Gaza in my Phone
By Mazen Kerbaj
O/R Books £14.99

IN THE Afterword of Gaza in My Phone visual artist Mazen Kerbaj tells the story of when he was asked to do a mural for the Slovenian festival Remix Comics in 2023.

He chose to redo his cartoon Gaza Boy from 2012. This was a smiling motionless boy in four frames depicting “In Gaza there is / A boy standing / And waiting / To go to sleep”. The fourth frame is the same image of the boy who is now dead.

Kerbaj arrived in Ljubljana on the afternoon of October 4 2023 to work on the project for the unveiling at the start of the festival on the evening of the 7th.Then one of his assistants told him that Hamas had succeeded in breaking the siege of Gaza and had committed a large-scale massacre.

The organisers panicked and told him: “Maybe we shouldn’t have chosen ‘Gaza Boy’ after all.” Kerbaj replied without hesitation, “Give it a week and this drawing will be more topical than ever.”

The same could be said for his brilliant book Gaza in My Phone. “In” rather than “on” as he states it was the “first time genocide was captured in real-time on devices we hold in our hands.”

The book, the size of a large mobile phone, is 144 pages long with images that shock, but at the same time instantly record the event. The fact that this book was originally produced in Berlin where support for Palestinians has been strongly repressed, is amazing.

The images are sometimes words themself highlighted in blocked out lettering — “Let’s be loud and clear: ANTI-SEMITISM is a DISGRACE while ANTI-ZIONISM is a DUTY.”

Others are simple cartoons that shock with their simplicity of truth. Under the heading Master Plan for Gaza we have a three-dimensional drawing of the Gaza Strip-Stage 1 — Open — Air Prison, Stage 2 — Open Air-Target and Stage 3 – Open — Air Coffin.

Some of the images are so disturbing and shocking it left this reviewer stunned (page 59). Some sum up in a few words what we all have been feeling — “Dear Supremacy — You are so white — I need Sunglasses.”

When I try to draw cartoons for the Morning Star, I sometimes want satire, but for the most part it allows me to vent my rage in ink. However, what I have never been able to do is present an image whose impact is automatically apparent at one glance.

Here Kerbaj is the master. I don’t think I can ever “unsee” his drawing of a hospital pillow with a blood stain in the centre of its whiteness. The caption reads: “A hospital bed with a pillow; in the middle of the pillow, a bullet hole with blood around it. This image is enough for your brain to recreate the scene that took place in the room.”

Everyone should get a copy of this book. As one of the reviews on the back states “Take care opening this book. It might explode. An explosion of outrage, love, pain, humanity, accusation, empathy, and yes even humor. And art.” Indeed.

For more information visit https://orbooks.com/catalog/gaza-in-my-phone/