Lost Navigator

A skilled artisan is a joy to witness

This is a man who is VIOLENTLY aware that when it comes to conservatives, he is a Muslim first, a Brown Man second, an Immigrant third, a Socialist fourth, and a human a very distant fifth, if considered at all. He was also a young adult during the Obama Years and will have seen Republicans rip Obama to shreds for wearing a tan suit instead of a dark one and use literally ANY excuse they could to try and degrade his image.

Below is a list of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip who have either followed me or reached out to me via my ask-box this past week.

I compile these new lists throughout the week, then post them every Monday. I used to post them every Friday, but this will allow me to catch up on any messages or headlines over the weekend. I also share each account’s donation posts for added visibility.

“Board of Peace”

On January 22nd, a proposal for a multinational “Board of Peace” was signed by United States President Donald Trump at the World Economic Forum, in accordance with his 20-point peace plan. This coalition, approved at the UN on November 17th of last year under Resolution 2803, is meant to aid in the reconstruction and re-stabilization of the Gaza Strip.

However, the Board of Peace as it’s been established has been called into question, with some world leaders and diplomats expressing concern that it might undermine the UN’s authority.

Additionally, it has been criticized as yet another self-serving imperialist overreach by Trump, which seeks to create multiple properties for real estate and tourism, all with no input from Palestinians in Gaza themselves.

A Ceasefire in Name Only

As of June 29th, the IDF has killed 1,041 Palestinians and wounded 3,372 since the so-called "ceasefire" went into effect on October 10th, 2025. According to UNICEF on June 19th, this includes 265 children, with an average of one child death per day.

According to Gaza’s Government Media Office, Israel has committed at least 3,201 ceasefire violations between October 10th, 2025 and June 9th, 2026 (corrected from my 3,701 typo two weeks ago --Elly).

Additionally, Israel has officially suspended entry permits for 37 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) since January 1st, including Doctors Without Borders, putting further strain on the severely limited medical and food resources.

On December 7th 2025, the IDF’s Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir has declared that the “yellow line” dividing Gaza in accordance with Trump’s 20-part peace plan is a “new border line” for Israel.

On January 22nd, Reuters has reported that the yellow line has been shifted further into Gaza City by the IDF, with buildings razed and more Palestinians displaced beyond the original parameters.

The IDF denies contesting the yellow line, but the above two headlines coincide with Israeli right-wing defense minister Israel Katz’s announcement that new illegal settlements will be established in North Gaza.

Amid the US-Israel starting a war with Iran, Israel has once again closed the Rafah border crossing. During its short opening period, only a small trickle of 50 medical evacuees per day, along with two companions for each, were allowed to pass through. Additionally, evacuees reported constant delays, abusive interrogations, and confiscation of their belongings.

Additionally, this has given Israel another excuse to further restrict aid once again. Only 214 aid trucks have entered Gaza between March 1st and March 10th, even farther below the number required of the 20-part peace plan.

Palestinians in Gaza have begun panic-buying food due to this sudden closure and newly imposed aid restrictions. Already inflated prices are rising even higher because of this, which makes the cost of barely surviving even more expensive than before.

On top of all of this, there has been a surge of rat infestations in Gaza's displacement camps due to the ongoing build-up of garbage and raw sewage, all with no infrastructure to manage any of it. This is causing a spread of rat bites among the displaced, particularly children, leaving them vulnerable to infection and dangerous diseases.

Palestinian Genocide in Gaza, 2023-present: Death, Injury and Starvation Figures

As of June 29th, the official death toll of Palestinian civilians has risen to 73,058 and 173,488 wounded, and with over 42,000 having received life-altering injuries, according to an October 2025 report from the UN. Altogether, both the official death and injury tolls account for more than 10% of Gaza’s population before Israel’s siege.

On January 26th, an analysis of Gaza's civil registry by Al-Jazeera found that 2,700 Palestinian families have been completely wiped out by the IDF since October 2023. Roughly 6,000 more families have only one surviving member left.

According to several studies conducted over the course of this genocide — the first published by British Medical Journal and the second by The Lancet — the Gaza Health Ministry’s official death toll is an extreme under-count. Indirect deaths from starvation and disease, combined with official figures, might bring the toll into the hundreds of thousands.

On September 16th 2025, the United Nations’ Independent Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Including East Jerusalem and Israel, has officially concluded that Israel has been committing a genocide in Gaza for the past two years and counting.

As of October 7th 2025, 460 Palestinians in Gaza have died of malnutrition and starvation since October 2023, including 154 children. Although the numbers are no longer being reported, they have continued to climb as Israel continues delaying food and aid from entering Gaza.

On November 25th 2025, the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Germany released a study determining not only that the death toll is more than 100,000 people, but that the average life expectancy of Palestinians in Gaza has fallen by 44% in 2023, and 47% in 2024.

More statistics and infographics of civilian deaths, imprisonment and damage to nearly all of Gaza’s infrastructure can be found here.

More death statistics here, including the names of adults and children killed in the genocide.

Palestinians in Gaza still need all of the help they can get to rebuild their lives, as well as heal from the horrific physical and psychological violence inflicted upon them by the Israeli occupation.

Fundraisers that are extremely low on donations (i.e. less than 10% funded) are marked in red. Those whose donations have slowed down are marked in orange. An exclamation point emoji (‼️) indicates a stagnated fundraiser (i.e. no movement in two or more days).

Vetted Fundraisers

🍉 Manal al-Banna (@gazamanal) - 4,555/6,000 raised on GoFundMe | donation post | #438 on GazaVetters ‼️NO DONATIONS IN TWO DAYS‼️

🍉 Youseff Abu al-Rish (@yousef11sworld) - 12,599/50,000 GBP raised on GoFundMe | donation post | #591 on GazaVetters ‼️NO DONATIONS IN FOUR DAYS‼️

🍉 Shuhaila Mohammed al-Wan (@alwan-su7haailav-gaza, formerly @sohilagazahh) - 28,517/30,000 USD raised on GoFundMe | donation post (TW for sick child, needles, flashing GIF) | #724 on GazaVetters

🍉 Enas Balousha (@enaskn, formerly @enasq2, @enasgaza8j2) - 27,549/75,000 USD raised on GoFundMe | donation post | #630 on GazaVetters

🍉 Jomana and Mahmoud Jouda (@kareem-family30, formerly @keensparkmarionette, @plainlydreamybarbarian, @jomana-mahmoud30) - 13,251/30,000 USD raised on Chuffed | donation post | vetted by association with #43 on GazaVetters

So are

colostomy bags

Diapers

insulin pumps

Oxygen systems

rollators

hearing aids

compression garments

prosthetics

FREEDOM AIDS

- service animals

- noise cancelling headphones/ear defenders

- wheelchair attachments

- fidgets

IT’S DISABILITY PRIDE MONTH YALL

FORGOT TO POST THIS HERE AAAA

No shirt, no bra, completely bare torso, just like cis men are allowed to

It's about desexualizing breasts and "female presenting nipples" and not being criminalized for our bodies if we want to go topless because it's a million damn degrees out. This was a popular growing movement that was still widely known a decade ago!

The substance I was addicted to was heroin. While I was actively addicted, it absolutely came before everything else. My life shrank around it. I kept using despite very real, very obvious negative consequences. If you’re looking for something that fits the “compulsion + harm + loss of control” model, that was it.

But what’s always sat strangely with me is what happened when that context changed.

Once my abusive relationship ended and I was no longer in an environment where it was readily available, it was shockingly easy to stop. I’m not saying it was physically comfortable. My body was pretty pissed off for a while. But psychologically, it just didn’t have the same hold anymore. I wasn’t spending my days white-knuckling cravings or constantly thinking about it. It dropped out of my life in a way that, according to the 12-step model, is not really supposed to happen.

And that’s where my issue with that framework starts.

Because 12-step ideology tends to assume that if you have ever had that kind of relationship with one substance, it reveals something fundamental and permanent about you. That you now have a generalized “addictive nature” that will attach itself to other substances or behaviors if you’re not constantly managing it. That you are, in some essential way, always on the verge of transferring that pattern onto something else.

And that just hasn’t been true for me.

I was a near-daily cannabis user for years. When it started consistently making me feel physically uncomfortable instead of good, I stopped. No drawn-out battle, no existential crisis, just “this isn’t giving me what I liked about it anymore” and I moved on.

I drink occasionally, in social or celebratory contexts, and I genuinely find alcohol kind of boring outside of that. It doesn’t have much pull for me.

I tried gambling once, got annoyed at how tedious and overstimulating it felt, and left the casino in under an hour. I have not felt remotely compelled to revisit that experience.

I use the internet a lot, and I play a handful of video games, but I can also go on a camping trip with no signal and be completely fine, unless you want to try and find something pathological about nature photography, in which case you can blow it out your ass. If anything, I generally enjoy the change of pace. There’s no sense of panic or withdrawal or “I need to get back to my computer/consoles immediately.”

So when I hear the idea that addiction is this broad, transferable trait that will latch onto anything with quick reward or low friction, I just don’t see it reflected in my own life.

What does make sense, looking back, is context.

When I was using heroin, I was in an abusive relationship. My environment was unstable, stressful, and honestly pretty bleak. The substance didn’t just exist in a vacuum. It fit into a specific set of conditions where it functioned as relief, escape, and regulation.

When those conditions changed, the behavior changed with them.

That doesn’t mean there was no dependency. There obviously was. It doesn’t mean there were no consequences. There very much were. My grades suffered. I dropped out of college. I lost my apartment because staying out of withdrawal and numbing out from the abuse felt more important than paying rent.

But it does suggest that what we call “addiction” might not always be this permanent, identity-level trait that needs to be managed forever. Sometimes it looks a lot more like a relationship between a person, a substance, and a specific environment.

When that’s the case, then a framework that assumes universality - “if this happened once, it will always be waiting to happen again, with anything” - is going to miss a lot of variation.

I’m not saying 12-step programs can’t help people. Clearly they can, or they likely wouldn’t exist in the way they do. But I do think they’re often treated as the model of addiction rather than a model that fits some people and not others, and when your experience doesn’t match that model, many people who swear by them will assume that you are misunderstanding yourself, in denial, or “not taking it seriously enough.” This paternalistic attitude only serves to make me even more skeptical of the framework.

For me, what mattered wasn’t declaring myself permanently “addictive” or treating every pleasurable behavior as a potential threat.

What mattered was getting out of the environment where that pattern made sense in the first place.

Children placed in residental schools were abused, murdered, and sold into arranged marriages with white men. More recently, children "adopted" out into white households are often also subjected to the same, as well as forcibly converted to Christianity.