What We Are Doing: 

In front of our eyes, we are witnessing the genocide of the Palestinian people. This is an online archive of cartoonists responding to this ongoing violence.  

The forced displacement and killing of Palestinian people, as well as the seizure of their land, has been ongoing incrementally since 1948 but now has entered a very overt phase. This horrifying violence is actively abetted or passively ignored by our governments. In the face of this, we seek to gather cartoonists together in a radically transnational space where they can reflect on this bloodshed, share our voices, and express our solidarity. While we are under no illusion that art can stop bombs from falling on children or tanks from rolling through city streets, we believe there is an urgent value to any community we can bring together in reaction to this bleak moment. In the face of calamity, artists still have a role to play and are inspired by the examples of our history -- from those who used art to reckon with the death camps of the Holocaust in Europe to those who employed art to fight against Apartheid in South Africa, and more. 

Their legacy to us is a message: do not stand still or stay silent.

This archive seeks to center personal responses to Gaza within the cartoonist community, regardless of nationality, ethnicity, state-identification, place of birth, or place of current existence. This archive rejects Islamophobia, antisemitism, chauvinism, and hate of any and all kinds. This anthology embraces social justice, solidarity, equality, and unity of any and all kinds. 

Comics have no walls nor borders, and the youngness of our medium represents an opportunity to reject the boundaries that were assigned to us. All around the world, in newspapers, magazines and on mobile phone screens, comics speak about the most important topics of the day. We are not powerless. Through comics, we can shape the narratives told about ourselves and our world—and in that way, we hope to provoke change.  

Recent events are extreme, brutal, and shocking, but they are part of a continuum–the long ideological project of settler colonialism that requires the systematic denial and destruction of indigenous peoples. Now is the time to build something new and different.

We aim to publish a print anthology of this archive in the spring of 2024, with international distribution.  Artists will be paid an honorarium for work published in the anthology. All editors are working as volunteers, and all proceeds beyond payments to artists and the costs of printing will be donated to direct aid to Palestinians. 

If you have any resources, knowledge, or skills that you would like to donate to this publication, please feel free to get in touch. If you have any questions, the group editorial email is cartoonistsforpalestine@proton.me

Who We Are:

We are a volunteer group of cartoonists, writers and editors who are collecting comics about Palestine to publish online and in print in order to help them reach a wider audience and help shape public understanding of the ongoing genocide. 

Cartoonists can donate their comic  - either previously published or brand new - to be published on this website by filling out the submissions form here. Comics published on the site will also be posted on our Instagram, @cartoonistsforpalestine. 

In Spring 2024, we will be collecting comics published on this site and elsewhere to include in a print anthology called Cartoonists for Palestine. All profits from sales of this book will be donated to three Palestinian organizations (listed below). Artists included in the book can opt to be paid an honorarium for their work, or to donate the honorarium to the organizations the book is benefiting. 

Organizations we will donate proceeds from the print anthology to: 

Medical Aid for Palestinians

Medical Aid for Palestine is running a Gaza emergency funding appeal to help provide much-needed medications, medical supplies and disposables to Palestinian hospitals and emergency services in both Gaza and Jerusalem. Donate here.

ANERA

ANERA is also responding by providing access to medical supplies and aid to Palestinian healthcare facilities
More information on how to donate here.

Palestine Children’s Relief Fund (PCRF)

The PCRF has an ongoing fundraiser for Gaza to provide urgent humanitarian and medical aid to injured and sick children in Gaza on a need basis.

The Palestine Children’s Relief Fund (1991) addresses medical and humanitarian Palestinian youth in Palestine and the Middle East. The organization helps provide free medical care for children who otherwise could not access it. Support the fundraising for Gaza here

Financial details:

The editorial team has donated the labor and technical costs of creating and running this website. The costs associated with this project are printing the anthology book and paying artists honorariums. Any money we receive beyond the cost of printing and honorariums will be donated to these three organizations. 

Receipts: We will update this page with the cost of printing and honorariums, as well as receipts of all donations, once we begin the process of printing the anthology book in June 2024. We pledge full financial transparency.

Editors:

We are a small group of volunteer cartoonists collecting comics for this website and future print anthology. 

Yazan al-Saadi is a Syrian-Canadian writer, researcher, critic, and comic zealot. He is currently based in the alluring (yet callous) city of Beirut. He has seen too many airports and often dreams of electronic sheep. He has an aversion to genocidal regimes. 

Tracy Chahwan is a cartoonist and illustrator from Lebanon. Since 2016, she has been working closely with the Beirut music scene, designing posters and visuals for numerous venues and concerts. In 2018, she published her first graphic novel Beirut Bloody Beirut with Marabulles. Chahwan is a member of many collectives, including Lebanese comics collective Samandal, and Zeez which aims to be a truthful alternative to mainstream media.

Sarah “Shay” Mirk (she/they) is a graphic journalist, editor, and teacher. For six years, Shay was a contributing editor at comics publication The Nib, where projects she worked on won both Eisner and Ignatz award-winning stories. They are the author of Guantanamo Voices, an illustrated oral history of Guantanamo Bay prison, which Kirkus called “extraordinary… an eye-opening, damning indictment of one of America’s worst trespasses.” They are a zine-maker and illustrator whose comics have been featured in The New Yorker, Bitch, and NPR. They are white, nonbinary, and queer.

Andy Warner makes, edits and teaches nonfiction comics. He was a contributing editor at the Nib from 2016 until the ship went down. He is the author of four books, and is working on three more. He comes from the sea.

Social media volunteer: 

Al Benbow (they/them) is a designer and illustrator whose work is often centered around their identity as a nonbinary butch lesbian. Born and raised in the Midwest, they now live in Massachusetts with their partner, where they still harbor a love for rural spaces.

Submissions volunteer: 

Souzan Alavi

Web developer: 

Layal Khatib is an open source enthusiast and web developer from Lebanon. She lives and works in the city of Saida where she founded Sikka, a free and open community center.

Header and footer image by Kazimir Lee.