space is closing up and there's only room for two!

from Lets Talk Palestine, 04/Feb/2024:

From Noury: Hey everyone... I'm terrified for my family's situation so I set up a fundraiser if anyone would like to help us with our surgeries and situation. It would mean the world if you took a look, considered donating, and shared with friends. I love you all

Link to tweet here | Link to fundraiser here

If you're unfamiliar, Lama is a 9 year old Gazan girl who is also known as Gaza's youngest journalist. She dreams of becoming a journalist as an adult and telling the world the truth about her people. Al Jazeera has featured her regularly in their news coverage on Palestine. Here she is in a Press Vest far too big for her. A role far too big for her.

https://youtu.be/FQXWVh52-5Y

She and her family evacuated to the south of Gaza.

Israel Occupational Forces have begun bombing the south in earnest. Lama and her family is in danger, and trying to escape. There are high fees required to escape into Egypt, please help out if you can.

In the Gaza Strip, Israeli forces has put the Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis under a brutal siege, barring entry and exit to the facility, which has forced Palestinian families to bury their relatives in the hospital’s yards. The Nasser Hospital is the biggest and most vital health facility in south Gaza and has the highest number of beds, doctors, and operation rooms. It offers medical services to Palestinians as far as Rafah, the most southern town in Gaza. Gaza’s Ministry of Health spokesperson Dr. Asharf al-Qudra said on Tuesday that Israeli forces are besieging the hospital for the second consecutive week.

Currently, there are 150 medical staff, 450 injured patients, and 3,000 displaced Palestinians trapped in the facility, and they are at risk of Israeli fire if they attempt to leave. “Electrical generators at Nasser Medical Complex will stop within two days due to fuel shortages,” Dr. al-Qudra said in a statement on Telegram. “Waste accumulates in the sections and courtyards of the Nasser Medical Complex, and the occupation refuses to allow it to be transported out,” he added.

The ministry said that Israeli forces killed 114 Palestinians and injured 249 others in 13 massacres in Gaza in the past 24 hours.  “A number of victims are still under rubble and on the roads. The occupation prevents ambulance and civil defense crews from reaching them,” it added. The number of Palestinians killed in the Israeli aggression on Gaza now stands at 26,751 martyrs, and 65,636 were injured since October.

in case any of you missed it, despite the ICJ's ruling for Israel to facilitate MORE aid into Gaza, the global west has responded by cutting funding to UNWRA, which is responsible for delivering significant amounts of aid into Gaza, as well as surrounding areas such as Lebanon. The countries cutting funding consist of the US, Australia, the UK, the Netherlands, Swritzerland, Italy, Germany, Finland, Canada and Japan. This was all due to a claim by Israel that members of UNWRA were Hamas-members or sympathisers which, at the end of the day, is a claim that concerns only 12 members in a total of 30,000.

Without proper funding, UNWRA is likely to run out of resources by February of this year (only another month) and urges the countries that have suspended donations to reconsider. This is a blatant move from the colonialist countries of this world to starve Palestinians even further when they are already facing unforeseen levels of famine.

Please take some time out of your day to call your reps, your political leaders and urge them to restart their funding. In the meantime, here is a link to donate to the UNWRA.

Hind Khoudary has just posted a link to a GFM to help her friends, Abood and Leyan Al-Hossini, as well as their son, evacuate Gaza

In Gaza, journalists are passing out from exhaustion and famine. Despite the ICJ ruling, the US and Australia are intentionally defunding UNWRA based on baseless claims by Israel that members of the aid group are Hamas-sympathizers. Netanyahu, of course, has ignored the ICJ ruling. Israel has banned insulin pens from arriving in Gaza, a particularly cruel and inhumane crime to add to their laundry list of offences. Nothing has changed, and things are getting worse.

It is not that hard to not buy things. To not watch things. Perhaps it is inconvenient, and makes you go out of your way, and costs a little more to buy alternatives. But if you were to attend a funeral a day for every child that has died in Gaza so far, it would take you over 27 years. When the worst that will happen to you is that you don't watch a TV show featuring a zionist, you don't buy a specific brand that donates to and supports zionism, how could that possibly compare to the plight of Palestinians who must amputate limbs without anesthesia?

Once again, this is the BDS list of brands to boycott.

Here is a comprehensive post about more actions you can take in support of Palestine.

Here is a list of verifiable orgs that provide aid on the ground.

credible organisations that are doing work on the ground in Palestine:

Care for Gaza:non-profit charity that distributes money, food and other resources directly to families in Gaza.They maintain a regular presence on Twitter and Instagram. You can donate to them via Paypal here.

PCRF / Palestine Children's Relief Fund: non-profit organisation that distributes essential food and resources to families in Gaza. Most recently, they delivered 30 tons of vital medicine, and 82,000 pounds of flour.

Medical Aid For Palestinians: deploys medical teams to treat Palestinians suffering under Israel's malicious bombardments.

Donate e-sims to Palestine: massive post with tutorials and relevant links, with discount codes included in the post and in the replies.

Direct Aid: humanitarian fund distributing supplies such as blankets and winter jackets directly to Palestinian families.

help people leave palestine (donate what you can)

Help a Family Evacuate Gaza (GoGetFunding)

Save Sanaa and her Family (Gofundme)

Save Amjad Saher and his family (Gofundme)

Help a family of 13 escape Gaza (Gofundme)

Help a Palestinian children's book illustrator save her family of 12 (Gofundme)

Antizionist Jewish Shoah survivors have always been some of my heroes.

And every one of them has been attacked and discredited by Zionists.

you’ve seen this bird everywhere lately I’m sure,

so, you may be wondering.. why is this bird so important?

In 2013, Israel campaigned to remove ‘palestine’ from the bird’s name. this failed, however, when the palestine wildlife society (PWS) petitioned to instead adopt it as palestine’s national bird as a direct defiance of the campaign.

in 2015, the palestine sunbird was officially declared the national bird of palestine.

the palestinian artist khaled jarrar designed a border control stamp featuring the sunbird with which he stamped passports as a cry for freedom.

more recently, khaled jarrar has also created these postal stamps for the same message— in defiance of israel’s efforts to erase palestine.

here you can find an incredible, short documentary detailing his work across the years to use his art as a protest against the plight of the palestinian people.

another palestinian artist, rasha eleyan, uses the sunbird in her work as a motif for the strength and boldness of palestinian women:

(source)

the palestinian poet tamim al-barghouti has tied the palestine sunbird’s beauty to resilience, in saying: “whenever you face injustice or roughness, remember to defend yourself by finding beauty… document, prove, and defend it because all beauty is resistance.”

the palestine sunbird is a symbol of hope and strength. It’s a symbol of fighting back against the odds and refusal to go quietly into the night— refusal to be erased.

continue to support palestinian artists.

continue to support palestine.

raise the voices of those who now, more than ever, need to be heard.

From today’s #ShutItDown4Palestine march through Manhattan and across the Brooklyn Bridge. More police repression: seven of the lead organizers were arrested, but the march continued undeterred. Police intimidation won’t stop the movement to free Palestine!

Israeli "settlement" housing surveys and dominates the landscape, West Bank, Palestine

THE ARCHITECTURE OF VIOLENCE (2014)

It feels like an important time to revisit this short documentary. Part of the Rebel Architecture series, the film examines, clearly and concisely, the use of design as a weapon of intimidation and subjugation within the Palestine Israel conflict.  One element it focuses on is Palestine's 'architecture of occupation': the way the built environment, even in the form of suburban 'settlement' housing (in which tracts of Israeli homes have been built in occupied territories like the West Bank), has been deliberately shaped to intimidate, surveil, segregate, and even dehumanise.

"Israeli settlements are built on hilltops, overlooking Palestinian valleys, to dominate. They're laid out to create a suburban-scale optical device that can survey the territory. The bright red roofs of the houses are mandated by law... to allow military to understand what's friend and foe: where to bomb and where not to."

"...When you put Israeli colonies on highways, you accelerate Israeli movement through the space. In the same way, with every twist and turn of terrain, Palestinians encounter a checkpoint, a border, a fence, a valley they cannot cross..."

It's important for architects and urban designers everywhere to understand that our craft has the potential to be weaponised. It's important that, no matter whom the client, we think about how a project will impact everyone whose life it touches.  But sadly, as essential as these considerations are, they're of no immediate help to the people in Gaza and the rest of Palestine right now. So, it seems worth sharing:

Some ways that we can help Palestinians:

1. Speak up. Send an email to your elected representative. Sign petitions. Stand up in any forum you can against human rights violations, and against both islamaphobic and antisemitic behaviour.

2. Contribute to a trusted aid organisation working in Gaza, such as Unicef or the British Red Cross. Sites like  charitynavigator and charitychecker can be used to check it's a group who'll use it well.

3. Understand the context. Short videos here and here provide a clear introduction/overview.

4. Boycott companies that are directly profiting from the illegal occupation, and from human rights violations.

January 27, 2024

For more context:

In Gaza, journalists are passing out from exhaustion and famine. Despite the ICJ ruling, the US and Australia are intentionally defunding UNWRA based on baseless claims by Israel that members of the aid group are Hamas-sympathizers. Netanyahu, of course, has ignored the ICJ ruling. Israel has banned insulin pens from arriving in Gaza, a particularly cruel and inhumane crime to add to their laundry list of offences. Nothing has changed, and things are getting worse.

It is not that hard to not buy things. To not watch things. Perhaps it is inconvenient, and makes you go out of your way, and costs a little more to buy alternatives. But if you were to attend a funeral a day for every child that has died in Gaza so far, it would take you over 27 years. When the worst that will happen to you is that you don't watch a TV show featuring a zionist, you don't buy a specific brand that donates to and supports zionism, how could that possibly compare to the plight of Palestinians who must amputate limbs without anesthesia?

Once again, this is the BDS list of brands to boycott.

Here is a comprehensive post about more actions you can take in support of Palestine.

Here is a list of verifiable orgs that provide aid on the ground.

credible organisations that are doing work on the ground in Palestine:

Care for Gaza:non-profit charity that distributes money, food and other resources directly to families in Gaza.They maintain a regular presence on Twitter and Instagram. You can donate to them via Paypal here.

PCRF / Palestine Children's Relief Fund: non-profit organisation that distributes essential food and resources to families in Gaza. Most recently, they delivered 30 tons of vital medicine, and 82,000 pounds of flour.

Medical Aid For Palestinians: deploys medical teams to treat Palestinians suffering under Israel's malicious bombardments.

Donate e-sims to Palestine: massive post with tutorials and relevant links, with discount codes included in the post and in the replies.

Direct Aid: humanitarian fund distributing supplies such as blankets and winter jackets directly to Palestinian families.

help people leave palestine (donate what you can)

Help a Family Evacuate Gaza (GoGetFunding)

Save Sanaa and her Family (Gofundme)

Save Amjad Saher and his family (Gofundme)

Help a family of 13 escape Gaza (Gofundme)

Help a Palestinian children's book illustrator save her family of 12 (Gofundme)