This powerful new book examines the moral contradictions of the west and asks what liberal values mean in the face of such brutal and sustained obliteration of human life

Like many people, I have followed the unrelenting horror that has unfolded in Gaza since the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel on 7 October 2023 mainly through the medium of social media. The Instagram reels of citizen journalists on the ground have become for me and countless others the most powerful testimony to the slaughter, destruction and trauma visited on the already beleaguered Palestinian population. Recorded at great risk, they are often heartbreaking and enraging: so many dead infants; so many maimed and traumatised children; so many obliterated families and communities.

Some of these witnesses have achieved heroic status among their millions of followers, the likes of Motaz Azaiza, a photojournalist who was evacuated to Qatar after 108 days covering the carnage at close hand; Wael Al-Dahdouh, the Al Jazeera correspondent, whose wife, daughter, son and grandson were killed in an Israeli airstrike on their home in the Nuseirat refugee camp; Bisan Owda, who shares videos of the destruction that begin with the same defiant mantra of survival: “This is Bizan from Gaza and I am still alive.”