30 Seconds from Gaza: Diary of Genocide

In this arresting collection of political cartoons, Sabaaneh (Power Born of Dreams) plucks heart-stopping moments from the tumult of the war in Gaza. Each one-panel comic offers his interpretation of clips from videos Palestinians posted to social channels, many of which he reports have since been censored. The works are drawn in India ink to give “permanence” to this fleeting form of media, Sabaaneh writes. A still of a grieving parent saying “Marah loved painting” becomes an image of a girl touching a pencil to an approaching missile, while another parent’s question—“How did a ten-year-old threaten them?”—is illustrated with a boy aiming a kite at a plane dropping bombs. Sabaaneh’s cartoons vibrate with sorrow and rage, though some land with an unexpected gentleness when capturing families’ attempts to comfort each other. In one such image, abstracted figures represent a sister consoling a younger brother “trembling in fear after the bombing.” The thickly inked art recalls Peter Kuper and Eric Drooker, but the angular figures bent over in pain most strongly evoke Picasso’s Guernica, which Sabaaneh cites as his model, though the off-the-shelf font for the translation doesn’t frame the sophistication of the art as well. The book ends with a longer piece illustrating the final phone call of Hind Rajab, a five-year-old girl killed by a tank. By freezing these moments so beautifully in time, Sabaaneh refuses to let readers look away. (Aug.)