160 pgs. B&W | $25.99 hardcover | W: Chris Hedges A: Joe Sacco
For all our modern access to information, from 24-hour cable news to countless long-form YouTube podcasts and endless half-minute Tik Tok explainer videos, there is a remarkable disconnect in understanding what is happening in Gaza currently. The new book Requiem for Gaza, by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges and acclaimed cartoonist Joe Sacco, aims to correct this disinformation. Requiem for Gaza presents a harrowing tale of the ongoing genocide detailed from firsthand accounts from 29 displaced Palestinian families interviewed by the authors. They provide readers a story of dignity, retelling the painful journey of the few Palestinian survivors. Many Western media outlets have been largely indifferent or misinformed about the extreme suffering these families have endured. Their stories are underreported or altogether ignored, and the little reporting we do see is often inaccurate at best. Hedges posits poetically about Western media in his preface to the book, saying that “The desire to believe is more powerful than the desire to see.” Perhaps it is only through this book’s combination of words and pictures that these families’ stories can be truly seen, understood and not forgotten.
Hedges and Sacco began interviewing the Palestinian refugees (who’ve now relocated to Cairo, Egypt) in 2025. They recount their stories beginning after Hamas initiated the coordinated attack on October 7th, 2023, into Southern Israel that resulted in 1,200 deaths and 251 hostages. Israel’s military response, with the support of US funding, has left an estimated 75,000 Palestinians dead, with thousands more unaccounted for and over 175,000 injured or disabled. Just to contextualize this massive number, if you sold out every single seat in St. Louis’ Busch Stadium and Enterprise Center, you still wouldn’t reach the full causalities count of the civilian Palestinians population that have died in this Genocide.
All this death of course takes a toll on the survivors, too. In fact, these families’ desperate journeys, filled with PTSD and survivors’ guilt, are even more distressing by hearing the nightmares they experienced in escaping Gaza. Many survivors bluntly state they would have preferred a quick death to prolonged exile. One named Osama explains, “We are starting to question our humanity… It’s questioning whether I deserve to live.” He continues, “The whole world is saying, ‘You are responsible for this. You started October 7… and this is the consequence. You have to suffer this kind of killing of your children’.” Even though these refugees are now physically safe, many Palestinian exiles long to return to Gaza and their community. While they’ve escaped the threat of Israel, they now live in extreme poverty and without citizenship.
The first two chapters of Requiem for Gaza are very challenging and may require breaks. Focusing on the immediate aftermath of October 7, Hedges reports on the mass confusion experienced by the residents of Gaza City. Israel soon began air dropping evacuation notices throughout Gaza. Hedges shares multiple accounts of residents fleeing to those designated refugee encampments before being blindsided by Israeli bombs, soldiers and drones while en route. One survivor named Najwa eloquently explains, “If I collected all the letters in the alphabet and made every single word in the language, I could never fully describe what we’ve been through.”
This mass exodus is illustrated in part by Sacco, who focuses on one couple’s horrific journey as they fled Gaza with their four children, pet cat, and extended family. As they struggle to find safety for their children and elderly parents, they are confronted by Israeli soldiers who strip the men of their clothes, mock the children’s fears, and separate the elderly who are too weak to migrate by foot from their families, leaving them stranded on beaches, unsure if they will simply die of starvation. It is harrowing.
Requiem for Gaza is only 160 pages, but its chapters are all wisely concise, knowing that if it was any longer it would simply be too much for most readers. Hedges, the former Middle East Bureau Chief for The New York Times, maximizes his page count with vivid storytelling instead of sterile reporting. Cartoonist Joe Sacco contributes 39 comic pages that give a face to survivors and an image of the ruined remains of their former homes and communities. Sacco originally created the comic Palestine in 1993, an essential companion piece to Requiem for Gaza, which details similar suffering in Gaza over 30 years ago and introduced a form of political cartooning called comics journalism to the larger graphic artform. (See also the recently released The Dissidents for more on political cartooning history.)
Hedges attempt to address some arguments conflating Palestinians with Hamas. He spoke with one Palestinian journalist, Sanaa Kamal, who had previously interviewed Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas that was largely responsible for the terrorist attack. When Hedges asks Kamal about her opinion about Sinwar she angrily replies, “Fuck him! He was not a good man. He was a radical. Every time I saw him, I came back and told my friends and colleagues, ‘This man is crazy.’ I knew he would bring something bad to Gaza.”
The consensus of Requiem for Gaza is that all violence is bad. The terrorist attack on October 7th, 2023, was wrong. The genocidal response Israel has perpetrated is also wrong. We should be able to both denounce the Holocaust committed by the Nazis and the ongoing genocide of Palestinians perpetrated by Benjamin Netanyahu’s IDF. Zionism and Judaism are not identical, and criticism of Zionism does not make one antisemitic. Yet, Hedges is forced to reemphasize this point in Requiem for Gaza as their conflations and confusions persist. (For example, in 2025 the Los Angeles Holocaust Museum chose to delete an Instagram post that read “’Never again’ can’t only mean never again for Jews” after being subject to Zionist criticism. In 2024 St. Louis’ own Craft Alliance chose to silence artists removing their work from a show days before its opening as some pieces that spoke to Palestinian liberation were deemed “antisemitic.” And of course, the countless student protesters who’ve faced consequences for their alleged antisemitism as they advocate for a Free Palestine.)
Hedges also details the dehumanizing rhetoric that continues in Isreal to justify its genocide in Gaza, where Palestinians are often referred to as “human animals” and Palestinian children “little snakes.” One Israeli rabbi named Ronen Shaulov is quoted as proclaiming “All of Gaza and every child in Gaza should starve to death. I don’t have mercy for those who, in a few years, will grow up and won’t have mercy for us. I don’t have a drop of compassion for those who shed the blood of Jews… May they starve to death. And if anyone has a problem with what I’ve said, that’s their problem.”
The book also details the Palestinians who are frequently targeted for assassination. Hedges writes, “The assassination of doctors, along with journalists, academics, teachers and students, writers, artists and intellectuals, aid and civil defenses workers, is a daily occurrence.” It is not an opposing army that Israel is targeting, but myriad civilians who make up the Palestinian culture that they are exterminating. And for what? Hedges suggests colonialism and war-profiteering are to blame, even offering a list of American companies that stand to benefit from this genocide.
Requiem for Gaza is not for the faint of heart. There is little levity in this book. However, if you’ve ever wondered how you would have behaved or informed yourself during the Holocaust, this book gives you a real-time window into the tragedy of a genocide that is happening now and an invitation to reflect. What are you doing? What will you do?
Joe Sacco’s illustrations also offer us an unlikely surrogate into this catastrophe: a traumatized Persian cat named Semsem who survived over 120 days of bombings while soldiers terrorized his family and their food supplies dwindled. This poor animal is undisputedly an innocent bystander in this horrific situation. Sacco draws a simple one-panel image of Semsem’s wide-eyed terror at the massacre surrounding its home, before he is heartbreakingly separated from his family. This cat’s PTSD acts as a surrogate for the reader’s own distanced PTSD from a story almost too overwhelming to bear. Yet, unlike a pet cat, the reader still has real-world agency in this tale. We can still call our elected officials and demand change. We can still protest this genocide by marching in the streets and by refusing to give our money to corporations who support it. The phrase “history is written by the victors” is largely true, but in Requiem for Gaza, Hedges and Sacco defiantly offer us a history of this genocide from the Palestinian perspective, to honor the survivors and dignify the countless lives that have already been lost. This book is a must-read for our times, despite how tragic and painful it may be to endure. | Jon Osia Scorfina
You can find Requiem for Gaza at your local comic shop, bookstore, or at the Fantagraphics website.
