Cartooning After Tragedy

Cartooning After Tragedy analyzes how Israeli cartoonists produced artistic responses to October 7 and the ensuing war and hostage crisis. Utilizing the work Israeli cartoonists routinely post on their social media channels and conversations with the artists themselves, Reingold conducts semi-structured interviews with Israeli cartoonists to gain a deeper insight into their work and their understanding of Israeli society after October 7. The author uses a thematic and topical approach to adopt an analytic lens that explores themes, issues, and topics that emerged in Israeli society in the wake of the terror attack and ensuing war. This approach allows for a deeper and richer textual analysis and understanding of the creative ways that the cartoonists responded to current events. Moreover, the approach recognizes that some topics spanned weeks and even months. Moving beyond a chronological treatment allows texts about like topics but published at different times to be put into dialogue with each other.Drawing upon illustrations produced by a politically and religiously diverse group of Israeli cartoonists, Reingold demonstrates some of the many ways that artists responded to the crisis. This includes using humor, invoking the Holocaust, and drawing upon religious and national rituals, customs, and iconography. The works show that rather than being cowed by the magnitude and gravity of the violence and war, cartooning operated as a crucial creative voice that offered diverse and divergent perspectives to not only construe meaning but to shape and guide understanding.