On Palestine: Covering culture in a time of genocide

What does Gaza require from those who bear witness? The team behind our latest story on Palestine shares their process, thoughts, and feelings while highlighting the beauty of life in Gaza amid the profound loss of Palestinian heritage and cultural identity. 

Zafirah (Writer): I came across an Instagram post by writer Intan Paramadhita a few months ago that struck a deep chord with me. She wrote: What does it mean to write, or create art now, in the time of genocide, displacement, starvation? What does it mean to tell a story when writers like Refaat Alareer die for telling a story?

In the process of writing Gaza Lives: Resisting Cultural Genocide, I questioned myself many times. What else is there to write about, when all that has been said has not brought the horrors in Gaza to an end? What other goal is there? Is it my place to write anything at all? Yet, I believed that if the pen has any power, writing in a time of genocide is a moral imperative. Writing this story is an act of bearing witness to 75 years of injustice, and honouring the Palestinian life that continues to spring amid the darkest depths of oppression. 

Our partnership with Visualizing Palestine (VP) was a long time coming. I reached out in 2022 as a longtime follower of their work. Due to our busy schedules, we only managed to pin down a topic a few weeks before October 2023. VP wanted to work together on a story on Palestinian culture. We could not have anticipated that we would spend the next year trying to visualise the scale of cultural destruction in Gaza while it was being televised in front of us.