A new book chronicles the Israeli-Palestinian war through an unconventional narrative medium: comics. Lebanese-Palestinian author Gina Nakhle Koller, born in 1982, recently published While the World Watches, an illustrated chronicle documenting the violence suffered by the Palestinian people in the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, attack. The book, published by Eris and presented at the Turin Book Fair, offers a daily diary in which images and words intertwine to bring into focus the human price of this conflict.
The idea behind Koller’s project is clear and ambitious: to employ comics as a means of narrating concrete, hard facts that are often ignored or underestimated. Through a hundred or so cartoons created during the last year of the war, the author offers a visual and narrative account of aggression by the Israeli army against the Palestinian civilian population, revealing its dramatic daily impact.
“The project started in mid-November 2023, about a month and a half after October 7,” the author tells Sky Arte. “Before then, I had not drawn for a long time-I was stuck creatively and emotionally. But what happened in Gaza shattered something in me and, strangely enough, that rupture turned into a kind of opening. I was overwhelmed: anger, pain, fear, helplessness, everything lived inside me at the same time and I didn’t know where to put it. So I started drawing again, not with a definite plan, but as a way to survive emotionally. At first it was just about venting pain: scribbling what I was feeling on paper and posting it online. Over time, my goal changed. I started drawing every day not only how I was feeling, but also what I was seeing: what was happening to the people of Gaza, things that seemed unbearable to see and impossible to understand. The act of drawing became both a liberation and a form of witnessing. The intention evolved from simply letting out my emotions to trying to communicate something deeper: to show the world what was happening and how I felt.”
The book is distinguished by the concise and immediate approach with which it recounts the events, avoiding digressions or abstract interpretations. The decision to rely on comics allows Koller to depict horror in an accessible and direct language that can engage a wider and more diverse audience than traditional journalistic accounts. The images, accompanied by short texts, offer a fragmented but coherent reading of a complex and layered reality. In addition to denouncing the military actions and abuse suffered by Palestinian civilians, While the World Watch also serves as an implicit critique of international indifference. His choice to chronicle the day-to-day events on the ground reflects a constant and personal commitment that results in a work that is intended to be not just chronicle, but visual and moral memory. This volume is thus in a special position in the panorama of publications on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, offering a fresh perspective that combines art and information.
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| Israeli-Palestinian war told in Gina Nakhle Koller's comic strip |
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