DBushell Illustrator

I just want to say 'happy new year' and give a very special thanks to everyone who has watched and engaged with my content. For the past 12 weeks, my focus has been on the Israeli assault on Gaza. This is, I firmly believe, one of the great crimes of our time. Tens of thousands are being slaughtered, many of them children, a quarter of the population is projected to die from disease, 70% of buildings have been damaged or destroyed, the vast majority have been driven from their homes, food and fresh water is being denied, the medical system has all but collapsed. The horrors are endless - the apocalypse has come to Gaza. While foreign journalists have been prevented from entering, the witnesses to this bloodbath have been the lions of the world's press pack - the Palestinian journalists of Gaza, without whom the world would have little real idea of the crimes committed by the Israeli state. Yet almost every day, these eyes and ears are snuffed out: the greatest massacre of journalists ever recorded, and in such a short space of time. Every day, we read of reports of entire bloodlines being wiped from the face of the earth. An aid worker, a journalist, a medic, a lecturer has been killed by an Israeli air strike, along with several members of their family. Announcements such as this are to be read every day on Twitter. History may well ask how that could be so and yet there was no overwhelming pressure for this entirely manufactured human catastrophe to end. The best answer is that the Palestinian people have been completely dehumanised, and there hasn't even been a pretence that Palestinian life has any meaningful value at all. The Israeli state, meanwhile, makes no effort to disguise its intentions, employing genocidal rhetoric on a daily basis, while Israeli society is in the grip of what can only be described as genocidal mania. Yet this crime of historic proportions has been aided and abetted by Western powers. This is an understatement. Israel would not have been able to unleash this unimaginable horror without the weapons and diplomatic and political cover provided by the US, cheered on by states such as Britain. Meanwhile, most of the Western media has either cheered on this atrocity, or refused to describe what are clear, unapologetic war crimes which the Israeli state isn't even making an effort to cover up, instead - at best - leaving the question of whether this is a 'proportionate' response to a matter of debate, where we can all agree to disagree. This has nothing to do with a 'proportionate' response. It is one of the great massacres of our age, inflicted by a state which has made it clear it wishes to rid Gaza of its Palestinian population. At the same time, dissenting voices have been vilified, harassed and silenced. There has been a deliberate campaign to portray the real hateful dangerous extremists as not those who cheer on this slaughter, but those who oppose it. That's why my focus has been on this moral obscenity, and that's where it will stay for the foreseeable future. I'm delighted to say that this content has been reaching an audience of many millions each month. I'm particularly proud of work to elevate the voices we need to hear - Palestinian voices above all else, of course, as well as Israeli peace activists and scholars of war and genocide. It's important that those of us using our platforms to speak the truth aren't acting as 'white knights' - it's the Palestinian people who need the biggest loudspeakers. There will be much more of that to come. We all have a responsibility to speak out, however big or small our platform, or we become complicit. And while that may mean being harassed, intimidated and vilified, we have to remember that this is nothing compared to the horrors suffered by the Palestinian journalists of Gaza - and if they still have the courage and determination to speak the truth, then the least we can all do under infinitely less horrendous circumstances is to do the same. Happy New Year and thanks again. xxxx