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- [00:10]
Chris Hedges
I first met the cartoonist Joe Sacco in Bosnia shortly after the war in 1995, where I was reporting for the New York Times. I knew nothing about comics and was unfamiliar with his work, but I knew something about reporting. And as we worked together in the Bosnian town of Gorazda, where Joe was gathering material for what would become his book, Safe Area Garaged, I very swiftly realized that Joe was a brilliant and meticulous reporter. We later did a book together, Days of Destruction, Days of revolt, where 50 pages were given over to his comics. Invariably, once what I thought was an exhaustive interview, often lasting a few hours, was done, Joe would quietly ask the half dozen or so questions I had missed, questions that were vital to the narrative. Joe invented nonfiction graphic journalism. He not only reports his stories, he draws them out in cartoons, a labor intensive process that can take years. This marriage of graphic illustration and panels give a visceral power to his reporting that we as writers often struggle to match. From 1993 to 1995, he published nine comics on the plight of the Palestinians living under Israeli occupation, later collected in the book Palestine. His book educated a generation about the brutality of Israel's settler colonial project and system of apartheid. It won an American Book Award and is often included in college syllabuses. Edward Said, in the introduction to Palestine, wrote, with the exception of one or two novelists and poets, no one has ever rendered this terrible state of affairs better than Joe Sacco. I worked again with Joe on an article for Harper's Magazine called A Gaza Diary, which chronicled the life of Palestinians in the Khan Yunis refugee camp in Gaza in 2001. During our reporting, we interviewed survivors of the massacres carried out when Israel occupied the Gaza Strip in 1956, massacres in which at least 275 men and boys were executed by Israeli soldiers. The editors at Harper's edited out this part of the story, arguing that it was irrelevant because it was history. This did not sit well with me. It certainly did not sit well with Joe, who spent the next six years making repeated trips to Gaza to doggedly track down victims and eyewitnesses of the massacre. The result was his masterpiece, Footnotes in Gaza, one of the finest books on the Palestine Israel conflict. Joe is well aware that that context is key, that those who do not understand the past do not understand the present. And now he and I, who have spent considerable time in Gaza, watch the livestream Genocide one where familiar places in Gaza are reduced to rubble. Palestinians we know and care about are killed, disappear or disappear. No doubt buried under the rubble or are forced into exile. We each have devoted considerable time and energy since the genocide began, desperately trying to make the voices and the suffering of the Palestinians heard. The result for Joe is his new comic on Gaza, which we will be discussing today. Let's begin with your reaction after October 7th. I'm sure it was very similar to mine, this desperate urge to chronicle, express in your case, of course, also draw about what was happening, but talk about that moment and the impetus for what became this book on Gaza.
- [03:44]
Joe Sacco
Well, my first reaction on October 7th was great shock. I mean, first of all, I just heard about a lot of Israeli civilians being killed, heard about the festival and the killings that took place there. And I was overwhelmed by the numbers and the sense of what must have happened. And to be honest, that sort of paralyzed me for a minute or two. But then the bombing that started almost immediately basically incapacitated me, at least for some weeks. I mean, I felt I had to do something. I knew I was going to do something. But for that first period, just as a human being, I couldn't really take it all in myself. I had some news organizations calling me up for a reaction, and I didn't even answer the phone because I had no reaction. I mean, I had nothing to say, nothing geopolitical to say. No, great analysis. Just as a human being. I was just taken aback. I tried to do some work. I, you know, picked up my pen, took some notes. It was sort of going nowhere. But then a friend wrote to me from Hun Yunus and said, please raise up your voice. And then that sort of. That was the moment I just decided, okay, just start whatever it is. Just begin and let's see what comes out of it. And. And once I really began, it all just began to flow out of me. I mean, sometimes that's what it takes. It's not. It's not a question of thinking about it or mulling it over. It's a question of actually just doing. And that's, you think, by doing somehow. And, you know, like you, I can't go there. I can't report from there, which is what I'd rather do. I'd rather talk to people, get their reactions, see what they have to say, see with my own eyes what's going on. But because I couldn't do that, I had to approach it in some other way. And I didn't want it to be an outright polemic, which is kind of how I felt like I should write a polemic. But I wanted to bring the reader along. With me. And so I fell back on something I'd been doing for a long time, which is satire. That's. That's a place where I'm comfortable, is working with satire. And then I basically found my voice as I was going along with the. With the drawings which first appeared in the Comics Journal. You know, whenever I finished one or two, I would send them in and they would post them as I finished them.
- [06:37]
Chris Hedges
I remember you telling me that you worked. This was with FATA Graphics, which publishes your book. Well, has published, I think, all your books. Right.
- [06:45]
Joe Sacco
That's not all, but most. Not half, I'd say half.
- [06:50]
Chris Hedges
Okay. And I remember you saying that you just assumed that although you had been approached by mainstream publications like the Guardian, you just assumed they wouldn't run your stuff. Is that correct?
- [07:02]
Joe Sacco
Well, you know, it was. I was assuming that I would start in my own head, starting to accommodate myself to. To a way of doing things. You know, you'd sort of think about what the. What the Guardian would need to sort of balance this or that out. And I thought I didn't want to play that game with myself. I mean, I'm glad they approached me. It was nice. But I knew that Fantagraphics and the publishers there, Gary Groth and Eric Reynolds, were. They got what was going on and they felt very strongly about what was going on. And I knew they weren't going to mess with any of my words and I wouldn't have to second think anything.
- [07:42]
Chris Hedges
So let's begin as the book begins, and that is about your. You talk about that paralysis, your initial response, and you reflect you read. A long time ago, when I was in Gaza, I told my friend what the Palestinians there ought to do. They ought to take a page from Gandhi's book. And that's what they did with the Great March of Return. Talk about that and what you ended up drawing.
- [08:17]
Joe Sacco
Well, yeah, I mean, I was, you know, I believe non violence is the best way to go, ultimately. When I suggested it to my Palestinian friend, he said, if we march to the wall in a great demonstration to protest the blockade or to protest our lives here in the occupation, they'll shoot us. They're going to shoot us. And when they did have the Great March of Return some years later, they marched to the fortified fence and were shot down in droves. A couple of hundred were killed. This was almost exclusively a peaceful demonstration. And Amnesty reported that it seemed that Israeli snipers were shooting at people to wound them in ways that would require, you know, amputations, basically. So at that point I realized, who am I to suggest how the Palestinians should respond to the occupation? I'm not living under the occupation. I wouldn't know how I would react to myself if I were in their shoes.
- [09:28]
Chris Hedges
You have a full page and you ask as a question, is it genocide or is it self defense? Let's make everyone happy and say it is both. In that case, we'll need new terminology. I propose genocidal self defense. That should give both sides something to work with. Of course, this was early on when the use of the term genocide didn't have as much currency in the mainstream as it does now.
- [09:59]
Joe Sacco
That might be the case, but it seemed clear to me almost immediately that's what was going to happen. I mean, hundreds of Palestinians were getting killed every day in this first few weeks especially. And Netanyahu, I think a couple of days into all this was talking about Amalek. He was talking about. He was making biblical references to a people that were exterminated and that God had required the extermination of those people, down to the sucklings, in other words, the babies at the breast and the animals. And there was a lot of indications from other Israeli politicians that, you know, gallant calling the Palestinians human animals. If you couple what looked to me like intent with great devastation. It was early on it seemed like it was going to be genocidal. Now self defense, I mean, that's sort of the mantra. Israel has the right to defend itself. It almost has like a biblical feel to it at this point. But then we have to examine what is self defense. I mean, we throw that around. Does self defense include everything? Every atrocity up to and including genocide? We have to question terminologies like self defense when it gets to that point.
- [11:21]
Chris Hedges
I have to ask you about the. Because you talk about satire, but this is, you know, there's a very dark humor. When we first met, I think one of the books that we discussed together in Bosnia was Celine Louis Fernandez Celine's Journey to the End of the Night, Death on the installment plan. But it certainly has echoes of Celine. It's not simply satire. There's a very, it's, it's. There's a darkness to what you're doing.
- [11:47]
Joe Sacco
There's a darkness, but it's sort of the darkness. It's the. You find humor. You will find humor in places like Gaza, places like Bosnia, and it's always of the darkest sort. I mean, it's their way of sort of managing their own thoughts, being funny, but understanding the underlying darkness of the, of their humor and I'm, I think, I think I picked that up and I'm reflecting it back.
- [12:10]
Chris Hedges
Yeah, completely. So you talk about as it overnighted planeload after plane load of 2000 pound bombs and 155 millimeter artillery rounds to Israel. The White House declared that there would be no red lines for its enraged ally. And so yeah, let's talk about the, that whole concept of red lines.
- [12:43]
Joe Sacco
Well, this is, I mean the fact that they would say something like that is basically saying anything you do is okay with us. And any red line that was stated, let's say Biden had his red line in Rafah, that was going to be a red line. I mean even when they had red lines it meant nothing. Basically it was carte blanche, carte blanche to do whatever they want. And that's what's been going on. I mean bombs are being shoveled, they're going there by the planeload and they're being used. So there are no red lines for Israel it seems as far as America is concerned.
- [13:27]
Chris Hedges
Well, there were rhetorical red lines.
- [13:29]
Joe Sacco
Rhetorical red lines. Even those again, Biden, about Rafah, that Israelis crossed that red line. They've obliterated Rafah.
- [13:37]
Chris Hedges
Yeah. And so you, let's talk about the aid which you write about the, you know, this kind of assumption that the United States is the chief humanitarian benefactor as well of course as the arms supplier.
- [13:57]
Joe Sacco
I mean I don't even know what to say when Jack Kirby said that. What do you say to something like that? It's unbelievable that a spokesperson, an official of the White House is saying something like we are the chief benefactor. That you can't find a greater humanitarian in this particular conflict than, than us, the people who are also providing the bombs. I mean this is beyond, I mean you, this is not about satire anymore. You know, it's, it's like it's this and, and you know, the, the journalists are just noting it down and it's just being pumped out to us. And of course I think by, at this point everyone sees it for what it is or everyone should see it for what it is.
- [14:46]
Chris Hedges
Well, you call it. America has just invented a kindler, gentler genocide.
- [14:51]
Joe Sacco
Right. Because if you, you want it both ways. You want to be the, you know, you want to bomb them and you want to feed them. But, but the feeding part, the so called, the humanitarian gestures are the way of selling the genocide. It's part of the sales genocidal salesmanship, as you say, it's something else.
- [15:10]
Chris Hedges
Yeah, that was true as aid in every war that I covered.
- [15:14]
Joe Sacco
Okay, there you go.
- [15:16]
Chris Hedges
It was a mechanism, and of course it was. It was used to mask. I mean, the war in El Salvador would be a perfect example there.
- [15:25]
Joe Sacco
It's about a narrative and how you. How you shape a narrative while you're. While you're, you know, committing atrocities.
- [15:32]
Chris Hedges
So you turn the page and you have the full page of Biden with the new scarlet letter, which is. It's a black and white drawing, but on Biden's forehead is G for genocide in red. I just want to ask you.
- [15:52]
Joe Sacco
Because.
- [15:52]
Chris Hedges
You do that all the time in all of your work. Your panels are not uniform. They will in footnotes in Gaza, which we have to mention, which is a masterpiece. It's one of the finest books, dawn on the Palestine, Israel conflict, hands down. You use the size in order to convey emotion, convey feelings of entrapment feeling. But let's just talk about that reason that you flip the page, because before you have more traditional panels and then it's a full page of Biden with the words the new Scarlet Letter.
- [16:28]
Joe Sacco
Right. I want to. That to be. I mean, you know, in a. In. I almost wanted that to be a meme, basically. I mean, it already is. We already have the term genocide, Joe. But, you know, my hope is that this is. This is. Will be his historical legacy. It should be his historical legacy. And of course, I'm taking it from Hawthorne's book the Scarlet Letter, where an adulteress had to wear, you know, the scarlet letter A. So hopefully people got the reference. But I think of Biden as a war criminal. I mean, I'm not sure I understand why. If your listeners think that there's a genocide's being committed and that we're culpable, then he should be considered a war criminal, as many other members of his administration. And this is just, you know, giving it some. I'm just trying to give it some impact. This. This whole thought.
- [17:29]
Chris Hedges
You. You have an image on the next page. It's what. It's this Biden repeating this false claim by Israel about beheaded babies, where he said he saw pictures of beheaded babies, which of course was a lie. And right below that image, surely it was the divine that implanted images of beheaded babies and children into the mind of the president. For, in fact, there were neither beheaded babies nor beheaded children and no images there of. Let's talk a little bit about that, because it's something that you and I have run into repeatedly. That Israeli. That hasbara. That Israeli propaganda machine and how it works, right?
- [18:20]
Joe Sacco
There's an Israeli propaganda machine. And then there's the President of the United States embracing that and repeating the propaganda and pushing the propaganda. Even when the White House talked it back, he continued to say the same thing in subsequent, you know, subsequent speeches. So to me, he's embracing the dehumanization of Palestinians. I mean, Hamas committed atrocities. That seems like a reasonable charge. But to make up atrocities, to conjure up what we would consider the lowest thing a human can do, beheading a baby. I mean, he is part of the dehumanization project. And I mean, dehumanization is the sort of stepping stone to annihilation. So that's what I'm trying to get across.
- [19:17]
Chris Hedges
There you have that. You close with that last image. O Israel, let a monument be raised atop the flattened cities of Amalek so that future generations will never forget the miracle of Joe Biden's hallucination. I humbly submit this design to the relevant committee. And it's a picture of a child and diapers beheaded with blood gushing out of. Well, that top of their head.
- [19:45]
Joe Sacco
To me, that's part of his legacy, too, is paving the way for genocide. With those statements like that. I mean, we have to look at the fact that the United States has sent bombs. But then there's this. There's the rhetorical aspect, too, where they're not just emphasizing a narrative, but creating one out of whole cloth.
- [20:08]
Chris Hedges
The next little section is on your mother. Your mother was a young woman in Malta in World War II, when I think Malta was one of the most heavily. One moment. One of the most heavily bombed places on Earth. It was because it was a major kind of staging area in the Mediterranean for the British in particular. But let's talk exactly about that narrative. And you have also done a longer comic, I can't remember what book it's in, on your mother's experience in Malta. Which book is that? Where is that?
- [20:48]
Joe Sacco
That's from Notes From a Defeatist.
- [20:50]
Chris Hedges
Right. But let's talk about that story that you tell about your mother.
- [20:56]
Joe Sacco
Right. Well, you know, my mother's 95, and when my sister and I talk in front of her, we've tried to avoid talking about Gaza, but we started talking about it, and she overheard, and then she started immediately thinking about her own experiences in World War II. And for about two and a half years, Malta was very heavily bombed, as you, as you mentioned. And she lived in a quarry. She lived in a shelter. She, you know, she saw friends killed. She was personally strafed by a German fighter plane. She used to Tell us about not having any food, like, basically going to school with one small piece of bread, and that's what she ate for the day and eating it right away so no one would take it. I mean, she lived under very bad conditions in the war, and so did my dad. So I grew up with those stories. And it's clear, you know, she doesn't remember a lot of things now, but these are the memories that come back to her. These are the ones that are dredged up in her mind. And it's clear that the trauma still. It's still when she'll forget what she did, you know, 10 minutes ago. The trauma of what happened in World War II is still with her. She started talking about what was going on when we were talking about Gaza. She was talking about her own experiences. And then, of course, at the end of that particular story, I talk about the Israeli minister, Mei Galan, I think, who hoped that Palestinian babies, now, 80 years from now, would be telling their grandchildren, this is what we did. This is what the Israelis had done to the Palestinians, as if to sort of revel in the idea that trauma would be handed down from one generation to another. And it will be. And I mean, to find pleasure in that is so disgusting that you're. I mean, you've reached a level of being able to dehumanize people to that extent that you hope their grandchildren's grandchildren perhaps will still suffer the trauma from it.
- [23:10]
Chris Hedges
Well, and this is what you did so powerfully in Footnotes in Gaza.
- [23:18]
Joe Sacco
Well, again, I mean, I talk to people who, in the middle of the 1950s, were attacked by the Israelis, and a lot of the men were lined up against walls and shot. And people who survived that, when I was talking to them half a century later, you could tell the trauma was still there. They remembered very well being beaten over the head as they entered into a school to get screened, for example. So trauma does. It is passed down the generations. And, you know, obviously the Jewish people understand this. People who are traumatized it will just continue with their children and others. I mean, you know, I have friends who've had. Whose parents went through the Holocaust, and my friends are traumatized by that.
- [24:20]
Chris Hedges
Let's talk about the next. So a reading from the book of genocide. Of course, what you're pulling on is Sodom and Gomorrah. I love the biblical references, but it's Netanyahu, who in this comic is Yahweh up in the clouds and Biden looking out and saying, wilt thou also destroy the righteous? And the wicked. Suppose there are 50 righteous men in Gaza. Wilt thou then sweep them away and not pardon the place for the sake of the 50? This is of course, right out of that biblical story. But talk about that little story.
- [25:00]
Joe Sacco
Yeah, I mean, that's Abraham was asking Yahweh, could you say, would you save the city? Basically, if it came down to just a few individuals were righteous. And I sort of reverse it and we start with if there were just a few righteous in Gaza and I increase the number, I don't decrease it. So at the end it's if there are 2 million innocent people in Gaza, would you still destroy it?
- [25:30]
Chris Hedges
And half of them are children.
- [25:31]
Joe Sacco
And half of them are children. Exactly. And I mean, obviously we know the answer to that because we've seen Netanyahu's actions. But then I'm also showing that Biden wasn't being sincere with this question. It was just a joke to him anyway. He's going to provide the bombs to destroy these, the innocent, the as well as the guilty.
- [26:00]
Chris Hedges
The end of that panel is, I think it gets back to the point you made earlier about Biden's legacy and the genocide. So you said the. And the President looked back and he was turned into a pillar of votes for Jill Stein. That's of course the pillar of salt. But just mention that complete moral bankruptcy on the part not just of Biden, but the entire US ruling class, Republican or Democrat.
- [26:37]
Joe Sacco
Well, that's the whole idea. I mean, the biblical story fit quite well because Lot, when he escapes Gomorrah, is told not. He's told not to look back and his wife looks back and is turned into a pillar of salt. But that's the whole idea. It's like this is being committed, but it's almost a way of saying, I mean, in this particular case, it's Biden, Blinken, we're not responsible, we're moving on from this. Ignore what we've done, don't think about it, don't talk about it. But in this particular case, when Biden was still running for, was running for election, I felt like he would suffer from this electorally on some level. And he did. Democrats did.
- [27:26]
Chris Hedges
Yeah. And they deserve to. Absolutely. So then we're back in Portland and you're just talking about which I think all of us who've worked in Gaza feel the sense of powerlessness, the sense of frustration, outrage at just this live streamed genocide. But you immediately of course, tie it into the unhoused population in the city. So just talk about that narrative and what you're. What you're seeking to express in terms of your own feelings.
- [28:06]
Joe Sacco
Well, my own feelings are, you know, I live in the United States. I pay taxes here. I live in Portland, Oregon. There are a lot of homeless people on the street. There are a lot of people who need help. There are a lot of structural problems with the United States that are causing what I'm seeing on the streets. I would hope that. I mean, in a better world, that's where my tax money would be going, is to helping people who need it that live in America. Instead, it's going to killing people in Gaza. Well, that's what it seems to me. And I've always had this idea that whatever I'm paying in taxes really just adds up to one small piece of shrapnel. I mean, as a nightmare. I just imagine that all my money is funneled into a small part of a bomb that causes someone to lose their life in Gaza.
- [29:05]
Chris Hedges
Well, but of course that's true.
- [29:07]
Joe Sacco
That is true. I'm paying for it. I mean, I'm culpable. I don't want to be culpable. I don't want to be part of this genocide. But I am part of a genocide, as you are, Chris, whether you like it or not, and as the readers are or as your listeners are. So I feel a sense of responsibility for what's going on.
- [29:30]
Chris Hedges
Your next section is about the forthcoming election and a president who will facilitate a genocide and a former president who will end our democracy. And I have to, as a caveat, say that I totally stole that line because you mentioned it to me when we met in New York, and because you're honest and decent. You called up before you wrote this and said you just want to know that you'd thought of it first. And I said, of course you thought of it first. I used it.
- [29:59]
Joe Sacco
You used it first.
- [30:01]
Chris Hedges
I just used it first. But this is the frustration I think I felt in this election. How can we vote? How can we normalize genocide as a governmental policy? How can we vote for anyone who embraces a genocide? And yet none of us want Trump. I mean, Trump's Biden's or the Democratic Party's disdain for democracy is perhaps subtler, but is there? Trump's disdain for democracy is quite overt and open. So let's just talk about the last election in light of the genocide and what you drew.
- [30:44]
Joe Sacco
Well, I mean, I think you just have to. You have to question where we are today, that these are the people our political parties are going to throw up or These are what our political parties actually represent. One does, the Republicans do seem to represent some movement toward or move toward a completely anti Democratic system. And then the Democratic Party, you know, if you voted for them, you were gonna, you were basically going to give a rubber stamp to what had been going on with the genocide. There was, there was never an idea. There was never the sense that, oh, this is going to stop if Kamala Harris is elected. She never said anything like that. So I don't understand how you morally can vote for either. I understand that people say, oh, Trump is worse. And I had a lot of discussions with friends who were debating this whole issue. But in the end I'd say, well, you know, you're going to be voting for a genocide one way or the other, so how can you actually be part of that? How can you put your name behind any of that? But if we're at that place, then we really have to question where we are as a republic. Who are the people who are representing us? Who are the parties that are representing us?
- [32:10]
Chris Hedges
Yeah, well, that and also the fact that 66% of the public, it's either 61 or 66% of the public opposes arms shipments to Israel and 77% of the registered Democrats oppose. And it's irrelevant.
- [32:25]
Joe Sacco
It's irrelevant and they will still vote for the Democrats.
- [32:31]
Chris Hedges
And let's talk about. Because this is also a panel on freedom of speech, because it's become even worse since you drew this on college campuses. They've become academic gulags. Everything is shut down. Students who participated in the encampments or occupations are on probation or suspended. Faculty members have been terminated. The few who have spoken up. But you see all of this coming. There's that panel with. Of Biden speaking at aipac. One thing this war taught us is that never again is a registered trademark licensed only under certain conditions, that anyone trespassing on this intellectual property will be severely reprimanded. Indeed, we now live in a world where sane.
- [33:28]
Joe Sacco
You.
- [33:28]
Chris Hedges
You want to stop a genocide is hate speech while slandering those who want to stop it is paid speech. And at the end, that last panel, and the answer to more speech is a police charge. It's even worse than when you drew this. Let's talk about that suppression of speech and its consequences. I don't think that all of these new rules, which universities and colleges spent the summer oftentimes not only collaborating, but working with security firms that have close ties to Israel. I don't see how those rules will be lifted even after the Genocide.
- [34:10]
Joe Sacco
Well, yeah, maybe some of these things are going to be here to stay. I mean, what's really important, I think what the students really, I was really, if you want to talk about hope, I found it in the students and what they were saying and how they were willing to put themselves on the line. And of course they were a threat because they were seeing a different narrative. They were understanding things. I think first viscerally, just by looking on their phones and seeing what was going on. I think they were viscerally disgusted and they must have thought this has to stop. And then they began to educate themselves, I think about what was going on. And the narrative was shifting. The narrative has shifted in many ways. So that narrative has to be suppressed. But it shows how effective they've been that these draconian measures are now being implemented. You know, this isn't my thought, I heard it somewhere, but someone was saying that, you know, here are these students, they're learning about, they're in these classes learning about Frantz Fanon and reading Edward Said. And then they, they take this on board. And then when they want to sort of express it in, in praxis somehow, when they actually want to implement what they're, they're being taught, they're crushed. I mean you really have to wonder about what the academic institutions are providing, what service are they providing for so much money. Yes, you can talk about this and talk about this, but at some point you can't talk about this because now this is a particular issue where any line, you're going to be crossing a line. And that's the whole idea. You begin to talk about one narrative, let's say the students narrative as being hate speech. No, you're anti Semitic. Even, even Jewish students are being anti Semitic. I mean, I think the liberal order is sort of twisting itself in knots here. But in the end they have force on their side. They can call the police.
- [36:19]
Chris Hedges
They do call the police.
- [36:20]
Joe Sacco
They do call the police.
- [36:25]
Chris Hedges
You have this full page panel. Gaza was where the west went to die. The only truth still held to be self evident was that the rules based order weighed 2,000 pounds and could flatten an entire neighborhood. I think that's right. I think that not that the rules based order was honored in Iraq or Afghanistan, Syria, Libya and go back to Vietnam. But now there's no pretense anymore of a rules based order. And what are the consequences of that?
- [37:00]
Joe Sacco
Well, I mean what are the new rules if there's no rules based order? We don't know what those are. You're Right. I mean, the west, especially the United States, has always been hypocritical about rules and international norms. Of course, they're setting the international norms and they're the ones who are deciding who's following them and who isn't. There's no universal laws really. They're particular. But what we've seen really, like you say, is the hypocrisy now is it's on open display. They're not trying to hide it anymore that international law doesn't matter. I mean, a international criminal court can hand down arrest warrants. And it's just, you know, the west, the collective west, is mostly going to shrug its shoulders at this. The United States is going to ignore it. So what are the rules about? I mean, we have to question all this, all these things.
- [38:06]
Chris Hedges
And this is that panel human. So you have these, you know, these parachuted aid packages, which of course are, it's, you know, very cynical publicity what provides nothing in terms of real food to Palestinians. So you had this picture with these aid packages being dropped from a plane by parachute and next to a long trench filled with shrouded corpses. And you write human animals would have no right to water, much less to the rights of man. And the only inalienable rights endowed with Amalek would be death, servitude and the pursuit of airdrops. One might fairly ask, was the Enlightenment buried in the rubble of Gaza or was the rubble the Enlightenment's logical conclusion? Well, was it in the Enlightenment's logical conclusion? That is a pretty weighty philosophical argument which we're not going to spend the whole show on, but we can talk.
- [39:20]
Joe Sacco
About it a bit. I mean, if you read these philosophers, I mean, and I think they had great contributions to make, but actually if you read them, you realize they were racist. They were talking, you know, theory, David Hume or Emmanuel Kant. I mean, they said things that are really would be, would get them canceled today. You know, the white race was the, was the superior race. Other races had nothing to offer at all. They weren't, other races weren't intelligent at all. So with the Enlightenment, the Enlightenment was always an exclusionary project. That's why you could have America's founding fathers have this great document or documents with basically establishing the liberal order here and also have slavery and genocide at the same time. I mean, it's, the Enlightenment was always circling around itself on these particular issues. And so there was, there were good things about the Enlightenment and about the west, obviously. But then, you know, let's, let's, let's see what's really. Let's see what's really happening. Ultimately, there is a racist project in the West.
- [40:34]
Chris Hedges
Well, that comment reminds me of the writings of philosopher John Gray, who argues that the Enlightenment believed in educating people to think correctly and behave correctly, but that those who could not be educated or refused to be educated and this gave birth to the Jacobins, were then eradicated. And he draws a direct line from the Enlightenment project to the Jacobins to finally the Stalinists and that his writings are thought about. His writings when you asked precisely that question, whether this was the natural denouement of the Enlightenment.
- [41:15]
Joe Sacco
Right, exactly.
- [41:18]
Chris Hedges
I think that, you know, you go back to the academic institutions. I think the academic institutions which have been corporatized have become just appendages of the corporate state have been completely exposed. Not just the ruling governing apparatus, but also the academic institutions have been exposed for their own bankruptcy. Not that they were ever great, but there used to be more space on academic or university or colleges, college campuses, and now even the heads of. I mean, where was Shafiq, the president of Columbia? Where did she come from? The World Bank? I mean, the. And it's not just sometimes they'll have a figurehead president who has a PhD in physics, but then all of the administrators are drawn out of the corporate world. And you've seen a withering away of the humanities, an accentuation on stem and these gleaming business schools. Business schools should not even be on college campuses. And the transformation of big research universities like Stanford, Harvard's underway, Princeton, into essentially becoming vocational schools, technical schools. But you hit the universities and I just wondered if you could comment on that.
- [42:44]
Joe Sacco
Well, I mean, I agree with everything you've been saying there. I'm not sure. House students. I really wonder how students are faring now, going back to classes where they're talking about things. And they're talking about things only in the theoretical now, because if they shift to actually acting on some of this theory, they know what's in store for them. So I'm not sure if they really feel like they're like what's the education they're getting. This is all sort of in the cloud stuff that you've been taught about decolonization or you know, inclusivity or whatever it is. I mean, it's all sort of. It's sort of a chimera. But you're still going to be paying to be taught the theory. I don't know. That's up to them to figure that out. I hope they do.
- [43:35]
Chris Hedges
And you write. And so oppression Abroad and repression at home orbit each other in an ever tightening circle and will achieve singularity when the last self hating Jewish student is strangled with the entrails of the last child in Gaza. Yeah, that's. You draw that parallel, which I think is smart, between what's happening on the outer reaches of Empire and what's happening at home.
- [44:00]
Joe Sacco
Yeah, because I think what happens abroad, what we do abroad eventually will come back to us. I mean, look at the militarization of American police forces since the Iraq war. I mean, I think you and I remember pretty ordinary patrol cars going by and police looking just as vulnerable as anyone else when they're on the street, just in their blue uniforms. It's not like that anymore. So, you know, we have to think about how we are. We're poisoning ourselves with these wars abroad. It's not just causing damage abroad, it's we're poisoning ourselves.
- [44:38]
Chris Hedges
On that next page you write from universities to journalists and this picture of murdered Palestinian journalists. Over 200, of course, have been murdered, from ambulances to women's lingerie. After a while, one began to wonder what wasn't a military target in Gaza. Let's talk about the behavior of the IDF in the Israeli Defense Forces in Gaza. And of course all of this stuff is the looting itself was chronicled by Israeli soldiers themselves on social media.
- [45:12]
Joe Sacco
Right. I mean, the IDF calls itself the world's most moral army. And I know institutions and nations have their myths and you know, you have to hold people up to their myth. So what is this morality that it claims to have? The actions of the IDF have been atrocious. It seems like all of Gaza is what in Vietnam was called a free fire zone. When IDF sets up places that are safe havens or places where people can go where they're told they're going to be safe. They've moved from their bombed out home to another bombed out place to these safe places and that are also bombed. I'm not sure how we can use the term moral army when we're talking about the idf, but it also shows how the Palestinians have been dehumanized over the decades in Israeli society that the average soldier will behave in this sort of way. They really have to have an image in their mind of what Palestinians are to do this kind of thing and not flinch. I mean, they're filming themselves blowing up homes, blowing up universities. I'm not sure what else to say about it. Chris.
- [46:44]
Chris Hedges
Well, they've been indoctrinated. Elon Pappe actually wrote a book about it about the Indoctrination machine starting in primary school.
- [46:51]
Joe Sacco
Well, there you go. I mean, and they're always accusing the Palestinians of being taught things in their books that the Palestinians are taught to hate. Well, now we're getting a real demonstration of who's being taught to hate.
- [47:02]
Chris Hedges
Yeah, that last panel on that next page. Meanwhile, those still keeping records in Gaza would have to adapt to circumstances. The birth certificate and the death certificate were hereafter merged into the same form. Then you bring us back to Abu Ghraib. How many more times do we need to be reminded of our shared values with Israel? Honestly, we were already convinced. And by the way, are we still giving points for democracy? I think that's an extremely important point. Israel is us. I mean, we behave no different in Iraq.
- [47:43]
Joe Sacco
No, that's it exactly. I mean, we're often talking about our shared values with Israel. And yeah, we do have shared values with Israel, but what are those values? That's the question.
- [47:56]
Chris Hedges
You throw in ancient Athens. But it's an important point. Even ancient Athens, the greatest example of pure democracy the west has ever known, famously left out women and depended on slave labor to make its political experiment work. And speaking of ancient Athens, let me just interject there that even Aristotle did not envision the end of slavery.
- [48:24]
Joe Sacco
No, he thought it was a natural thing for certain people. They were natural slaves.
- [48:29]
Chris Hedges
Right. And speaking of ancient Athens, this is you, a drawing of you, as usual, with your glasses, with no eyes. And speaking of ancient Athens, have we all read Thucydides? Do we all recall the story of the island state of Milos? And then you talk about the island state of Milos. Tell us what happened.
- [48:56]
Joe Sacco
Well, the Athenians, the great democrats, the Athenians had their own empire and they wanted the state of the island state of Milos to join their alliance. And the people on Milos didn't want that. So Athens basically descended upon them, killed every man and took all the women and children into slavery and then sent colonists, Athenians, to take over the homes of the people that had been eradicated. And, you know, we call Athens a democracy. But democracies can commit atrocities. I prefer a democracy. I want a democracy. That's the political system that I would fight for. But a democracy itself is not a moral. There's no morality behind democracy itself. I mean, it's the people. It's what the people decide. And democracies are very good about excluding people. They're very good about saying, these are the people that have these rights and these are the people on the outside. And the people on the outside, there's often not an attempt to bring them in. I think that's true with. Definitely true with the Athenians who was in and who was out, and it's definitely true with us. So I don't like the idea when democracy is used as sort of a. Well, you can't talk about them doing this because they're a democracy, or democracy somehow washes some atrocity away. It doesn't. Democracies commit atrocities.
- [50:46]
Chris Hedges
Towards the end of the book, you say, we know how this ends. The warmongers. One thinks of Kissinger. The warmongers will recast themselves as peacemakers and humbly nominate themselves to the Nobel Committee for its prize. It reminds me of the website at Columbia University where they proudly show pictures of student protesters from 1968.
- [51:11]
Joe Sacco
Well, there you go. I mean, it's just like continual hypocrisy, you know, now we can talk about these fine students, but, you know, in 68 who took over these buildings, it almost becomes part of the institution's lore. And it's also, it's almost a selling point. But when it's happening now and push comes to shove now, obviously it has to be suppressed. There's just hypocrisy in those academic institutions. Definitely.
- [51:38]
Chris Hedges
Yeah. Great. Thanks, Joe. And I want to thank Sophia, Max, Thomas and Diego who produced the show. You can find me at chrished.substack.com thanks, Chris.