Art Spiegelman: "I don't want 'Maus' to be used as an Israeli recruitment tool"

American cartoonist Art Spiegelman , famous for creating the graphic novel Maus , stated in a meeting with journalists during the Kosmopolis literary festival in Barcelona that he does not want his work " to be used as a recruitment tool for the Israeli army."

Spiegelman is the author of Maus , a fundamental work in the discipline after becoming the first graphic novel to win a Pulitzer Prize in 1992.

The comic, already recognized as a classic of literature , delves into the memories of Vladek Spiegelman, Art's father and a Holocaust survivor.

Spiegelman, the son of a Polish Jewish Holocaust survivor who emigrated to the United States after World War II, has stated that he considers himself an "Azionist," something like an "agnostic of Zionism," since, belonging to the diaspora, he believes "in the synthesis of cultures."

" The main problem in Israel, after Hamas, is me , because I belong to the diaspora and I don't believe in the promised land, which is a reality that doesn't resonate with me," Spiegelman added.

One of their latest releases is the comic strip Never Again!, a collaboration with Joe Sacco, author of Footnotes to Gaza , in which they denounce the genocide in Palestine.

" I was never a Zionist . My parents went to plant trees in Israel when I was a child, and it made me very uncomfortable to see people walking around armed in the street. That's when I understood how things worked between Israelis and Palestinians," the cartoonist said.

"I don't want Maus to be used as a recruitment tool for the Israeli army, that's what led me to work on Never Again! " , Spiegelman added.

His concerns right now are not only in the Middle East, as the re-election of Donald Trump in the United States has "disoriented him greatly".

" It's very difficult to deal with the current circumstances ; all we have is sarcasm and irony, and that's a much less powerful weapon than the real power they have," the cartoonist lamented.

"My parents came to the United States in 1945 fleeing and seeking freedom, and now it seems that I'm the one who will have to flee the United States," Spiegelman continued to complain.

Despite having promised himself in 2018 that he would never draw Trump because "he is an evil narcissist who should not be fed," Spiegelman has confessed that he appears portrayed in the work he is currently involved in, a "sketches book that is turning into a complaints book."