Fantagraphics Publishers Denounce Genocide, Call for Gaza Ceasefire

In 1993, Fantagraphics started publishing Palestine, Joe Sacco’s landmark work of graphic journalism, a first-person chronicle that gave voice to the unvoiced and dispossessed individuals who have been dwelling and struggling in Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem — the Palestinian territories.

Considering that we’ve believed within the deeply humanistic perspective of this guide, that we’ve thought of it our duty to maintain it obtainable to the general public constantly in 25 printings in 31 years, and that we’ve boundless respect for its writer, we think about it an ethical crucial to make our place on the present “Israel-Hamas/Gaza war” publicly recognized.

We need to state clearly and emphatically that we stand with the harmless individuals of Gaza. At the identical time, we emphatically condemn the bloodbath of harmless Israeli civilians by Hamas on October 7 as a warfare crime and acknowledge with deep remorse the grief and trauma Jewish persons are enduring in its aftermath; however this barbarous act doesn’t warrant Israel to commit its personal warfare crime and to inflict exponentially better grief and trauma in return.

Finally, as residents of the United States, it’s each emotionally agonizing and morally objectionable to observe our nation’s complicity within the ongoing genocide of Gaza. We respectfully submit that:

• There ought to be an instantaneous ceasefire
• Israel ought to instantly permit humanitarian assist into Gaza
• Israel should finish its apartheid regime
• Israel should cease wanting the opposite means as West Bank settlers homicide Palestinians
• Israel’s unlawful West Bank settlements have to be dismantled
• Negotiations in good religion should start towards a two- or single-state resolution during which each Israelis and Palestinians share the identical sovereign rights.
• Israeli and Hamas prisoners/hostages ought to be launched
• Those who communicate out on behalf of Palestinians shouldn’t be silenced, retaliated towards, or smeared as antisemitic
• Slippery new phrases like “humanitarian expulsion” and “voluntary migration” ought to be denounced for what they’re — oxymoronic euphemisms for ethnic cleaning
• War crimes ought to be investigated and vigorously pursued by the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice

“Before the terrifying prospects now available to humanity, we see even more clearly that peace is the only goal worth struggling for. This is no longer a prayer but a demand to be made by all peoples to their governments — a demand to choose definitively between hell and reason.” — Albert Camus, Combat, 1945

[This statement does not necessarily reflect the opinions of our staff or our authors, who are entirely free to agree or disagree and to make their own beliefs known.]

Gary Groth
Publisher, Fantagraphics Books

Eric Reynolds,
Associate Publisher, Fantagraphics Books

There have been optimistic notes in response from numerous comedian creators.