soft-sunbird

[soft-sunbird]

Will we have another home? Or are we destined to remain displaced the rest of our live?

The Israeli army granted us temporary permission to return to the Shuja'iyya neighborhood, where we had lived before our forced displacement last March.

My father and my brother Ahmad went to check on our home only to find it had been completely leveled to the ground. NOTHING LEFT.

This was the home that embraced us for decades. The place where we grew up, laughed, feared, and felt safe. My private room, the window I used to watch life through... all of it is gone.

I asked my father, who struggled to hold back his emotions. He loved that house deeply. He built it brick by brick, when it was nothing but an empty plot of land.

He whispered: "I don't know… I can’t feel anything anymore… I’ve lost the ability to feel or comprehend."

I was speechless…

And now, standing on its ruins, we ask ourselves:

Will we rebuild it?

Will we even have another home? Or are we destined to remain displaced the rest of our live?

It’s a harsh reality…

And the unknown ahead of us is harder than we can bear, and more bitter than words can describe.

======================

✅️Vetted by @gazavetters, my number verified on the list is ( #15 )✅️

Also promoted by @nabulsi @a-shade-of-blue

and many others. @rhymeswithfart

Thank you for your support 💗

[soft-sunbird]

My sister Maryam is an eight-year-old girl. Before the war, she used to go to school and come back to her small home where our father was with us. She dreamed of growing up, learning, and becoming a doctor. But in November 2024, we lost our father in the war and we also lost our brother. Today, Maryam has no father, no home, and no food. She goes to sleep hungry, dreaming only of going back to her classroom and continuing her education like other children. Please help us, so her dream isn’t taken away like her childhood was 🙏🏻💔

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i can't believe my brother DIED in my arms, and my family was under the rubble for 3 hours. My heart aches, and my hands are shaking. idk what to do. All I need now is to pay for my father and sister's surgeries, and buy medicine, clothes, and food for my injured siblings. Please donate plsss

Donation link here or paypal here Verification here

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I will leave the place I am in as soon as I publish this post‼️

I am now in the middle of a war zone. There is no place for me and my mother after our house was bombed & my brother was killed (I need your sincere support for a girl from Gaza who lost her home and her brother. I only own the clothes I'm wearing..) Help me buy painkillers for my injured family members, and buy food and clothes

Donation link here or paypal here Verification here

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Please stop here for a moment 🚨🚨🚨

My name is Azza, I'm 26 years old.

I used to have a small newborn photography project that helped me support my family and live with dignity.

But the war took everything from me...

I lost my work, and now I can't even cover our basic needs.

My father is seriously ill, my mother is elderly and needs care, and even our little cat is suffering from severe malnutrition.

I can't afford food for us, let alone for her.

Today, I'm reaching out with hope in my heart...

*I need your support - even the smallest donation can make a big difference.*

Your kindness could help me stand again.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart to anyone who feels with us and chooses to help 🚨🙏

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Help Nesma!

I will leave the place I am in as soon as I publish this post‼️

I am now in the middle of a war zone. There is no place for me and my mother after our house was bombed & my brother was killed (I need your sincere support for a girl from Gaza who lost her home and her brother. I only own the clothes I'm wearing..) Help me buy painkillers for my injured family members, and buy food and clothes

Donation link here or paypal here Verification here

[soft-sunbird]

hey! i can answer this!

basically, most if not all gaza fundraising was happening on gofundme simply due to name recognition and brand trust. however, gofundme quickly proved itself to be actively complicit in the genocide through its targeting of palestinian fundraisers for deletion and suppression.

my own friend siraj lost over $27,000 he had painstakingly raised over several months when gofundme arbitrarily declared his previously verified fundraiser fraudulent. he instantly lost access to food and housing for his entire family and has not been able to regain that progress since.

by contrast, chuffed has basically never given gaza fundraisers any problems. it actively promotes palestine-related fundraisers on its front page.

chuffed has also been used by the sameer project, crips for esims for gaza, and other palestine orgs for over a year now. after a particularly bad wave of deletions (of which siraj was a victim) people began migrating their fundraisers to chuffed, and it's become the go-to host site for new crowdfunding campaigns.

so if you see a fundraiser on chuffed, that's why!

my friend siraj has since moved his fundraiser to chuffed. if you got something out of this post, please consider donating to him. he needs ~150 euros to afford food for his family.

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Hello everyone, if you can please share and donate to the Shehab family’s campaign to support them through displacement and famine. Sahar, her family of eight (five of whom are children), and extended family (three are children) need funds to survive as food, water, formula and baby products become more and more scarce and expensive. All donations will go towards evacuation funds, and to help them recover afterwards and build towards a brighter future once more. Please keep this family in your hearts and minds, and show them your kindness through sharing and donating, thank you. @danashehab is one of the accounts for the family who contacted and asked me to make this post for them.

Tags below the cut, let me know if you’d rather be removed.

@fricklefracklefloof @pocketsizedquasar-3 @a-shade-of-blue @autisticmudkip @punkitt-is-here @heritageposts @sayruq

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I am making this post on behalf of Sami and his family who are currently suffering in Gaza. Please consider donating to their fundraiser if you have the means or circulating their link -- any help is beautiful. They are currently at 78% of their fundraising goal and I'd love to see them hit 80% in the next few days!

DONATE HERE.

Sami wrote this:

"In Gaza, many are like this withered plant… Children who have lost their strength, mothers battling hunger and cold, and fathers who have lost everything, waiting for a compassionate hand to reach out to them. Just like in this picture... A child cries over her nearly dead plant until a kind hand waters it, and it blooms again. We too need that hand to give us life.

Your donation today saves not just one person, but an entire family who has survived death repeatedly. Every minute we face death, not only from bombings but also from malnutrition and weak immunity. Your gift is a drop of water to quench the thirsty, medicine to ease the sick, and shelter to protect a family from the cold. Support our family— we cannot survive without your help."

[soft-sunbird]

Purple Gold Jumping Spider (Irura bidenticulata), family Salticidae, found in SE Asia

photographs by Inglourious Reptiles

[soft-sunbird]

🚨⚠️ Warning ⛔️ ‼️

Dear friends, I want to inform you that I have closed the previous fundraising campaign due to difficulties with the old account and its Swedish currency. 💵

I decided to halt my previous fundraising campaign due to the immense effort it required, unfortunately without the desired effectiveness. This was largely because of the challenges related to the currency exchange process

My friends, I am now turning to you, in need of your support in this new campaign. Your unwavering dedication, endless encouragement, and heartfelt care for me and my family mean the world. Thank you deeply for standing by us.”

I have now created a new, 🆕 more accessible account to help us continue gathering the support we desperately need.

I kindly ask for your help in spreading the word about our new 🆕 campaign, supporting me and my family in reaching a place of safety.

♥️Thank you from the bottom of my heart.♥️

♥️🍉🇵🇸🍓♥️🌹🍉🇵🇸🍓♥️🌹🇵🇸🍓♥️🌹🍉🇵🇸

🌹“My friends, I need your help updating the link to my new fundraising campaign. I would be grateful for your support.”🌹

@dlxxv-vetted-donations @a-shade-of-blue @aces-and-angels @nabulsi @90-ghost @tamamita @heritageposts @heritage-post @riding-with-the-wild-hunt @aria-ashryver @punkitt-is-here @jezior0 @ibtisams @sar-soor @sayruq @soon-palestine @i-am-aprl @palestine-button-reminder @appsa @mangocheesecakes @feluka @palipunk @plomegranate @commissions4aid-international @mysharona1987 @myceliacrochet

[soft-sunbird]

important

More than a year ago, I started my campaign to collect donations, because I lost all my money, my home, and my job, and I became homeless on the street.

Thanks to your donations, I was able to get up a little, but every time I get up and try to build something for my family's future, the occupation comes and bombs everything.

Four months ago, a room I had prepared for my children and I to live in was bombed, and I lost everything.

A month ago, the tents were bombed and all my belongings were thrown into the sky. I am still trying to make up for what I lost.

I need you and I know that I bothered you, but I have no one but you, so please don't leave me

Please I need to collect 2500€

I need 100 people to donate 25€

To be able to reach the next goal

I love you all and I'm so sorry but I need you, you're my family

Verification: Shared by @/90-ghost and #307 in the vetted fundraisers' spreadsheet by the Butterfly Effect Project!

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Preview of my piece for sahcon zine alala

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many families in gaza have neurodivergent family members. from the people i know in gaza one of their biggest challenges is the difficulty of living in a tent or being displaced with disabled family members whose routines have been disrupted. neurodivergent adults, especially men, are also targeted by the israeli occupation forces, the most notable case being that of mohammed bhar, who had down's syndrome and was mauled to death by israeli military dogs after his family was forced to leave him at gunpoint.

but what this also obscures is how much of gaza's disabled population was the result of israel's continuous occupation, which gave so many children PTSD that in 2021 Save the Children found that 80% of children in their study showed symptoms of emotional distress. About half of them there reported having contemplated suicide, and three out of five kids were self-harming. Four in five children reported they were living with depression, grief and fear.

this is aside from physical disabilities which meant gaza already had an unusually high proportion of amputees from previous wars, whose conditions were exacerbated by the lack of medical equipment (including wheelchairs) and permits to travel abroad for treatment.

what i'm trying to say is for nineteen months you've heard about people miserably trekking from one "safety zone" to another to be concentrated into tents, a supposedly humanitarian tactic from israel (even though they also bombed the humanitarian zones, even though forced displacement is indeed a war crime) but the people being displaced are not able-bodied young people who can easily travel on foot from one area to the next. they're people who are actually the least able to travel easily; families full of elderly and disabled members, young children, and in some cases mothers who have just given birth. the reason hind rajab's mother survived is because she decided to walk while her children took the car to spare them the difficulty of that journey on foot in cold weather. 19 year old lara sayegh died of exhaustion on the journey from north to south. in some cases israel has forced entire hospitals to evacuate, leading to scenes of patients standing on amputated legs or walking out with their IVs still attached. can you imagine being displaced in these conditions? that's not movement. that's torture. it's a death march.

now imagine making this journey knowing your home will be destroyed, and everything you leave behind no longer exists. imagine making this journey after losing your children, or making this journey as a lost child with no parents. imagine making this journey and encountering corpses along the entire route (it is almost impossible not to). imagine making this journey while stiff with fear that you could be attacked at any point or stopped at a checkpoint and arrested at any point because the young able-bodied men are the ones most likely to be disappeared or targeted during these journeys (which is what happened to mosab abu toha) leaving their families not only terrified for their safety, but also without their strongest family members to rely on. this also happened to family friends of mine, whose two year old was left with his grandmother after his parents were killed by airstrike on their route south. he only survived because they shielded him with their bodies.

that is not an exception for palestinians in gaza right now; that's the majority. because everything above is not incidental, it is israeli policy intended to bring about these exact circumstances.

[soft-sunbird]

please please don't abandon gaza and palestine and continue to care about them as we have the power to actually do something to help those affected by the genocide.

conditions are worsening and prices have been rising continuously for 22 months and will continue to rise for as long as the blockade lasts.

children are malnourished and have been out of school for nearly two years, they're being incredibly brave living through an active genocide where conditions are worsening with every passing day.

i urge all of you to donate to my friend and her young children. her tent was bombed and she has no shelter. please have some heart and help her and her children survive. her fundraiser is verified.

donate here

[soft-sunbird]

European Green Toad (Bufotes viridis), family Bufonidae, Elhovo, Bulgaria

Photograph by Mark G. Ferris

[soft-sunbird]

On behalf of my friend Mahmoud @ma7moudgaza2 I'd really like to draw your attention to his campaign. He's a university student who has been splitting his time between supporting his family during this genocide and extreme crisis andalso supporting his community.

He's currently saving up to pursue his education, even under these conditions. His fundraiser has reached 32K out of 35K, and he is very eager to close his campaign so he can truly focus on continuing to support the community through endeavors like @isnadfoundation which he founded and is organizing currently.

And though he has all of this pressure and stress on his mind, like every other Gazan, he is suffering due to the exorbitant costs of food. He barely even has the time or energy to advocate for his own fundraiser with all the work he has been taking on. And yet, he needs this money to feed himself and his family.

If you can support him in any way, please consider donating to his family's fundraising campaign.

You can also donate to his Paypal.