Palestine puts a very human face on the ongoing tragedy of the people living in their own country, specifically those areas that have not been claimed by Israel. It's not about who's right or wrong, it's about how to deal with the challenge of simply living under very difficult, often fatal, circumstances. There's a sad parallel with the situation faced by native Americans, where even self-imposed exile failed to accommodate the intrusive settlements.

Joe Sacco, as usual, brings an almost documentary style of storytelling to his real-life description of the hardships faced by Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. I think his efforts should be recognized as a public service, as the point of view of the Palestinians is a seldom shown and unpopular view. Nonetheless, in today's climate, it is important to remember that the vast majority of Palestinians have dreams, lives, and difficulties that aren't represented by the stereotypical suicide bomber's farewell video.

I don't pretend to represent that this one perspective is the only book you should read to fully understand the complex realities, plural, of the Middle East. The tale is told with a certain point of view. However, every story has a point of view, whether explicit or implicit. Joe Sacco merely makes his explicit.

In addition to being an important story, it is also well told. As mere entertainment or as education, "Palestine" is an important and fascinating work.

Joe Sacco lived in Palestine for 2 months, living and conversing with Palestinians about the horrors of Israeli occupation. He shows visually what Human Rights reports can only give in statistics: the shame and inhumanity of arbitrary checkpoints, the immense grief of losing a son or daughter to blatant Israelis aggression and Chauvinism, the deadening effect of a life fully controlled by a racist occupying force in one's own country, and the stoic resolve with which innocent Palestinians (women, children, men) are tortured by Israeli Shin Bet.

Israeli apologists and closet bigots will ironically (and predictably) call this book "propaganda" and "lies". Unfortunately for them, truth does not conform to the subjective imaginings of a flawed and hypocritical ideology. Zionism is founded on the exploitation and suffering of the Palestinians, and no amount of prevarication, sophistry, and lies can change this fact.

Sacco's artwork is unique and eye-catching, meticulous and quirky. The images are worth the price alone. A must-read.

Israel won a war, but has been of myriad minds with regards to its occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, and Sacco shows the numbing result. The turmoil will outlive nations yet to be born. If you abhor uncertainty and misery, give this a pass.

This is probably the best book out there that'll make you understand what you never understood before , A true Graphic novel that captured what other artists haven't .. 10\10 You can't live without reading this, Just give it a chance .. You wont be the same .

I'd just like to echo what so many other reviewers have said - such as how people will gain a deeper understanding of the Palestinian's struggle, and that we should buy two copies of "Palestine" and give one away. I actually bought an additional copy that's in Spanish and sent it to a library in Mexico.
The way Joe Sacco describes life and his own experience in the Occupied Territories is captivating, and the drawings are fantastic.
When he came out with this graphic novel, there were very few voices who would dare to say something sympathetic toward Palestinians. Now, with books like Jimmy Carter's "Palestine: Peace not Apartheid" and the work of Noam Chomsky reaching a global audience, Sacco's compassion is more mainstream.

For analysis of how the Palestinian's struggle was mischaracterized for so long, I'd suggest the DVD "Peace, Propaganda, and the Promised Land."
And for people who are interested in the "graphic" novel format, I'd also highly recommend "Wobblies!: A Graphic History of the Industrial Workers of the World" edited by Paul Buhle and Nicole Schulman.

I'd just like to echo what so many other reviewers have said - such as how people will gain a deeper understanding of the Palestinian's struggle, and that we should buy two copies of "Palestine" and give one away. I actually bought an additional copy that's in Spanish and sent it to a library in Mexico.
The way Joe Sacco describes life and his own experience in the Occupied Territories is captivating, and the drawings are fantastic.
When he came out with this graphic novel, there were very few voices who would dare to say something sympathetic toward Palestinians. Now, with books like Jimmy Carter's "Palestine: Peace not Apartheid" and the work of Noam Chomsky reaching a global audience, Sacco's compassion is more mainstream.

For analysis of how the Palestinian's struggle was mischaracterized for so long, I'd suggest the DVD "Peace, Propaganda, and the Promised Land."
And for people who are interested in the "graphic" novel format, I'd also highly recommend "Wobblies!: A Graphic History of the Industrial Workers of the World" edited by Paul Buhle and Nicole Schulman.

If you seek to understand the Middle East, this is one you MUST read. That's all I have to say. To say more would be superfluous. You really want to understand it all, you MUST read it. There, I"ve said it twice. NOw go read it. If you want to understand.....

If you seek to understand the Middle East, this is one you MUST read. That's all I have to say. To say more would be superfluous. You really want to understand it all, you MUST read it. There, I"ve said it twice. NOw go read it. If you want to understand.....

It is not suprising that the conflict in the middle east lends itself to distortion and hyperbole, after all not everyone can visit the region and few understand the size of things being fought over. If the region was as proportional to the world as presented in the media it would be the size of Asia rather than .001% of it.

This comic looks at a person travelling to Israel and subseuqently going to the Palestinian territories and seing the 'truth'. But there is one truth here. When in Israel he wears a skullkap or Yarmluke(Kippah) a sign of being Jewish, in the territories he does not. Why? Because he could die for it. This might be a worthwhile litmus test for tolerance, it clearly shows what 'tolerance' really means in Palestine. If you can die for being religious, that doesnt point to the liberal tolerance Edward Said claims to exist.

However there is one blatent lie in the drawings here. The Jewish houses in the settlements are accused of looking 'foreign' while the Arab ones are said to be 'indigenous'. Somehow this is hard to beleive given the fact that 95% of Arab homes in Palestine are constructed of concrete, and are two stories. THos 'native' houses the author refers to, and depicts, existed as mud huts in the 1800s, todays rich Palestinian elite have Mercedes and 3 story houses, ten times larger than the trailors and single bedroom homes of the 'bad' settlers. But distortion can be forgiven, it is a critical view of how Israel is bad and Palestine good.

Seth J. Frantzman

Away from Sacco's great illustration and story telling and the great humour of incidents. How he captured the case of the palestinian ppl and how he mingled with them and the type of people he interviewed is just amazing. You can tell that Sacco is neutral he didn't go to defend a certain side, he just went to see what is really happening on the holy land. This book is a must to all people who sympathize with the Israeli Government, and see Palestinians as terrorists, who have no right to the land.

Using the graphic novel format, Joe Sacco provides his readers with an excellent way of telling a deeply disturbing story. The point of view is wholly that of the Arabs displaced from their former homes in what is now the state of Israel. The drawings are remarkable--the detail and accuracy of the landscape, the facial expressions and garb of the individuals, the difficult living conditions, even the effects of the weather on the people and environment.

I think that, by the author presenting himself within the context of the story, the book itself becomes more readable. The character of Joe the journalist provides not only some comic relief, but also keeps the reader more engaged in the story by making it more of a travelogue rather than simply a list of grievances.

Although this book is presented entirely from the anti-Israel (anti-Jewish) point of view, it is sometimes necessary to see the human side of the enemy. No conflict can be resolved without really hearing what the other side has to say and how it feels. I cannot say it is unbiased, but I do know the feelings expressed in the books are the truths as Palestinians know them. I can only hope this evocative and important piece of literature is used creatively and in a positive way to show there are two sides to every story.

In a few cartoon pages he describes the most complex human issue in the world

What a waste. Sacco could reach a much wider audience if he had written essays. But, wait...does he have the talent to write essays? Being "cool & edgy" apparently has more meaning to him than making a legitimate difference in the world, in general, and in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, specifically. Additionally, he is both biased and sexist in his writing.

Three-and-a-half stars, actually.

I enjoyed Joe Sacco's books on the war in Bosnia, and picked up Palestine with interest. This book is the collected edition of his nine Palestine comics

First off, Sacco is a great storyteller who is quite expert at expressing the humanity of the people in his stories. He also presents an excellent picture of the daily life of Palestinians, giving them a human face that is not often portrayed in the West. Sacco allows the people to tell the story themselves, rather than interjecting his thoughts and opinions more than is necessary.

However, on the other hand, I found Palestine to be more tedious than Sacco's Bosnian work. The stories often became repetitive, and I found the same points being made again and again. In the book's defense, what else would one expect from people who live such a limited life? As well, why should someone's suffering be entertaining? On the other hand, I feel that the message being conveyed is lost if the reader's interest lags.

As for the issue that always seems to come up in negative reviews, I have to admit that I did find the book a little one-sided. I do feel that the Palestinians are more wronged in the conflict, but the way Sacco presented the situation did more to solely present the Palestinian side rather than achieve greater understanding. However, while some may feel this is wrong or even anti-Semitic (A ridiculous charge) I feel that it is completely necessary. How can you understand and begin to resolve anything if you don't hear all points of view? I think that anyone interested in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict should read Sacco's book because it is one of the best ways to understand the emotions and perspectives of the Palestinians. You can disagree with it, but you can't dismiss or ignore it.

Hard to not bring one's biases to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. If you don't have biases, you just don't care and you wouldn't be interested in this book in the first place. Joe Sacco is obviously skewed towards the Palestinians, but he only has a few terrible moments of omission - such as the Golda Meir quote without context or stating the fact of Israel expansion in 1967 and 1948 without the context of Israel being attacked.

Beyond that he does try earnestly to be evenhanded. He portrays the Palestinians as foolish, angry, noble and scary depending on the context. He portrays the Israelis as either leftist leaning or sick of the situation. But mostly he betrays the frustrations, the anger, the conflicts and the ambiguity that come with a decades long unresolved conflict (and he was writing this pre-Oslo) and to his credit he does not get too wrapped up in polemics.

One of the key moments comes later in the book when he quotes an Israeli as saying that two-state vs. one-state isn't the issue. The issue is whether Palestinians and Israelis can co-exist and then he flashes to a young boy being bullied by Israeli soldiers. The boy might be a suspect. He might be innocent but he's going to resent that treatment. And that's going to cause more pain in the future than a thousand terrorist assassinations.

Even if you are rabidly Zionist (like me) you should read this book as it gives the other side of the story without dipping into asinine polemics like most pro-Palestinian texts.

This is a awsome book. It is a graphic novel on the conflict in Palestine. I would recomend it to anybody who is intrested in history or loves graphic novels.

Sacco is a journalist who also happens to be a great comic book writer. He has a fantastic feel for the interplay of words and pictures in the graphic novel form, and importantly, he knows when to let the pictures do the talking. I recommend all his books.

Remember, though, he's not trying to give an anchorman's-eye-view of the conflict in Palestine; he's telling the intimate and evocative story of his own experience there and the experiences of some of the people he met.

One of my favorite aspects of his writing is how he injects just enough of himself and his own self-reflection into the stories to let you know that he's aware of his own viewpoint, self-doubts, and biases. And yet this never overwhelms the other stories he's relating. In fact, it gives you more confidence in them because you build a relationship with the storyteller himself.

The potent combination of text and the "graphic parts" in this novel give us a total picture of the specific story Sacco is trying to tell us: that the Israeli occupation causes immense Palestinian suffering. History books use pictures, text, and captions as well, but their function is to teach us about an era, event, or personality in history, often with some lean or perspective but, in the case of any self-respecting work of nonfiction, there is a decided lack of judgmental bias on the outer sides of the quotation marks. Palestine demonstrates the shortcomings of the graphic novel when scrutinized as a historical text.

Palestine talks about the suffering of a people in the current day and age. What it does not give us, however, is an overall picture, lacking sound references on the origins of the Palestinian nation, the history of their plight, and the overall factors that actually affect their lives.

Instead, Sacco chooses to convey to us what he sees as the Palestinian experience: the day to day life of a resident in Ramallah, Israeli soldiers on patrol, imprisonment and interrogation of the innocent.

Palestine gives us no dialogue towards the complicated and ongoing debate on such issues, serving only as an incendiary text in its coarseness and deliberate lack of context. He utterly fails on the count of objectivity, showing himself as a biased narrator through and through.

The fact that his caricaturized pictures try to "speak for themselves" demonstrate this book's existence as an antithesis to history books, which give sources and include true variation in the aspects and contributing factors of the situations they describe.

This book also exists as an antithesis to what journalists do. Journalists seek to inform, to enlighten and empower their audiences with the information they have obtained that sheds light on an issue. Sacco, in his inclusion of pictures and personal (as well as gripping) stories, but no true historical or sourced context, utterly fails at this task. He leaves us full of grief and empathy but only a false sense, if at all, of understanding. The exclusion of such trivia is the gift of the comic and the graphic novel to propagandists everywhere.

What Sacco does include, however, is random inserts of what he considers to be "historical context"-- for example, a quote by Golda Meir that he interprets-without-bothering-to-interpret as racist, a list of casualties in Hebron over the course of twenty years that fails to specify which were civilians and which were militants-- scream either bias after his own extensive research, or (as I strongly suspect) his already biased sources of information.

Because of the nature of the graphic novel, and in contrast to a historical, objective text, Sacco is not required to provide references to the sources for his information, nor is he required to fill in the gaps between his leaps of logic, as he knows his reader is less likely to question what he sees.

But why is a reader less likely to question what he sees? Why is a reader so ready to assume that Sacco knows that an Israeli leader had such audacity and spite as to dehumanize an entire nation of people, with just one sentence? Why, as the "R" word is uttered by the mouth of one of his interviewees, do we swallow the idea that a curfew in a refugee camp can be accurately described by the international community, by us, as "a racist curfew?"

I would argue that it is not only the pictorial or essentially biased nature of the graphic novel that helps us quiet our inner skeptic, but the intellectual attitude one takes as he or she reads one of these texts. Comics (or even "commix") are still not widely accepted in the intellectual, academic world, and we don't take this medium seriously as a source of information the way we would view BBC or the New York Times. Palestine is neither subject to public scrutiny nor a reader's dissection the way would be a book by Pat Buchanan, Michael Moore, or Noam Chomsky. Yet we are affected by this text nonetheless.

A history book, it is true, may contain biased statements about what it considers to be true evil. However, rarely will it fail to give you a total perspective on the alleged victims, including the enumeration of all those who were responsible for the suffering that took place. Mr. Sacco, let's give some credit to the Palestinian leaders, the Palestinian organizations, the entire "pre-occupationally" anti-Jewish Arab/Islamic Middle East, for the tragedy which you say is the everyday suffering of the Palestinian people. Can the tragedy of it be told in black and white with glaring omissions, if a text's readers may choose to forgo such trivialities? Maybe so. After all, it's just a comic book.

Joe Sacco travelled through the West Bank and Gaza, seeking the day-to-day details of life under the occupation, then faithfully rendering them in this impressive graphic novel. He writes in the venerable tradition of Art Speigelman's Maus series, creating a work of art as well as journalism.

I don't think that Sacco is trying for "objectivity" in the Israeli-Palestinian debacle. As he admits, he sees Israelis in the book, but primarily through the eyes of Palestinians-- the Israelis become solely settlers and soldiers. I was reminded of the recent film "Paradise Now," which also does not strive to be objective about the situation, but captures the feeling of life in occupied Palestine extremely well.

The truth is that we generally see the Israeli perspective in the U.S., as we are more aligned in interest. As Chomsky says, we see the constant agitation and bloodshed, but in many cases we don't see the historical context of the struggle-- it becomes stripped of meaning. This graphic novel helps to fill in some of those absences.

What we are left with is the dire poverty of the Palestinians, the constant suspicion and aggression directed towards them, their displacement. The helpless rage of the youth, the thrown rocks, the suicide bombers. Perhaps a dysfunctional response to the occupation, but nonetheless one of very few options open to them.

Now that the U.S. has its own Mideast occupation, this graphic novel is more timely and relevant than ever. I would like to see a work by Sacco about Iraq.

If you your going to read an objective book on the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict you are wrong! This blatantly blames Israel for all the problems in the Palestinian territories and if you read between the lines it insinuates that it's not the Israelis who are to blame but the Jews. If you want an objective book on the conflict I suggest you read Alan Dershowitz's books, The Case for Israel and The Case for Peace.

I read this book a few weeks before going and seeing the situation in the occupied Palestinian territories for myself. I don't think I would have been prepared for what I saw there had I not read this book. Even though it's somewhat dated (it's from the first intifada, 1990 or so) it portrays life under occupation so accurately. It will inspire you to go and see the situation there for what it is.

Since pro-Israel reviewers are concerned about one-sidedness (funny how they always are when we start telling the truth!)I want to say that his portrayals of Israelis and their fears are also quite accurate.

I say, read this book and go for yourself. Check all of it out and see what you believe. Oh, and the intro by Edward Said is an amazing read.

I am not a fan of graphic novels, at least not normally. But Joe Sacco's "Palestine" stands out as the exception.

Sacco shows us what everyday Palestinians experience through his interviews and his simple yet powerful drawings. It is not "propaganda" as some would suggest. It simply shows what people experience under the Israeli occupation.

It's unfortunate that the critics of this book go after Sacco (and the positive reviewers) because they love Israel or defend its right to exist. "Palestine" is mostly about what Israel has done to the Palestinian people. That is fact. It is equally factual that some Palestinians have committed horrendous acts of terrorism. To point out the former does not mean you defend the latter. To suggest it does is nothing less than childish arrogance.

My major beef with Sacco is his lack of aggressiveness on the issue women's rights and Islam. He gives us a few pages on the topic but these offer very little logic in showing what is ultimately a morally indefensible position - the subjugation of women for religious reasons.

Despite this one criticism, and despite the wishes of Sacco's critics, "Palestine" will likely stand the test of time. It's one of those books that will be read and talked about 50 years from now when, hopefully, the Palestinians and Israelis will both have their own peaceful homeland.

Palestine is melodramatic propaganda.

It tows the PLO party line and does not provide any solutions.

Reading "Palestine" was a real education. Joe Sacco takes you to the people of Palestine and shows you their sad, desperate plight all while managing not to be preachy in the least. I couldn't put it down, I bought 10 copies for friends, and rushed to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) Website to make a donation. Now that's the power of literature!

Joe Sacco is no doubt a talented illustrator, and based on Palestine he proves himself to be an adequate but one-sided journalist. A lot of the publicity for this book came from the fact that someone had shed light on a topic rarely covered in the US, and had a also done it in a creative fashion.

Yet after reading the book, it seemed strangely pointless. If Sacco wanted to show the plight of the Palestinians, he did not do a good job of reporting. Were this not in comic book form, no one would have picked up the book. There is nothing really new in this book, just a new presentation. Also, Sacco casts himself as an unedacated American interested in learning more about Palestine, but his agenda is clear. The Palestinians are portrayed positively while the Jews are made out to be rich and arrogant. Certainly there is some truth in what he reports and there are human rights abuses, but they are much more nuanced in real life than they are in this book.

The illustrations are good, but as mentioned, they serve more as a gimmick than anything else. I don't think that Sacco takes advantage of the format, and mostly uses it to show irate Isreali soldiers and crying, miserable Palestinians. He is able to capture his own feelings, but I was still left wondering what he really was personally struggling with.

I have no clue what Sacco's goal was when he wrote this book. Did he want to report on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? He does, but subjectively and unoriginally. Did he want to show his own anxieties? He does this sporadically. He straddles the fence, leaving the book as a poor journalistic account and a half-baked examination of Sacco's own feeling. Would someone really write a book dealing with the history of the Israeli crisis while inserting their own thoughts about how, during an interview, they had to pee really badly?

Sure the drawings are good, but I never really understood why this book had to be done in comic book. The drawings, while quite skilled, amount to a diversion from the fact that Sacco really doesn't have a good book at all.

This book collects all nine issues of a comic book series written and drawn by Sacco after he spent two months in the Occupied Territories in the winter of 1991 - 92.

This is an important book. It gives a view of the Palestinian situation that we do not often see in the U.S. Any ambivalence I feel about this work must be put down to the ambivalence I feel about the political situation, where both sides are right and both sides are wrong, both have justice on their side and both act and feel unjustly towards the other. One would like to have hope, but it is difficult.

What is it like to lose your land, to have your home bulldozed, your olive trees uprooted, your livelihood taken away, your children killed? Can we even imagine?
Sacco does not pretend to have a solution, and, although the book focuses on the Palestinian point of view, he is clear-eyed enough to distrust easy sloganeering.

I was struck by a number of parallels to the United States. For example, there is a section where Sacco meets members of the Palestinian Federation of Women's Action Committees. In the course of that discussion, one woman says, "If we get a state, do we retreat back to the way things were, or do we change things? Will economic development be considered priority and women's issues left behind?" The whole question of where the women's movement fits into a movement for radical social change is one that all social revolutions have faced.

The organizations within the refugee camps, teaching children, making sure food is equitably shared, reminded me of the Black Panther Party's free breakfast programs and other social programs. The behavior of the Israeli soldiers reminded me in many ways of the behavior of police in this country in the ghettos. "I'm numbed by so many accounts of incarceration that the sort of thing that raises my brow is a male in his mid-20's who hasn't been arrested . . ." I could not read that without thinking of the number of black men in this country who are under the control of our criminal "justice" system.

You will, perhaps, when you read about "moderate pressure" be reminded of the current scandal of Abu Ghraib, and understand why it is not credible that it was not policy.

A difficult, but necessary, book.

Fantastic, eye-opening, hilarious at times and yet fundamentally disturbing. A priceless primer on the roots of Palestinian dispossession. His descriptions of Israeli torture techniques and the methods used to humiliate and control a subject population eerily echo the events recently publicized regarding present American methods in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib prisons.

Sacco paints the situation realistically and lets his characters speak for themselves. Sacco is himself among the characters, treated objectively like the rest. This is a plain record of a visit to the territories occupied by Israel since their victory in the Six Day War. It is Sacco's intent, clearly, to portray the physical suffering and mental anguish suffered by all the participants. Among those participants are several Israelis. They are treated with just as much sympathy as the Palestinians. Those who claim that this book is "biased" have not read it or are themselves bigots of the sort that would embarrass millions of enlightened Israelis.
The reviewers of July 25th and May 13th 2004 are writing from an agenda no better than that of a Klansman or a Marxist. They watch American television, rather than reading books. Can you see any evidence that they read Sacco's book?