sacco does it again. or more accurately this would be sacco's first comics collection, "palestine" having been published the year after "safe area gorazde". and once again sacco draws you into a conflict and really makes you experience the pain of the people. both the israeli/palestine conflict and the bosnian war are humanitarian disasters that the world has largely ignored. but strangely, at the same time we are all well aware of them. the bosnian war was extensively televised, i can remember it vaguely, 13 years ago, so i would have been about that old. and of course most 13 year olds don't pay much attention to international conflicts. but looking back, it's amazing how little was done, as the u.n. just basically stood by and watched the slaughter of thousands of people. in srebrenica 7,000 muslims were exterminated by the serbs. that's in the course of a few days. can you wrap your head around that? because i certainly have a hard time doing so. anyway, this book is brilliant, powerful, moving and informing. read it if you're at all interested in this sort of stuff. aside from reading joe sacco's books, check out linda polman's "we did nothing" to get an idea of how the u.n. has been dismally failing at protecting anyone in the face of genocide and humanitarian crises.
No comments:
Post a Comment