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Jan. 7th, 2012 12:38 pmIronically, Joe Sacco's Footnotes in Gaza was a Hanukkah gift from my dad to the family at large. None of us knew anything about it, except that my Mystery Cousin Mark has a cameo appearance on the first page, and we are all super fascinated by Mystery Cousin Mark.
(Here is what I know about Mystery Cousin Mark: he currently works as a misinformation agent for the government of Dubai; his ex-wife is some kind of Saudi Arabian heiress; and he has a murderous vendetta against the squirrels of Denver, where he keeps a spare house. I've met Mystery Cousin Mark three times - the first time at my cousin's super epic wedding in Israel, at our family reunion in the wilds of upstate New York, where he and my mom reconnected; the second time at a New York dinner party that he invited us to thrown by his buddy the Bosnian sniper; and the third time at our family reunion this past fall, when he picked up this book and was like "see that dude Mark on the front page? That's me! :D" SO YOU SEE THE INTEREST.)
Anyway. It turns out, once I got past Mark's cameo, that Footnotes in Gaza is a work of graphic journalism investigating two massacres of Palestinian citizens from the Israeli occupation of the Gaza strip in 1956. The book is explicitly trying to present the Palestinian view on the incident, and it does a very powerful job of that. Which would make it a hard read for anyone, I think, but kind of especially so for an American Jew with Israeli relatives.
I'm gonna say right now, I really do not want to debate any issues about Israel and Palestine in this journal. I have too many biases and not enough actual information to say anything that I would feel comfortable with living on the internet forever.
I will say, though, that -- there are a lot of narratives, true narratives, about Jews as victims. It's the familiar story that we get, at least in the US. And I do think it's always important, for anyone, to take a look at the other narratives, no matter how uncomfortable -- to get used to the idea that there are stories where that's flipped. I think it's important for anyone to get a grip on the fact that there are places and times and stories in which they are the bad guys, the people who have privilege and power and abuse it, and that those narratives can be true, too.
(Here is what I know about Mystery Cousin Mark: he currently works as a misinformation agent for the government of Dubai; his ex-wife is some kind of Saudi Arabian heiress; and he has a murderous vendetta against the squirrels of Denver, where he keeps a spare house. I've met Mystery Cousin Mark three times - the first time at my cousin's super epic wedding in Israel, at our family reunion in the wilds of upstate New York, where he and my mom reconnected; the second time at a New York dinner party that he invited us to thrown by his buddy the Bosnian sniper; and the third time at our family reunion this past fall, when he picked up this book and was like "see that dude Mark on the front page? That's me! :D" SO YOU SEE THE INTEREST.)
Anyway. It turns out, once I got past Mark's cameo, that Footnotes in Gaza is a work of graphic journalism investigating two massacres of Palestinian citizens from the Israeli occupation of the Gaza strip in 1956. The book is explicitly trying to present the Palestinian view on the incident, and it does a very powerful job of that. Which would make it a hard read for anyone, I think, but kind of especially so for an American Jew with Israeli relatives.
I'm gonna say right now, I really do not want to debate any issues about Israel and Palestine in this journal. I have too many biases and not enough actual information to say anything that I would feel comfortable with living on the internet forever.
I will say, though, that -- there are a lot of narratives, true narratives, about Jews as victims. It's the familiar story that we get, at least in the US. And I do think it's always important, for anyone, to take a look at the other narratives, no matter how uncomfortable -- to get used to the idea that there are stories where that's flipped. I think it's important for anyone to get a grip on the fact that there are places and times and stories in which they are the bad guys, the people who have privilege and power and abuse it, and that those narratives can be true, too.
