Comics

A bit rude assuming anything about my ideology

Looking at my comment, the only time I comment on your own views are where I say "If you're impressed by him shaking your fist at Netanyahu." I didn't say that because I was assuming you were, I said that because you literally were praising him for doing that, pointing to it as evidence of . . . whatever you want to say. Perhaps I missed something.

In the meantime, I notice that you never actually addressed how Bibi is used as a sin-eater by liberals.

kinda makes me feel like I'm taking a very condescending purity test.

I really don't like "purity test" rhetoric and it doesn't make you less condescending for using it that you're using it to call me condescending.

In this comic Art's struggle with the term "genocide" is put in context of his fears about using the wrong word, because people use his work to justify movements he's against. That's not him trailing off, it's part of the message

Oh, so in your interpretation he didn't trail off, he deliberately neglected to complete the thought on the appropriate language for the "genocidish" thing happening in Gaza because it was raised in service of making this point? In that case he's a self-centered asshole and I was too gentle before! I was being charitable to him because he is by his own account in the interview an old man who likes to complain.

What Art's caricature says about Hamas is as his character and part of that narrative, not his actual view, that's the context.

Bullshit. That's him, or his authorial character, which it would be whether it had a mouse head or not.

The statement about trauma is to say that If hamas had the means, they would strike back Because of what Isreal did to them,

So he says something that's completely fucking wrong, classic accusation-in-a-mirror, and which is not refuted (Sacco's "pensive look" is not a refutation) for what great artistic purpose? So we can hear the same hasbara from him that we hear daily from the news? Wonderful contribution to the discourse.

I can't see the part of the interview you're referencing, I'm paywalled even with an ad blocker and web archive. But the guy's been criticising Isreal for at least a decade. I won't speak to his reasons for avoiding it, but he has likened Isreal's occupation of Gaza to the bloody colonialism of europeans against indigenous people for a while. I doubt it's new to him.

I got this part wrong, it was actually Sacco who said it:

Israel’s continuing conquest and settlement of the West Bank, its genocide in Gaza, and its embrace of Trump’s ethnic cleansing plan have definitively answered the question of whether Israel is a colonial enterprise.

What an embarrassing thing to say. Citing Trump's ethnic cleansing plan answering the "question" reminds me of Biden saying that Trump is the first racist President.

On the off chance you're looking at the wrong link (since I never linked it), it's here: https://www.nybooks.com/online/2025/03/08/cant-go-on-must-go-on-joe-sacco-art-spiegelman/

It's not a very politically incisive interview, it's basically just helpful if you're curious about the brainworms of the authors.

The apartment comic is meant to invoke the racist, colonial mantra that zionists called Palestine "A land without a people." If anything, it's calling out zionism for its dehumanizing "flawed premise." I mean, it says "flawed premise" right there on the page.

I know this. Do you seriously believe that I don't know this? My point is that his attempt at a refutation deliberately obscures the brutal reality, casting it as merely nonsensical rather than barbaric (and arguably both-sidesing the subsequent "conflict", when you actually look closely at the picture and see what the masses of prior tenants are up to).

The closing remarks aren't supposed to be witty

A quip is still a quip, don't hypercorrect me

another reiteration of the theme "Never again, and again..." about how difficult it is to break a cycle of violence.

People love to talk about how difficult and complex the situation is. I left it out, but there's also some wank at the very end of the comic acting like it's such a difficult thing to figure out. I contend that it is not and Israel's violence is not simply a byproduct of Jewish trauma. The Holocaust did not necessitate Apartheid, and Apartheid is not currently serving any purpose but a genocidal, colonial one because Israel was always a genocidal, colonial project that was backed by western powers, including some of the same ones that backed the Holocaust (and indeed even the Nazis gave some support to earlier iterations of the Israel project).

He's an artist and a writer who condemns isreal's violence, calls out zionism's flawed premise, says he's not a zionist, and donates to Palestine.

He's a hack who papers over the violence fundamental to the colonial ethnostate, calls himself not a zionist while declaring that Israel must keep existing (no such thing as cleaning up toothpaste!), and is a rich "progressive" liberal whose credibility rests on humanitarian pretenses, so he ~~bought an Indulgence~~ donated to charity. If you don't think that last point is a fair comparison, consider that you brought up him donating to charity to defend his character in the first place, so clearly it's doing some work to make him more credible to you (or you think others will think that way).

If you still think he's a zionist, I don't know what to tell you.

If you still think that anyone who says Israel must continue to exist isn't a Zionist because they say they're not a Zionist, well . . .