Rating: 
Summary: Phenomenal
Review: This comic book made the plight of the Palestinian people real to me in a way no other book, or even documentary film, ever has. What makes the comic format so well suited for this story is that unlike other formats such as documentary film or prose, Sacco is able to graphically illustrate the stories that his interview subjects tell him, so we get to see, for example, what its like inside Ansar III prison, or at an Israeli "interrogation" of a Palestinian stone-thrower. He is a gifted illustrator-- his mastery of displaying subtle human emotions through facial expression is breathtaking. This book series will probably be criticized for being "one sided," and it definitely is (not one bad thing happens to an Israeli in the book.) Yet, as the narrator replies when an Israeli woman in the comic says, "You should hear our side of the story,".... "I've heard nothing but the Israeli side most of my life." Here is a gripping view from the other side of the line.
Rating:
Summary: BUY THREE, GIVE AWAY TWO!
Review: Joe Sacco brilliantly gives voices and faces to the masses of 'invisible' Palestinians and in sharing their stories Sacco has created an incredibly personal and emotionally powerful historical document of an endangered people. Sacco gives humanity and dignity to the overlooked victims, as well as providing historical and political context to their struggle. Joe Sacco also brilliantly interweaves himself into the comic frames, as he is not just looking in from the outside but revealing from the inside, adding further strength to his work. By far, this is the best treatment of the Middle East conflict that I have read and I guarantee you will not be able to put it down until you get to the last page and then you'll want to start all over again! A keeper to be shared with as many as possible. I commend the publishers for their courageous efforts.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent!
Review: This book is amazing. I have seen documentaries like "Jenin, Jenin" that defend Palestinians and show the reppression of the Israeli occupation, but this packs more punch than any of those movies. I'm an American, and I went to a school in a neighborhood with quite a large Jewish community. Growing up all I ever learned about this conflict came from those that supported Israel 100%. It's unfortunate that more Americans don't read books like this. They'd have a much more balanced understanding of the Middle East if they did.
Rating: 
Summary: Poor research w/ an agenda
Review: Palestine is melodramatic propaganda.
It tows the PLO party line and does not provide any solutions.
Rating:
Summary: A heroic achievement
Review: 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!
Rating:
Summary: A difficult, necessary book
Review:
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.
Rating:
Summary: Smoke and Mirrors
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Read It and You'll Grow
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: suffering put plainly before the reader, without bias
Review: 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?
Rating: 
Summary: This is a comic book ! It is void of reality.
Review: This is a comic book by a man sympathetic to pawns in a 100+ year conflict. The facts are few if any and the lies are plentiful. Theforeword of this book was written by Edward Said an American propagandist who once admitted "the whole of Palestinian nationalism was based on driving all Jews out". This is a fact that cannot be disputed.
Little known facts not mentioned in the comic book:
In 1997 40% of the PA budget was reported "missing" due to corruption and outright theft by Yasser Arafat and his gang.
After starting 3 wars displacing Palestinians, Arab leaders denied them citizenship, restricted their access to housing, jobs, schools, and health care in Arab countries. They also introduced UN resolutions to prevent Palestinians from permanently resettling in Arab ocuntries and rejected UN funds to build them better housing.
Under Palestinian jurisdiction Gaza income dropped 35% in Gaza and unemployment rose to more than 20% between 1992-1996.
Yasser arafat planned this recent war against Israeli civilians before the end of the Camp David meeting in 2000 and long before Ariel Sharon walked at the Temple Mount.
Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia, a nation hostile to Israel, blamed the entire mess on Arafat saying, "It is a crime against Palestinians, in fact the entire region.
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