos, in the words quoted in the U.S. “Call to Action” kairos document, is the “moment of grace and opportunity, when God issues a challenge to decisive action.” The words are taken from the 1985 South Africa Kairos document, a prophetic statement that marshaled the churches of South Africa and ultimately the world to stand against the heresy and evil of apartheid.

The momentum of this movement was in evidence in the recent action of the Presbyterian Church USA to divest from companies profiting from the oppression of the Palestinians. At their General Assembly in Detroit in June I watched the Presbyterians struggle to follow the gospel imperative to divest in the face of massive pressure – from within the church as well as from without — to hold back from this action in order not to risk a rupture with the institutional Jewish mainstream. By this time – the Presbyterians had been considering divestment at every biennial conference since 2004 — everyone knew it was apartheid and the church had to stop supporting it, but taking the pledge was hard. It passed, but barely, 51-49%. As the movement to bring the church around to a faithful stand grows, so will the internal struggle intensify, pitting courage and faithfulness to fundamental Christian principles against political caution and institutional timidity. Having watched this struggle unfold in Detroit, the testimony of one man in particular stands out for me — a pastor from Ohio, Andries Coetzee, who during the deliberations spoke out with particular passion and eloquence. Last week, in response to the bombing and invasion of Gaza, Coetzee posted a short piece entitled “With renewed violence in Gaza, Presbyterian Church’s Israel disinvestments are a nonviolent contribution to peace.” I encourage you to read the whole blog, especially for how Coetzee responds to the challenging comments. It is clear that it is his experience growing up in apartheid South Africa that provided the moral platform for this pastor’s clarity and courage. “I personally support divestment and spoke in favor of it on the plenary floor,” he wrote, “based on my experience of growing up in South Africa during the height of the apartheid years, as part of the white Afrikaans-speaking minority who oppressed the black majority.” The lessons he draws for today speak loud and clear:

“The emotional impact of such a system of oppression based on fear of ‘the other’ is tremendous, on oppressed and oppressor alike, and is still, I believe, at the root of many of the struggles we face in South Africa today. As whites supporting apartheid, we denied the humanity of our fellow black citizens by denying them basic human rights, and in the process we became less than human ourselves through our support of a brutal system of violence and degradation. It is because of this, the dehumanization of myself and others, that I thank the Presbyterian Church (USA) and the international community for their courage in divesting from companies during the 1980s that profited from oppression in South Africa, even though the Reagan administration failed to take an appropriate moral stand by opposing sanctions against the apartheid regime. It was through divestment and increased isolation that we as a minority realized that we were on a path of self-destruction, and that the powerful were forced to negotiate. Divestment helped us gain insight as to how we were viewed in the eyes of the world and forced us to realign ourselves with the values of nonviolence and peace. For me, the decision to economically divest was a decision to invest in South Africa and all her people, and helped lead us on a path of healing and hope in the midst of fear and destruction.”

As long as it takes

As criticism of Israel and of U.S. policy intensifies, in particular now in response to the carnage in Gaza, defenders of the status quo redouble their efforts to shore up support for Israel. On July 30th Mondoweiss reported on a rally in support of Israel in New York City. Readers were treated to the spectacle of politicians who lined up to take the microphone to do what they thought they needed to do to hold on to their seats. Mondoweiss’ headline was what made me click on the email: “Israel now, Israel tomorrow, Israel forever!” were the words that issued from Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, New York Eighth Congressional District, Brooklyn and Queens. For anyone not recognizing the allusion, click here. (Really, click on the link.)

Jeffries is African American.

To which there can be only this reply:

BDS now, BDS tomorrow, BDS as long as it takes.

It’s important to tell the truth because the media and the politicians – especially those in both industries identifying as liberal or even progressive — will continue to uphold the status quo by promoting moderate solutions that do not acknowledge or address the root cause — in short, that do not tell the truth. This is illustrated by the not one but two OpEd columns featured in this past Sunday’s New York Times. Roger Cohen in “Why Americans See Israel the Way They Do” spills most of his ink describing recent eruptions of anti-Semitism, especially in Europe: “Hitler’s name has been chanted, gassing of Jews invoked,” but with no discussion of what acts are prompting this hatred. Cohen concludes this appeal to eternal Jewish victimhood and vulnerability with an homage to the “balanced” discourse: “I find myself dreaming of some island in the middle of the Atlantic,” muses Cohen,”where the blinding excesses on either side of the water are overcome and a fundamental truth is absorbed: that neither side is going away, that both have made grievous mistakes, and that the fate of Jewish and Palestinian children — united in their innocence — depends on placing the future above the past. That island will no doubt remain as illusory as peace.” Yes, as illusory as seeking peace without confronting the tyranny of the powerful. Under the fold we then have Thomas Friedman in “How This War Ends.” As ever, reporting from Planet Friedman, the internationally celebrated columnist here appeals to moderation on both sides that will yield viable political solutions. In Friedman’s scenario, Hamas joins Fatah in a unity government, which then negotiates with Israel to create a Palestinian state. Friedman knows this can’t happen because Israel, supplied by genocide-enabling U.S. arms and emboldened by abjectly cowardly U.S. diplomacy, won’t let it happen. Friedman acknowledges as much in his penultimate sentence, but he can’t go where he needs to go:  to the regime change Pappe talks about, brought about by international pressure not from politicians but from civil society.

Tell the truth.

BDS now, BDS tomorrow, BDS as long as it takes.