“Bring him home”, Alexandre Mitchell, 2023 (50 x 70 cm, Indian ink and gouache)

Israel has been fighting Hamas since 7 October 2023, when almost 2,500 terrorists attacked Israel, murdering over 1,400 people in their homes and at an open-air music festival. They also took at least 239 hostages, including babies and children and hid them in the Gaza Strip.

Since then, the war has intensified at an appalling rate, with enormous losses among the Palestinians, who have been instrumentalised by the Hamas and its Iranian masters and coerced into an asymmetrical urban guerrilla war where civilians serve as human shields.

Here, a teddy bear slips a note between two stone blocks of the Wailing Wall, imploring God to return his best friend, captured by the terrorists.

This painting is dedicated to the hundreds of hostages, men, women and children still held captive in Gaza, and to the many Palestinian civilians who have fallen in a war that almost no-one wants.