Yet still we come - standing in solidarity with Gaza

The BDS protest on Saturday 23 July 2024 was another great demonstration of solidarity with Gaza and Palestine with excellent speakers with powerful messages.

The creative family protest was "Poems for Palestine". Children wrote poems and drew powerful pictures representing what is happening in Gaza and their hopes for the future.

But ten months into the genocide in Gaza, it's hard not to feel a sense of helplessness, as the death toll reaches 35,000 including almost 17,000 children. Who cannot feel devastated by the inhumanity of our political leaders that allows such slaughter to continue for their own political ends, and the banks and businesses that care more for profit that for human lives?

But looking at the work of the children, their words and pictures, I was moved to write and recite my own poem, ‘Yet still we come’ about the resilience of our support for Gaza and Palestine in the face of what can seem like overwhelming apathy among the general public and the political self interest of the ruling classes. I'm no poet but I think it's important to put feelings into words.

You can see my poem below...

Yet still we come

They walk past

Ordinary people

People who love their children, their families

Are they uncaring

Or can they just not lift their heads?

Is it just too painful to contemplate

The slaughter of so many children?

Is the simple act of compassion

Of walking a mile in the shoes

Of those parents who have lost children

Of those children orphaned

Of those families wiped out entirely

Leaving only an imprint on the memory of those who loved them

Just too hard?

Is it easier just to bury their heads?

To see the Palestinian people as somehow different

Less important or maybe just very far away?

To see those of us gathering week on week

As a distraction, an obstruction, an annoyance?

Yet still we come

Those of us who see the injustice

Those of us who mourn the deaths

Those of us who are compelled to do something

To highlight Israel’s inhumanity

To demand an end to the genocide

To castigate those complicit in the bloodshed

And the double standards of our media and politicians

We don’t yet stop the death and destruction in Gaza

Still it mounts day by day, week by week

But we believe that good people will prevail

That others will wake up

That like apartheid in South Africa we will stand on the right side of history

So still we come

And one day Palestine will be free

 20 July 2024