When children in Gaza started flying kites again, the response described it as a phenomenon — something forceful action would be taken to end.
A phenomenon. Children. Flying kites.
What a kite is worth here
A kite costs almost nothing. A plastic bag, some sticks, a length of string pulled out of something else. In a place where almost everything has to be improvised, a kite is one of the few things a child can still make with their own hands and send somewhere they can't go themselves.
That's the part that gets left out. Kite-flying in Gaza isn't a protest. It's children doing the most ordinary thing children do — looking up, and wanting to reach it.
The design
We printed the kites and the sentence together, because the gap between them is the whole point. On one side, a child with a bag and some string. On the other, the language of a security threat.
When childhood itself gets described as something to be stopped, even a kite starts to look dangerous.
Why it's in the Archive
Gaza's children appear in the news as a number, usually at the end of a sentence. This design is about the version that doesn't get reported: the one holding the string, squinting into the sun, arguing with a cousin about whose kite is higher.
They are not a phenomenon. They are children, and they are still looking at the sky.
Kites of Gaza is an oversized organic cotton tee. 10% of every order goes to help orphans in Gaza.
