I want to address some common comments here.
"You are heartless, people are suffering".
Yes, people are. But those people do NOT have the time and recourse to spend all day sending thousands upon thousands of messages to total strangers, which has a very known low-return rate.
Those that do are scam centres.
Think of it like a call centre. Why are they profitable? If you spent ALL day trying to get clients for your business on the phone it would be fruitless, a waste of time.
But we have all had messages from call centres. Why? Economy of scale.
If you have 1 person, that is simply not a wide enough net for a return. 100, 1000, 10,000? Now we are getting somewhere.
It isn't about if people in Gaza have the internet, many do. But there are obviously better and more helpful ways for them to spend their time trying to get resources. There are lines for organisations and charities they can get in contact with that can help them far, far more.
"I do not believe they have the time, they need help NOW"
They do need help now, but you giving money is not any guarantee of help. Charities are not charging for food and medical help in Gaza, those are the organisations that need money to keep helping them. The most common use scenario, that I have seen, for Gazans wanting money is in order to get OUT of the area to safety. Which is, heartbreakingly, not something you should give to. Because those are RIFE with scammers and traffickers. Were, best case if you get grifted, you just lose all the money you have. Worst case is ending up in a contract that you have no way to get out of and no documentation.
When there is a natural disaster we do not start by giving people impacted some money, because it is not the most useful or helpful way to do things. We have to fund people giving rescue, giving food, giving medical supplies, the doctors without borders who go there to help.
These are charities that struggle for funding because people do not want to give to organisations because there are costs associated with running an organisation and WRONGLY insist that direct giving is better in a situation like this.
It isn't. These are strangers reaching out to strangers. It does not make sense for them to spend their time doing that, it does not make sense for you to spend your money doing that.
The only benefit it seems to have is making some people feel really good about themselves and calling it direct action. Which is not the goal.
"There are blogs that vet them though!"
And who are the vetters? What process do they use? Why has every scam blog that has messaged me ended up on one of the vet lists I have seen?
"Well...Some of them offer to FaceTime with you and prove they are Palestinian!"
I am once again begging you to ask who is more likely to have the time and resources for that: Someone who is in a precarious position in Gaza, or someone working in a scam centre?
Put aside the fact that, without religious garb, how would you TELL a Palestinian from an Israeli? From someone in the more central east? From Pakistan? From India? From Turkey? How do they verify they are Palestinian? How does that even make sense?
And, again, if they are sending out at least HUNDREDS of messages per day (a d that is a very conservative number) how on earth could they possibly have the time to verify themselves to even a percentage of the people who are asking? Is this something that is likely to happen?
Or
Is it more likely that this is a common scam strategy, because people are more likely to trust someone who OFFERS to validate themselves?
I had to turn off all asks at all because the scammers keep adapting. They are now sending out anonymous messages that just has a link to the bio so that they can't be reported and blocked as easily.
Why would someone want to send an ask to me? I have in my bio not to, my pinned post says not to, and my literal ask button says that I will report people as spammers if they do.
Despite having all those things, my flow of messages did not slow. Because they aren't a single real person. It is a tonne of people playing the numbers game.
"You just do not care about this as much as I do"
Why would a Nigerian prince send your grandmother an email asking to pay her money? There must be other, more logical solutions for his dilemma, right?
That is also the case for these scams. Just because they use a REAL WORLD tragedy as a front does not mean that it is not a scam. In fact, there have been other EXTREMELY direct situations in Gaza before and I have never EVER seen this many scammers.
Because it was not as well known before. The average person might have known "something" was going on over there, but you are absolutely kidding yourself if you think it has ever had this much social prominence.
That means there are more people caring than there were before. More people caring means more scammers looking to make money from this situation.
I have posted before, scam centres very often use human trafficking to get people to work on these scams. They exploit and manipulate to get people sending thousands and thousands of messages a day. A single account that says to be one man trying to find help for his child will actually be 2, 20, 30, 100 people all interacting in messages, depending how many responses they get.
Please do not mistake your naivety and refusal to give to charities that can actually make LARGE differences as you caring more. When you are told repeatedly that your actions are extremely likely to do more harm but you refuse to listen and just lash out at people I am going to assume you are either 1. Fairly self involved and feel more strongly about FEELING helpful rather than BEING helpful. Or 2. Some kind of bot account that is becoming extremely common on these sites just to create discourse. We are living on a dead internet.
"So, I just shouldn't do anything?"
Not at all, here are some charities I have given to or been recommended. Please, of course, do your own research. Giving is meant to be easy, but is has become less and less so. Please make sure you know and trust who you are giving.
Anera
World Kitchen
International Rescue
Red Crescent (like the Red Cross, but Crescent)
I'm sure there are many more. Please look into them. Every dollar you give to scammers is bad. Because it could go to organisations and people who need it, and it could be funding human trafficking. Do not let scammers exploit your kindness.
"But I know someone in Palestine personally, I have known them for years and I have given them money"
Then this is not about you. This is about cold message scammers. Make your own soup without beans.
Give better.
Should also note that some of these scam centers are using slave labor, so keeping them funded also keeps people enslaved.
Nothing is stopping the dude in Malaysia from reaching out to some random Turkish person and saying "hey, fake a FaceTime call for me" beyond the decency they clearly lack by using slave labor, then paying them some small bit of what they're taking in.
Wars are profitable for all the worst sorts. This is internet 101 from the time I was growing up.
