Joanne O'Brien

Photojournalist, Bloody Sunday book: A Matter of Minutes; work in National Portrait Gallery. Interests: current Palestine. Worries about the loonies in charge.

[Mosab Abu Toha @MosabAbuToha]

The story of the Abu Nasser family reflects the lived reality of countless Palestinian families. Entire bloodlines erased, homes reduced to rubble, and corpses remain under the rubble for months or are pulverized by US-made bombs.

When the massacre and war crime took place on October 29, 2024, much of the Western media, particularly in the country supplying the bombs, remained largely silent. There were no urgent headlines, no sustained outrage, no prime-time panels demanding answers.

Shame on that silence and complicity.

Over 200 people were killed.

No one was held accountable. No independent investigation brought justice to the victims. Instead, more war crimes unfolded in broad daylight, as the world watched, or chose not to.

Now, after 474 days, the family has managed to recover the remains of more than 67 loved ones from beneath the rubble. Imagine that: 474 days of digging, waiting, identifying fragments of those once held, loved, and known. And still, their suffering is met with indifference by the media and officials.

And still, there is no accountability.
Shame on the media’s silence and complicity.

[Dr. Simon @goddek]

🇮🇱🇨🇭 This Swiss commentator has balls of steel. While the Israeli bobsleigh team was racing, he kept reminding viewers of the war crimes the pilot has openly supported.

Absolute legend!

[Dr Fadel Naim @fnaim65]

A medical breakthrough under siege.
Gaza doctors unveil the first locally made 3D-printed external fixator, powered by solar energy and recycled materials.
Press conference https://t.co/r1piXV2Q9q

#Gaza #MedicalInnovation #3DPrinting #GlobalHealth #Resilience

[Ghassan Abu Sitta, Chair of Conflict Medicine AUB @GhassanAbuSitt1]

NEW | Gaza Death Toll Likely Exceeds 100,000, Max-Planck Study finds at least 100,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza during the more than two-year-long Israeli genocide. Between October 7, 2023 - October 6, 2025, around 112,000 Palestinians were killed, including 27% children under 15 and 24% women. Life expectancy in Gaza, which plummeted from pre-war averages of 77 years for women and 74 for men to 46 and 36, respectively, reflecting the extreme danger faced by civilians.

[Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt @FranceskAlbs]

BREAKING: A new UN report finds that Israel’s assault on Gaza - with the destruction of health care, education, infrastructure, even the banking system - has erased 69 years of human development, marking the worst economic collapse ever recorded.
This is not war: it is genocide.

[Nicola Perugini @PeruginiNic]

Raz Segal: “the genocide in Gaza is far from over” because it has become a model of permanent settler colonial elimination in a world shaped by the brutality of force. From “never again” to “again and again.” https://t.co/MqMNAwbGKh

[Democracy Now! @democracynow]

Alex de Waal has worked on humanitarian causes across the globe for over 40 years.

“There is no case, over those four decades, of such minutely engineered, closely monitored, precisely designed mass starvation of a population as is happening in Gaza today.”

[Forensic Architecture @ForensicArchi]

NEW: ‘A Cartography of Genocide’. Since October 2023, we have collected and analysed data related to Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. Our findings indicate that Israel has systematically targeted all aspects of civilian life. https://t.co/UUxYqpTF72

[Palestine Solidarity Campaign @PSCupdates]

We laid pots outside the gates of Downing St, London, to represent Israel's starvation of Palestinians in Gaza, enabled as Director @BenJamalpsc says, by the moral cowardice of @Keir_Starmer and @DavidLammy

[Maureen Hill @MaureenHil1l]

Dear children...
A grieving father bids farewell to his martyred child, who was killed in the Israeli bombing of a water filling station in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip. #savegazastrip

[Joanne O'Brien @joanneobrien2]

@arthistorynews BBC World Service Radio news is better, I switched years ago.

[Joanne O'Brien @joanneobrien2]

@DavidLammy You are so right There is a internet/ web blackout and the Sudanese can’t communicate the horrors going on. Please push for this to end.

[Forensic Architecture @ForensicArchi]

On 31 July, the Israeli military carried out an airstrike on a vehicle carrying Al Jazeera journalist Ismail al-Ghoul and cameraman Rami al-Rifee in northern Gaza, killing both. Their deaths bring the total number of journalists killed by the Israeli military since 7 October up to 165, according to reports. As these numbers mount, it is all the more crucial to push back against this ongoing war on information and the normalisation of such targeted attacks on the press.

[Joanne O'Brien @joanneobrien2]

@Jane__Victoria Congratulations Jane 👏🏻, wonderful news, I’m delighted for you 😄

[Middle East Eye @MiddleEastEye]

“I was injured, and I don’t know where to find clothes. There’s nothing to eat, nothing to drink. I look for bread and find nothing.”
In a video posted on social media, Maria, a young displaced Palestinian girl from Gaza, describes the hardships she and her family are going though, because of Israel’s war on Gaza.
The death toll of Palestinians killed in Gaza has risen to 37,084, with at least 84,494 others injured since 7 October.

[Led By Donkeys @ByDonkeys]

5 days to go. Remember when senior Conservatives showed they don't understand anything about trade

[Joanne O'Brien @joanneobrien2]

@DoubleDownNews @rogerwaters @LeanneMohamad Pamela Fitzpatrick, @pamelafitz4HW who is standing as an independent in the general election in Harrow West near London is another principled and vocal politician against the genocide. Like many decent left wingers she was forced to leave Labour.

[Joanne O'Brien @joanneobrien2]

@MiddleEastEye I wish @LeanneMohamad the very best in her campaign. Pamela Fitzpatrick, @pamelafitz4HW who is standing as an independent in the general election in Harrow West near London is another principled and vocal politician. Like many decent left wingers she was forced to leave Labour.

[Joanne O'Brien @joanneobrien2]

@Rachael_Swindon @jeremycorbyn 👍 to @jeremycorbyn and @pamelafitz4HW who is another candidate standing against Labour in Harrow West

[Pamela Fitzpatrick @pamelafitz4HW]

There is a real sense in Harrow of a movement being built. It is very uplifting. We haven’t had that for a long time. But there is also such a level of anger at both Labour and Tory’s that I have not seen before.