answering a couple questions i got on this post since i realized ppl genuinely wanna know:
tl;dr:
israel lets very, very little aid get into gaza. even the UN can't get in as much as they want to. funding individual families, gazan led initiatives, and mutual aid collectives operating out of gaza ensures gazans can provide for themselves and pay for the extremely expensive aid that is available.
with all the civil infrastructure destroyed by israel, the situation on the ground has devolved into unrestricted capitalism, driving up the price of aid (that should be free!). this makes it more urgent for people to have funding for daily survival.
the post linked above has examples of how donating to individual families can help a lot. if you want to help more than one family at a time, there are many gazan-led initiatives focusing on rebuilding their infrastructure and distributing aid fairly that are worth donating to instead of large charities that already get the majority of donations.
as i mentioned in the last post: @/careforgaza on twitter is a nonprofit started by gazans, it's been endorsed by multiple palestinian journalists.
the sameer project is a collective organized by diaspora palestinians offering emergency shelter to gazans.
ele elna elak is a project aiming to bring water, food, shelter, etc. to gazans and has been promoted by bisan owda.
and the municipality of gaza itself is fundraising to rebuild water infrastructure.
all of these organizations are active inside gaza right now and are being run by gazans. if anyone knows of other gazan-led mutual aid projects, nonprofits or charities feel free to link them in the notes! hope this helped!
long answers under the cut!
if you wanna donate to a charity that's absolutely fine, but the thing is most charities (and even the UN!) are unable to make it into gaza in the first place, leaving aid rotting at the egyptian side of the border or subject to israeli settler attacks
not to mention, charities and nonprofits also maintain a paternalistic colonial relationship with the indigenous people they are trying to help, determining what aid they need for them instead of returning power to them and letting them make their own choices
i'm not here to say that one option is better than the other, just that they achieve different things and are equally legitimate. there's an attitude among people who question the legitimacy of these gofundme campaigns that somehow the people promoting them are telling them not to donate to charities. nobody is stopping you from donating to charities. we are just asking that you do not dehumanize the very real gazans in your inbox just because their method of asking for aid is more direct and risky.
unfortunately that's exactly what has happened. because israel destroyed all of gaza's more formalized infrastructure, it seems that organized crime and rampant inflation has taken its place. aid is supposed to be free, but in order to save for evacuation or the cost of living, people have started selling them at an inflated price. and aid that is truly free attracts intense, large crowds that are dangerous to navigate.
this was posted on abc a few days ago
it's pure, unrestrained capitalism. i've had multiple palestinians describe this situation to me confidence. that's why everything's so expensive now. why people have to rent out tiny plots of land for their tents to sit on, why my friend @siraj2024 still has to buy tarps to cover the broken windows of the overpriced bombed out apartment he rented, and why a bag of flour can cost a thousand bucks in the north.
even before israel closed and then bombed the rafah crossing, the egyptian hala travel agency was only allowing people to cross the border if they paid a hefty $5000 USD per adult / $2500 USD per child bribe. it denies doing this, but the hundreds of stories from palestinians say otherwise.
with regard to the economy, here in america we saw something similar happen in the wake of hurricane helene and milton. the podcaster margaret killjoy describes how she saw dual economies rise after asheville was fully cut off from the rest of the country - some people offered each other supplies for free in a sort of mutual aid honor system, and some people required payment when they lent supplies because they themselves needed to buy stuff for their families. these dual economies exist in gaza too. and this means they all still need money to survive.
plugging gaza soup kitchen for those with the means to donate! it's another gazan-led initiative currently providing food, water, classes for children, and medical care across the north and south. you can donate through their website or their gofundme, or follow them on instagram for news about their projects
i've been feeling incredible anger and frustration lately with these posts lamenting what the next four years will look like in the u.s., how much "worse" things will get under the trump administration, as if we haven't been witnessing a holocaust for the past year funded by the biden administration. if you have seen a single video from gaza, a single picture, read a feature from a gazan journalist, spoken to a single person in your inbox when they plead for your attention and help, words like "worse" or "better" turn to ash in your mouth. just yesterday my friend hilda texted me that even when her family manages to get food, smoke from the fire needed to cook aggravates her sinus allergies, making it difficult to breathe. this is how she's been living for the past year and a month, under a democrat-funded genocide.
below is a small fraction of the palestinians who have reached out to me for help with their campaigns. it is a huge source of shame to me that i can't keep up with all of the people in my inbox. please go to their accounts and read their stories. and please give what you can spare.
the sometimes it's difficult to hear over the bellum of the anti-horse slaughter crowd. and there's no counter faction to balance the scales. no pro horse slaughter bumper stickers, no pro horse slaughter advocacy groups.
those who are pro horse slaughter may be intimidated into keeping their views secret. but even worse i fear most people that would support horse slaughter are totally unaware of the issue
horses are beautiful and intelligent creatures but they can still be eaten. they can still be invasive.
wildlife groups will put down grey squirrels when they're brought in because they're invasive and it's accepted that it's for the good of the environment they're controlled as much as possible. yet Americans pop a gasket if you even think about controlling the wild mustang population.
"...in a starving world, a source of protein should not go to waste for sentimental reasons. It is sentimentality that has resulted in profounder cruelty to our horses â because we donât accept that they are animals and have a utilitarian purpose, we hide from what happens to them, and so what happens to them happens in secret."
Rather than wishing away horse slaughter (or even horse racing), it would be far better to regulate horse transportation and slaughter.
I am writing to kindly ask for your support in reblogging my pinned post on my pageâ¤đ.
My name is Ahmed Al-Nabih from Gaza My family consists of four people and my father died My mother suffers from chronic diseases, and because the medicine ran out, her health condition has deteriorated greatly
The situation is very dangerous in Gaza
After the occupation fired shells and fire at our house, and we then saw death with our own eyes, we were displaced from the house and then to 5 places, the last of which was in the tents in which we currently live in tragic and complicated conditions.đĽ˛
Our dreams have been lost, our house has been destroyed, and I watch my mother lose her life due to the lack of medicine, without me being able to do anything for her here. Life is difficult in the tents, and the drinking water is polluted.
In short, there are no minimum necessities for human life here. The situation is catastrophic and devastates humanity. Famine is intensifying, poverty is intensifying, goods are running out, and the danger of bombing is all around us.đ
I appeal to you and seek your help to share our story and our suffering through your pages, and to provide us with support and concern.đ
Thank you very much.
Ahmed Al-Nabih from Gaza
Vetted by @gazavetters, my number verified on the list is ( #186 )đľđ¸đľđ¸
itâs fucking crazy that Harrisâ stance on trans rights is âwe should follow the lawâ. like arenât you running for office girl? isnât the whole idea that you will Make Changes to the pre-existing laws? truly continuing Bidenâs legacy as the âwhy wonât anybody do anything to stop this?!â president before she even gets into office.
if it isnât clear, Harrisâ position being âwe should follow the lawâ is tacit agreement with the pre-existing transphobic segregation & discrimination happening up and down the country. which shouldnât surprise you, because a bunch of those laws happened whilst she was VP, and neither she nor Biden did anything to stop it. in fact, much much more transphobic legislation was passed during the Biden administration than even when Trump was in power. i donât think a second Trump term is going to be like good for the trans community but iâd really like people to stop lying to my face about how much better the Dems are supposedly going to be when theyâve allowed all of this to happen in the first place.
photo by @ChuckModi1 on twitter, link to the original
I'm writing a new post because old ones don't get reblogged as much - as if the need for donations goes away the moment post is 4 days old. And even if they do get reblogs, they don't translate to donations.
So. This is a new post for Falastin even though nothing changed. There's literally nothing new to tell, all the horrors are still the same as they were a week or a month ago and they still could die any moment. But saying everything once again:
24 family members
displaced more than 50 times
family has many martyrs, last one less than a month ago
need funds for daily essentials (food, water, medicine) and tent materials + clothing for the winter
have raffle for hand-made Palestinian thobe (!! link !!) - 6 days left as of posting this
There have been 9 donations in the last 24 hours, and 3 the 24 hours before. 125 and 17 usd raised respectively. THAT'S 3 USD PER PERSON FOR ONE DAY. The donations usually come up only when there's another martyr or another displacement so please make a pleasant surprise for Falastin's family (they haven't got one in more than a year) and donate if you can.
Preferred way - Gofundme (in SEK, 10 USD = 106 SEK):
Conversion Notes: Swedish Krona to US Dollars
*250 SEK â 25 ⌠Falastin Iwais needs your support for Help Falastin's Family Survive & Escape
PayPal (in USD):
Help Falastin Iwais reach their goal by donating or sharing with your friends.
Vetting info: #282 in El-Shab-Hussein and Nabulsi's spreadsheet [here], #957 in the Butterfly Project spreadsheet [here]
Falastin's account: [link]
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