Ordinary people standing in solidarity with Gaza - Stories from the Aberdeen protests

As we gathered for the third Saturday in a row to stand in solidarity with the people of Gaza, to mourn the deaths and injuries of so many Palestinian people, so many children, a woman came up to me, with tears in her eyes. “I need to do something about this,” she said. “Tell me what I can do.”

She had been out shopping and had stopped to listen to the speakers at the protest. Speakers like Ibrahim, who grew up in Gaza with family still there, like June, of the Scottish Palestinian Solidarity Campaign, who read out a poem written earlier that week by a young mother living in Gaza, who got a phone call from “someone who knew my name” warning her family that their home would be bombed and to leave; speakers like seasoned trade unionist, Brian, who wept when he heard of the killing earlier that week of the four little boys playing football on the beach.

“I didn’t know,” she said, “Tell me what I can do.”