This piece was written in November 2023, a month or so into the Israeli bombing campaign of Gaza, in response to the 7th October Hamas terrorist attack at the music festival close to the Re’im Kibbutz. I was covering the Manchester street protests in support of Gaza and a free Palestine as part of a documentary photography project about the tradition of protest in Manchester, UK. At the time, of course nobody knew how long it would all go on for, and a few weeks in I wrote this piece - there are some Manchester photographs at the end. Unusually, I wrote it complete ‘on spec’ and it wasn’t published anywhere at the time (then I was writing mainly about environment) though I must admit I didn’t try very hard to find it a home. It was just something I felt the need to write, which reminded me why I had started writing in the first place - that is all too easily forgotten in this game. Having a clear out recently I re-read it and thought that it had quickly become of interest as a ‘h...
Words and pictures by Andrew Griffiths