‘A humanitarian crisis has been unfolding’ the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) tells us in a TV advert, as we’re shown a montage of desperate people hauling their belongings through a post-apocalyptic wasteland of destroyed buildings. ‘In Gaza, food and clean water are desperately scarce. Ninety per cent of the population has been displaced,’ the voiceover for the advert on the BBC continues.1

In another DEC film for the British ITV channel, we are presented with the unbearable suffering of Palestinian victims sobbing, accompanied by the saddest of music and celebrities speaking painfully slowly. In both films, we are told that we can help them out by donating £10.