Palestinians are hurting- they have been hurting whether they are in Palestine or in the Diaspora. The events that happened (and continue to happen) in May of 2021 sparked mass protests all around the world. At the time I was living in Istanbul and although we were under a strict lockdown due to Covid-19, people showed up in front of the occupation consulate in the thousands everyday for multiple days. What made this event special is the overwhelming solidarity that was felt throughout- the protests consisted of people from all over, making the Palestinians there a minority. I captured images of Syrian, Iraqi, and Palestinian youth holding their flags draped around their shoulders like superheroes, people gathering to pray for justice, friends reuniting after months of isolation. We were all angry, tired, frustrated, and having been in lockdown for months we were happy to be feeling these emotions together- we were hurting together in a beautiful exercise of solidarity. Many months of social media doom-scrolling and infographic-posting culminated into a mass gathering of love and anger, of release.
Just a few days later I was in Amman, Jordan witnessing the protests in front of the occupation embassy. Unlike the protests in Istanbul, the protests that occured in Amman were met with heavy government repression. I witnessed dozens of people brutally beat, phones confiscated; an active repression of the people’s voice by the Jordanian government. My own SD card was stolen by police- the most revealing photos are thus missing from this gallery. It pains me to my core to know that in a country that is majority Palestinian refugees- those refugees can not safely protest for their right to return to their homeland. At the very least, I witnessed another show of solidarity with my Palestinian brothers and sisters- and the struggle continues to bind us together.
If it was one thing I learned from watching these events it's that the injustice faced in Palestine is felt everywhere- and that the Palestinian cause is a global one.
