100,000 people killed, injured, or missing In Gaza (January 2024) “There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.” – Howard Zinn Colonisation and genocide go hand in hand. It’s impossible to read about European colonialism and not see the parallels with the Israeli state and how it acts towards the supposedly ‘barbaric’ people it has colonised. Not least in the way the coloniser regards itself as a shining beacon of civilisation on a dark continent, even while it unleashes incredible violence against defenceless civilians. The destruction of farms and wells, forced deportations, indigenous people as second-class citizens in their own land. There is nothing really new here except the technology of murder. This is Empire, red in tooth and claw. When European and North American nations cannot see genocide happening in Palestine, it’s because they are unable to see it in their own story either. If what Israel is doing is genocidal, then maybe what we did was too? Maybe we’d have to stop pretending that it was only a handful of enemy regimes that engaged in genocidal policies against ‘undesirable’ peoples. And then we’d have to stop skipping those pages of the history we tell ourselves.

My first painting of 2024. This was inspired by the double-standard around violence, not just in Israel’s occupation and destruction of Palestine, but also in the ‘monopoly of violence’ that is held by states, police, militaries, and intelligence agencies, which allows politicians and commentators to claim that “violence is never the answer” when referring to a regular person defending themselves against a police attack, punching a Nazi in the street, or pushing a cream pie into a politician or CEO’s face; but which also allows them to not flinch at the application of unimaginable levels of cruel, and even sadistic, violence as long as the people inflicting that violence wear the correct uniform. The threshold for what constitutes violence is also far lower when the charge is levelled at the general public, rather than those with power. After the overturning of Roe V Wade by the US Supreme Court, when pro-choice activists were peacefully protesting outside the homes of judges, President Biden said “No intimidation. Violence is never acceptable. Threats and intimidation are not speech. We must stand against violence in any form regardless of your rationale.” Implying that a protest was intimidation, and that intimidation was a form of violence. A quote of “Violence is never acceptable” from the commander in chief of the most powerful military in the history of the world, and a nation that has been at war for all but eighteen of its 247-year existence, also comes preloaded with its own punchline. This tweet from Aaron Bady on twitter has stayed with me, “The basic (colonial) double standard of the Israel Palestine “conflict” is that any Palestinian violence justifies any Israeli violence, but no Israeli violence ever justifies any Palestinian violence, and once you see it, you’ll never stop seeing it.” He continued, “(personally, I […]

I’m selling this as a postcard and a print to raise money for United Palestinian Appeal. #Palestine