French public station journalists' prize to American Israel-basher Joe Sacco

"What is so shocking is not so much that nowadays graphic novels are used to denounce Israel, that's freedom of art, but rather that Sacco's book (Gaza) describes the Israelis as Nazis and inhuman and the Palestinians as locked up in a concentration camp, and the fact that the book is displayed next to Maus, which denounces Nazi camps where Jews were herded... the circle is now complete." (A reader)


Source: Publishing Perspectives (Is Joe Sacco the World’s Greatest Graphic Noveliest/Reporter? The French Say “Oui”, Jan. 2011)

The Maltese-born American cartoonist and journalist Joe Sacco has just won the public news radio station France Info’s 2011 news and comic book prize for the French edition of his 400-page graphic novel Footnotes in Gaza.

This is the second time Sacco has won the France Info prize—he was awarded the prize in 1999 for his graphic novel Palestine.

Sacco’s work is well known in France, where graphic novelists are worshipped and considered stars. He is very pleased, he said in a recent radio interview, with the French edition. [...]

Sacco will be present at the prestigious 4-day Angouleme International Comics Festival, which kicks off January 27 where Footnotes in Gaza is also in the official competition. [he won a prize there too...]"
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Time line:

- December 2009 - Footnotes in Gaza comes out in the U.S.
One month later (it is typical for Israel-bashing books to be translated very quickly by French editors):
- January 2010 - French translation published by Futuropolis (+ 400 pages) 
- August 2010 - shortlisted at the Ouest-France/Quai des bulles prize
- Novembre 2010 -  shortlisted at the Grand prix de la critique (Blois)
- Janvier 2011 - public news radio station France Info’s 2011 news and comic book prize for the French edition
- janvier 2011 - awarded le Fauve at the festival international de la bande dessinée d'Angoulême ("the American author tells the Khan Younis and Rafah massacres like few journalists nowadays can or know how to tell. A valuable memory work.") 

A reader sent us these two pictures taken at the FNAC (a French retail chain) in Geneva:

He remarks:
"What is so shocking is not so much that nowadays graphic novels (comic books) are used to denounce Israel, that's freedom of art, but rather that Sacco's book (Gaza) describes the Israelis as Nazis and inhuman and the Palestinians as locked up in a concentration camp, and the fact that the book is displayed next to Maus, which denounces Nazi camps where Jews were herded ... the circle is now complete."  [French Arte TV does this too...]

More on how Israel is relentlessly demonised in France's intellectual and progressive circles:
- Jewish group calls Paris exhibition on mutilated people in Gaza 'propaganda work'
and the infamous Al-Durah affair (When it Comes to Al-Dura, Journalists Are Against Free Speech, by John Rosenthal)