The following review is taken from excerpts of interviews with the author and professionals on this book.

Sacco’s work has more in common with gonzo journalism than your Sunday comic strip. The American-Maltese artist’s latest book, “Footnotes in Gaza,” chronicles two episodes in 1956 in which a U.N. report filed Dec. 15, 1956 says a total of 386 civilians were shot dead by Israeli soldiers – events Sacco said have been “virtually airbrushed from history because they have been ignored by the mainstream media.”

Sacco himself admits he takes sides.

“I don’t believe in objectivity as it’s practiced in American journalism. I’m not anti-Israeli … It’s just I very much believe in getting across the Palestinian point of view,” he said. What I show in the book is that this massacre is just one element of Palestinian history … and that people are confused about which event, what year they are talking about,” he said.

“Palestinians never seem to have had the luxury of digesting one tragedy before the next is upon them. I’m not pretending to be the all powerful, all knowing journalist god … I’m an individual who reacts to people who are sometimes afraid … On a human level, of course that colors the stories I’m telling.”

Israeli historians dispute these figures. “It’s a big exaggeration,” said Meir Pail, a leading Israeli military historian and leftist politician. “There was never a killing of such a degree. Nobody was murdered. I was there. I don’t know of any massacre.” Sacco’s passion for the Palestinian cause has opened him up to accusations of bias.

Jose Alaniz, from the University of Washington’s Department of Comparative Literature, said Sacco uses “all sorts of subtle ways” to manipulate the reader. “Very often he will pick angles in his art work that favor the perspective of the victim: He’ll draw Israeli soldiers or settlers from a low perspective to make them more menacing and towering.” Alaniz also said Sacco draws children “in such a way to make them seem more victimized.”

Rating: 1 / 5

The author openly admits that he is biased against Israel. Yet this blood libel receives rave reviews from the New York Times. I think that says more about the period that we are living in than anything else. After this maybe the author can do a book about the massacre of the Jews in Gush etzion by the Palestinians or the massacre of hundreds of Christians by the Palestinians in Damoun Lebanon. Oh I forgot, that will make the Palestinians look bad so he won’t do it.
Rating: 1 / 5

I’m giving this book 4-stars because the art work and interactive detail, which are exceptionally good for a graphic novel. Politically, however, there are some problems, since Sacco clearly has an overriding intrest in promoting the grievances and claims of one side over the other side in the Mideast conflict. Hence, we see a group of hopeless, helpless and sympathetic victims brutalized by sadistic and unfeeling brutes, who are caricatured in these graphics as big, brawny and ugly. Nothing about the hurtful bigotry and exterminative philosophy of the so-called innocents.
Rating: 4 / 5