{"id":232467,"date":"2024-01-26T13:21:07","date_gmt":"2024-01-26T18:21:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/?p=232467"},"modified":"2024-01-26T13:22:38","modified_gmt":"2024-01-26T18:22:38","slug":"indie-comics-powerhouse-fantagraphics-has-denounced-the-genocide-in-gaza","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/indie-comics-powerhouse-fantagraphics-has-denounced-the-genocide-in-gaza\/","title":{"rendered":"Indie comics powerhouse Fantagraphics has denounced the genocide in Gaza."},"content":{"rendered":"

Fantagraphics<\/a>\u2014the Seattle-based indie comics juggernaut and publisher of Daniel Clowes, Charles Burns, and Joe Sacco (whose landmark work of graphic journalism, Palestine<\/em><\/a>, was released by Fantagraphics in 1993)\u2014has issued a forceful statement<\/a> denouncing the ongoing genocide in Gaza and calling for an immediate ceasefire:<\/p>\n

We want to state clearly and emphatically that we stand with the innocent people of Gaza. At the same time, we emphatically condemn the massacre of innocent Israeli civilians by Hamas on October 7 as a war crime and acknowledge with deep regret the grief and trauma Jewish people are enduring in its aftermath; but this barbarous act does not warrant Israel to commit its own war crime and to inflict exponentially greater grief and trauma in return.<\/p>\n

Finally, as citizens of the United States, it is both emotionally agonizing and morally objectionable to watch our nation\u2019s complicity in the ongoing genocide of Gaza.<\/p>\n

With the release of this statement, Fantagraphics becomes one of the highest profile US publishers to publicly call for an end to Israel’s war on Gaza, which has so far claimed the lives of over 25,000 people, including more than 120 writers, poets<\/a>, and journalists<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Here is the Fantagraphics statement in full:<\/p>\n

In 1993, Fantagraphics began publishing\u00a0Palestine,\u00a0<\/em>Joe Sacco\u2019s landmark work of graphic journalism, a first-person chronicle that gave voice to the voiceless and dispossessed people who were living and suffering in Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem\u2014the Palestinian territories.<\/p>\n

Considering that we have believed in the deeply humanistic perspective of this book, that we have considered it our responsibility to keep it available to the public continuously in 25 printings in 31 years, and that we have boundless respect for its author, we consider it a moral imperative to make our position on the current \u201cIsrael-Hamas\/Gaza war\u201d publicly known.<\/p>\n

We want to state clearly and emphatically that we stand with the innocent people of Gaza. At the same time, we emphatically condemn the massacre of innocent Israeli civilians by Hamas on October 7 as a war crime and acknowledge with deep regret the grief and trauma Jewish people are enduring in its aftermath; but this barbarous act does not warrant Israel to commit its own war crime and to inflict exponentially greater grief and trauma in return.<\/p>\n

Finally, as citizens of the United States, it is both emotionally agonizing and morally objectionable to watch our nation\u2019s complicity in the ongoing genocide of Gaza. We respectfully submit that:<\/p>\n

\u2022 There should be an immediate ceasefire<\/p>\n

\u2022 Israel should immediately allow humanitarian aid into Gaza<\/p>\n

\u2022 Israel must end its apartheid regime<\/p>\n

\u2022 Israel must stop looking the other way as West Bank settlers murder Palestinians<\/p>\n

\u2022 Israel\u2019s illegal West Bank settlements must be dismantled<\/p>\n

\u2022 Negotiations in good faith must begin toward a two- or single-state solution in which both Israelis and Palestinians share the same sovereign rights.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Israeli and Hamas prisoners\/hostages should be released<\/p>\n

\u2022 Those who speak out on behalf of Palestinians should not be silenced, retaliated against, or smeared as antisemitic<\/p>\n

\u2022 Slippery new terms like \u201chumanitarian expulsion\u201d and \u201cvoluntary migration\u201d should be denounced for what they are\u2014oxymoronic euphemisms for ethnic cleansing<\/p>\n

\u2022 War crimes should be investigated and vigorously pursued by the International Criminal Court\u00a0and the International Court of Justice<\/p>\n

\u201cBefore 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\u2014a demand to choose definitively between hell and reason.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014 Albert Camus,\u00a0Combat<\/em>, 1945<\/p>\n

[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.]<\/p>\n

Gary Groth
\nPublisher, Fantagraphics Books<\/p>\n

Eric Reynolds,
\nAssociate Publisher, Fantagraphics Books<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fantagraphics\u2014the Seattle-based indie comics juggernaut and publisher of Daniel Clowes, Charles Burns, and Joe Sacco (whose landmark work of graphic journalism, Palestine, was released by Fantagraphics in 1993)\u2014has issued a forceful statement denouncing the ongoing genocide in Gaza and calling for an immediate ceasefire: We want to state clearly and emphatically that we stand with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":599,"featured_media":232472,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[43201,43092,43646],"tags":[13154,8632,1209,1210],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Palestine-Fantagraphics.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5rKFr-Ytt","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232467"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/599"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232467"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232467\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/232472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}