War on Gaza

Having previously explored the region in works such as Palestine and Footnotes in Gaza, internationally acclaimed cartoonist and journalist Sacco delivers a bold and unflinching meditation on the devastation of the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict with honesty, outrage, and grim humor. Published in the aftermath of the harrowing events of October 7, Sacco’s book channels both the paralysis of witnessing atrocities from afar and the necessity of bearing witness. Through stark black-and-white artwork, he brings Gaza’s anguish to life: the rubble-strewn streets, the haunted faces of survivors, and the suffocating despair of life under siege, creating a visceral sense of the human cost of war. As powerful as these depictions are, Sacco’s profound sorrow and disgust at the suffering in Gaza are most powerfully evoked in wryly humorous sequences addressing the complicity of global powers and the failures of education and politics to foster peace, especially in a memorably excoriating sequence that imagines Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a wrathful deity barking orders to his prophet, President Joe Biden.