THE GENOCIDE IS BACK // SHELTER THE DISPLACED
https://chuffed.org/project/125154-humanitarian-appeal-help-my-family-survive-genocide-war-in-gaza
The Palestinians I know are telling me that the Israeli air attacks are far, far worse than in the pre-"ceasfire" phase. At the moment, Israel hitting tent cities and urban rubble with GBU-43/Bs – remember "the Mother of All Bombs"? That's the one – which are 30 feet long, about 4 feet wide, weigh 22,000 pounds, and detonate the equivalent of 11 tons of TNT. They're not tearing down a city or trying to rip up a cave complex in a mountain range, which were the ostensible "purposes" of these bombs; they're dropping them directly on people. Starved, sick, grieving, terrified people living in the unrecognizable ruin of the places that were once their homes.
The good news is that we did put together enough money for the medic station, and for that I'm sincerely grateful to all of you; the bad news is that we did it in the exact moment that Amjad, his family, and many others were forced out of their encampments at gunpoint by the IDF and forced to wander to nowhere in particular.
My suspicion is that Israel is forcing everyone south again, out of Gaza City and into Deir al-Balah, Khan Younis, and Rafah, so that they can rain apocalypse on all that relatively barren land and all the DPs and refugees trying to survive there, and they won't be dropping GBU-43/Bs on all the good real estate in North Gaza which they plan to annex. The fact that firepower never deployed in the first year-plus of genocide is now being aimed at Rafah, where there's nothing, truly nothing, except wreckage all the way up to the Egyptian border (now controlled by Shin Bet, whose American equivalent would be the "kinetic" or wetwork division of the CIA), but people around Gaza City are being forcibly removed, indicates to me that they want to finish the extermination in the south and then fully move into Gaza City.
Amjad has been cut off from the bank account for the medical fundraiser – your money is not gone, it hasn't been misused, it will show up, but nobody in Gaza has consistent internet access anymore, and he hasn't been able to withdraw any of that money, for reasons that might be fixable in an hour if there were any communication infrastructure left. There is not. The money will come through and be used for its purpose, we just have no idea when.
Right now, Amjad is with the DP evacuees who ran the same direction he did when the IDF guns were jammed in their faces, and they've been sleeping on pavement for days, with no ceilings above, no walls to any side, and no protection from anything. So, with the medical money held up and the god-knows-where instability of trying to set the thing up, Amjad is trying to raise $3,000 to build tents for all the displaced people he's with – these are people who know very, very well how to set up, tear down, and move a tent, but they had to leave their tents and whatever else they owned back in the last shantytown. Tents aren't just security for now; they can be moved as the people are forced to move, and perhaps most importantly right now, they can shelter the children who are otherwise living in a wasteland of life-threatening injuries – including LANDMINES left by Israel on the way out last time, which I have not seen a WORD about in the Anglophone press.
(Please note that this is a new and separate Chuffed page, to get around the system-blockage with the other one.)
I know it probably feels like my calls for help and action are never-ending, and believe me, I don't like asking anyone for anything on this level. But we – the people in countries with money who know what's really happening and who don't want the Palestinians to be exterminated – are, as weak and diffuse as we may be, also the best, last hope for the frontlines. Our governments are sponsoring and arming this Holocaust, and within the whole allegedly anti-NATO, anti-Israel bloc, only the Houthis have kept up meaningful support (though it appears Hezbollah may be back in the game).
You would like to believe there's something between a nuclear power engaged in racial holy war and you, wherever you are, trying to do something about it, you'd like to think there are structures in place and people vastly more empowered and better-funded to fix this fucking nightmare, but there isn't, and there's not, and I see no reason to believe there ever will be. More than one Palestinian I know has told me that pro-Palestinian Americans are the best chance they've got left, and the idea leaves me sick with rage at everyone between here and there who hasn't done a goddamn thing – but if that's how it is, then I can't bring myself to act otherwise than this, with whatever reach I have.
You have all frankly astonished me with the help you've been willing and able to give, and there are thousands of people who would thank you with their lives, down to the sap in their backbones, for anything you can do now.
From the mountain of ashes
M