Joe Sacco is widely regarded as one of the pioneers of comics journalism. He became famous for his Palestine (first published in 1993–95) which offered a powerful portrayal of Palestinian life under Israeli occupation. In 2009 came his Footnotes in Gaza, and, in 2024, War on Gaza, a collection of comics commenting on the Israeli destruction of the Gaza Strip. Today the streets that the journalist and cartoonist once depicted in such painstaking detail no longer exist.

Now, over three decades since the first publication of Palestine, Sacco has again turned his attention to Gaza. Last year, together with his colleague Chris Hedges, he traveled to Cairo to interview refugees who had survived the genocide. Their new volume Requiem for Gaza, combines Sacco’s drawings and reporting with Hedges’s prose and interviews to document Gazans’ experiences.

Sacco spoke with Elias Feroz about Requiem for Gaza in an interview for Jacobin. Sacco reflects on the failure of much Western media to stand by their Palestinian colleagues, many of whom were killed as they reported on the genocide. Their conversation also addressed historical memory, Sacco’s decades-long engagement with Palestine, and why the destruction of Gaza has compelled him to return to journalism.