REQUIEM FOR GAZA

A blend of journalism and art chronicling the ongoing devastation in Gaza.

Hedges, a reporter who covered Gaza for seven years, and graphic artist Sacco (War on Gaza, 2024, etc.) travel to the region to interview people of all ages and walks of life, finding on their arrival that “all that was familiar to us in Gaza has vanished, transformed into an apocalyptic landscape of shattered concrete and rubble.” One woman tells them that she turned to the internet to determine the cause of the explosions across the line in Israel on October 7, 2023, only to learn that Hamas had attacked several settlements. “We feared Israel’s reaction,” she says—and understandably so. A Palestinian doctor whose travails are recounted in Sacco’s graphic treatment, badly abused by invading Israeli soldiers, calls for an ambulance after an apartment complex is shelled, only to be informed that no ambulances can enter the war zone. He replies, “Okay, then the injured will be dying. All of them. And they died.” Hedges asserts that ambulances were routinely targeted by the Israeli Defense Forces and that 32 Palestinian doctors were deliberately killed, along with 68 nurses, 18 dentists, and even an optometrist. The casualties mount with each passing day, recounted in all their gruesome reality: In a single surprise bombardment on March 18, 2025, “terminating the ceasefire agreement that had been in place since January,” writes Hedges, at least 436 Palestinians were killed, among them 183 children. Following the bombs come the bulldozers, erasing history both modern and ancient, about which Hedges charges, “Those who carry out genocide seek total annihilation.” A line from a Palestinian poem that opens the book summarizes that observation memorably: “I try to remember, but everything has been erased.”

A book that captures, in painful detail, the terrors being visited on Gaza.