Sacco’s Palestine, Our Palestine

The rousing response to American cartoonistjournalist Joe Sacco should quell fears of official India hollowing out the Indianrsquos empathy for the Palestinians suffering under Israeli occupation It should dispel the assumption of those who believe the truths of history can be effaced by rewriting it Above all it should spawn hope that the Indian will not be silenced from expressing herhis views that run contrary to the StatersquosI make these claims because even though Saccorsquos oeuvre is varied he is largely known in India for his graphic novel Palestine Its sales shot up from 2000 copies a year to 4000 this year and counting Decidedly Israelrsquos brutal retaliation against Hamas for invading its territory on October 7 2023 has piqued public curiosity in Saccorsquos PalestineHis popularity became evident as a crush of people mostly comprising the youth thronged Delhirsquos Midland bookstore where he came last week to sign his books Over 250 copies of Palestine flew off the shelves The auditorium at Delhirsquos Jawahar Bhavan overflowed with people at an event organised for engaging with Sacco on his art of indelibly imprinting through cartooning the tragedy of Palestinians on his readersrsquo heartsSaccorsquos presence in India has become an occasion for expressing solidarity with the Palestinians relentlessly bombed and killed Buying Palestine and getting Sacco to sign it or flocking to his talk is not just a measure of his popularity It is also a signifier of his readers rejecting the Indian Statersquos narrative on Israelrsquos oppression of Palestine and their defiance of official attempts to stamp out meetings against the brutalisation of PalestiniansOver 50 people in different states whether ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party or the Congress have been booked for participating in such meetings In Srinagar even a case was filed under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act against ldquounknown personsrdquo for waving Palestinian flags during a Muharram procession Universities have cancelled lectures on Palestine by public intellectualsAgainst this political backdrop the enduring appeal of Saccorsquos Palestine among Indian youth is of immense sociopsychological interest Hersquos got a strong following not because he has the reader guffawing his humour in fact is dark Nor is Palestine a tale of adventure in West Bank and Gaza where Sacco lived for two months in 199192 when the first intifadamdashthe rebellion against Israeli occupationmdashhad already begun to flagOver 250 pages of intricately drawn cartoons Sacco records the quotidian experience of people living under Israeli occupation They are routinely humiliated and labour under curfewed nights and days Their homes are demolished and land usurped They are ruthlessly tortured during arbitrary incarcerations He etches the admirable fortitude of parents whose children were shot dead and courage of those who dare to battle the occupying armyEven more significantly he records Palestinersquos history from 1917 the year in which Britain issued the Balfour Declaration publicly professing that it favoured the ldquoestablishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish peoplerdquo He tracks the migration of Jews from Europe under the patronage of Western powers and who ethnically cleansed villages in 194748 overnight turning 800000 Palestinians into refugeesSaccorsquos Palestine must have come as an awakening for young Indian readers weaned like their counterparts around the world on the dominant narrative that the Palestinians are terrorists on a mission to destroy Israel and establish Islamic rule Their reading of Sacco turned them political They were presumably inspired in later years to deepen their understanding of the torrid truths of Palestine they perhaps first encountered in such graphic details in his novel This not only has them disbelieve Israel and the Westrsquos narrative but has also enabled them to contextualise Hamasrsquos attack on Israel perceiving it as more than senseless terrorismFor the same reason they do not buy into the shrill rhetoric of Hindutva leaders who have been projecting Israelis as the victims of the violent followers of Islam This rhetoric is driven as much by Hindutvarsquos historical antipathy against Muslims as it is for consolidating Hindus against an imaginary Islamic onslaught Their flocking to Saccorsquos events is a testament to their rejection of HindutvaSaccorsquos Palestine has also lessons for older Indians including journalists who swear by the principle of objectivity In Palestine Sacco is asked as to why he hasnrsquot tried to get the Israeli side of the story Sacco replies ldquoI say Irsquove heard nothing but the Israeli side most of my liferdquo Journalismrsquos mission is not to merely tell both sides of any story for it often leads to repeating dubious claims it is rather to find out the truth This is what Sacco does in PalestineThis is what most journalists donrsquot do preferring to subscribe to the Zionist lie that Palestine was a country without a people before a people Jews without a country inhabited it Palestine was never theirs It is the perfect example of settler colonialism As Gandhi in 1938 wrote ldquoPalestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French It is wrong and inhuman to impose the Jews on the Arabsrdquo That wrong continues to this day in all its barbarityThe writer is a senior journalist and author of Bhima Koregaon Challenging CasteSend your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper