Fiction that Matters

In an excerpt from his posthumous graphic memoir, Pekar contends with his identity and the Jewish state.

Harvey Pekar entered the world as a Zionist. As a young child in Cleveland, his mother, father, and Hebrew school teachers planted an ideal image of the Jewish state that eventually turned sour in Pekar’s mind. Just before the publicly enigmatic comic book artist and writer died two years ago, he documented a daylong conversation with illustrator JT Waldman about the history of the Jewish people, his beliefs versus his parents’, and the debilitating mixture of land, rights, religion, and death in Palestine. In this excerpt from the forthcoming graphic memoir Not the Israel My Parents Promised Me, which Pekar’s partner Joyce Brabner finished and epilogued after his death, Pekar and Waldman wrestle with fairness, justice, and solutions, ranging from the two-state option to sending Jews to the moon.

Art by JT Waldman

haaretz:

The BBC’s Olympics website has listed Israel as having no capital city, while it named East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine, causing anger in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bureau.

In response to omitting mention of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, Netanyahu’s foreign press and public affairs adviser sent a letter of protest to the BBC, and launched a Facebook page calling to pressure the BBC.

Following pressure, the BBC altered Israel’s page to note that the ‘seat of government’ is in Jerusalem, and altered Palestine’s page to note that the ‘intended seat of government’ is in East Jerusalem. Read more.