“what use is it to be an illustrator of children’s books when the world has sentenced the children of your country to the death penalty, to vanish, to genocide?”
some of baraa’s illustrations:
this is an illustration for youssef, whose mother is remembered running desperately into the hospital asking if anyone had seen a “small white boy with beautiful curly hair, his name is youssef,” a description which was remembered by millions when she finally identified his body:
this illustration is for young omar, who was hugging his little brother and teaching him how to repeat the shahada after him (a prayer spoken by muslims before their death) as he lay on his hospital bed:
“we want a new year that doesn’t kill us or our children, we want it a year without blood, without screaming, without pain, we want a new attempt to get our lives back, or something that resembled our life, even if life is a lie we still cling to it, return life to us—a new year’s card unlike any other year:”
baraa is currently fundraising to get her family of 12 out of gaza. she is a friend of mine and this is a reputable fundraiser, so please donate if you can. the egyptian government is currently charging upwards of 5,000 USD per person to get to cairo through the rafah border:
Israel isn’t just breaking international law. It’s creating precedent and changing it to make this violence permissible. What happens to Palestinians matters for everyone, everywhere. It sets a precedent that means no where else in the globe is safe. What more do we need to act?
“My life is made up of ‘I’m sorry’. I feel like I have to apologize to people, to things, to life itself. It’s like, ‘I’m sorry to be here’. I don’t want to disturb anyone.”
