Life Beyond The Line

Living in Israel, it's hard to find a good comic book to read. Israel does not have a mature comic culture, to say the least, and there are only of handful mainstream comic artists regularly releasing new material in Hebrew.

Therefore, I was more than happy when I bumped into a new comic book last week, while browsing through my local bookstore. After some hesitations I bought it, and immediately started reading it. It was so good that I finished reading it in 30 minutes, and couldn't help reading it again the next day.

The comic book is called "Beyond the Line", by Shay Charka. It is the story of a comic artist, called Charter, who decides one day to migrate, along with his family, from the suburbs of Tel-Aviv to a small village (a.k.a a Jewish Settlement) in Judea and Samaria (a.k.a the turbulent West Bank). All of this is hinted by the title of the book, "Beyond the Line", the line referring both to Charter's drawing lines, and to the Green Line, distinguishing Judea & Samaria from Israel's so-called "internationally recognized borders".

Charter soon finds out that life in a Jewish Settlement is not easy, especially for an "outsider" like him. His new neighbors find him too liberal in his opinions, while his old friends from Tel-Aviv think he's an extremist. He regularly drinks coffee with an Arab shepherd from the neighboring village, and both of them are sure that if it were up to them everyone would live in peace (as long as the Jews convert to Islam and the Palestinians relocate to Jordan). An annoying TV reporter is constantly trying to portray him as a fanatic zealot (the press in Israel, as in the rest of the world, tends to be extremely liberal). If that's not enough, the settlement is regularly observed by an American satellite, and even Condoleezza Rice and George W. Bush take personal interest in it.

The book elegantly portrays the complex (some may call it absurd) life in today's Israel. Charter's encounters with the various stereotypical characters found in Israel , be it the liberal TV reporter with the agenda, the Jewish settler, the Palestinian, the shrewd rabbi, the annoying peace activist, the journalist trying to put words in his mouth, or the violent policeman that is sent to evict him from his home, portray a grotesque picture of Israeli society. I couldn't help at laughing at most of the strips, but a few of them left me with a bitter taste in my mouth. As the saying goes, "I'd laugh if it wasn't so sad".

Mind that the book is not all about laughs, and a handful of the strips deal with serious issues. In fact, the book starts with a strip describing survivors from the Jewish Holocaust fleeing from their Nazi prosecutors and ending up in Israel, only to find themselves being prosecuted again, this time by their Palestinians neighbors, aiming at banishing them from their new home.

Although it is not an autobiographic story, Charka admits in interviews to the press that Charter's character is loosely based on him, and that the stories are inspired by true events that happened to him. Charka himself lives in Jewish Settlement, not unlike Charter's, and participated in the evacuation of Gush Katif, which was part of Israel's unilateral disengagement plan, considered by some to be one of the most traumatic events in the short history of Israel.

Charka's book is recommended for anyone wishing to explore the depths of Israeli society, although some of the jokes would be understood only by those already having this knowledge. The book is currently available only in Hebrew, but I hope it will be translated to other languages, so that non-Israelis could also get a glimpse what Israel really looks like, for better and for worse.

BEYOND THE LINE, by Shay Charka, 73 pages, Modan Publishing (Hebrew only).

Additional links: Shay Charka's blog