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

Israel has been fighting Hamas since October 7, 2023 when some 2,500 terrorists attacked Israel, murdering over 1,200 people, in their homes and at an outdoor music festival. They also dragged at least 239 hostages, including babies and kids, back to the Gaza Strip.

This is also a time for prayer for Jews all around the world. Here a teddy bear places a note between two stone blocks of the kotel (Wailing Wall) as is the tradition, imploring God for the safe return of his best friend taken by the terrorists.

This painting is dedicated to the hundreds of hostages, men, women and children still captive in Gaza and their families in Israel and abroad, and the men and women of the IDF in the fight of their lives, for all of us.

As a Greek friend told me recently talking about the deluded masses and Israel standing fast: Προκεχωρημένο Φυλάκιο της Δύσης.

The expression Προκεχωρημένο Φυλάκιο does not just mean Advanced Outpost (of the West), it means to defy all odds. To stand tall against the enemy. To stand fast in the face of obscurantism and the dead vision of the world pushed by Hamas and its masters.