LIVID 25/8

Israeli forces hours ago assassinated well-known Palestinian Al-Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Aqleh during an invasion of Jenin.

Shireen was in full press gear, wearing a clearly marked PRESS jacket & helmet, and was shot in the exposed area just beneath her helmet by Israeli snipers on rooftops.

Shireen arrived in a vehicle with a number of other journalists, all in full PRESS gear, who made themselves known to the Israeli forces in the area. Shortly after they began filming, the journalists came under fire, confirmed by journalists at the scene who also came under fire to have come from the Israeli snipers.

After Shireen was hit, the other journalists couldn’t bring her to safety as Israeli forces kept shooting, despite the journalists, which I’ll stress again were all in CLEAR PRESS GEAR, shouting “PRESS!”.

Then, moments ago, Israeli forces also murdered a 17 year old Palestinian student in Ramallah with a shot to the heart.

Israel’s response will likely be:

1- Say she was killed by Palestinians  2- Say “it’s unclear what happened” when more eyewitnesses give their statements 3- Still blame her or Palestinians one way or another, while still denying they’ve done anything wrong

Reporters on-site who came under fire say that “it was very clear that all gunfire was coming from Israeli forces, with there being no civilians or resistance forces in the area”.

his expression?????? this poor boy. the sheer devastation on his face killed me like you literally cannot spin it any other way, that's the love of his life right there.

At first glance, it feels warm and tender. But something about it carried a quiet, foreboding undertone I couldn't quite place — until I realized Eva's pose strongly echoes the mother in Egon Schiele's Tote Mutter (Dead Mother I, 1910).

In Schiele's piece, the contrast between the warm, vital colors of the child against cool and deathly tones for the mother is meant to emphasize loss, the fragility of life, protection mixed with inevitable separation, and that haunting mother-child bond in the face of mortality. Schiele painted it young, drawing from his own experiences with family loss and emotional isolation.

The contrast in the DMC piece, however, doesn't live in the colors, but in the subtext. For those of us who knows the lore, with full knowledge of Eva's and the twins' fate, it flips into something elegiac: a "dead mother" holding her living sons, frozen in a moment of love that can't last.

Under that interpretation, the warm, golden-hour glow and soft brushwork only help to make the piece even more tragic. They make it feel deliberately recollected, like a cherished memory that's already slipping into the past, something Dante and Vergil might remember in fragments years later, half-dream and half-pain, right before everything burns.

Mama, I don’t wanna die.

I sometimes wish I’d never been born at all.

You must be so afraid. I'm sorry you won't be here to see what comes next. It's always my favorite part. It's the part I wish could last forever. Would you like to know why? This is when they tear themselves apart.