smiles go for miles!

However, the dissonance creeps in. You miss the bus and stand outside in the cold until your fingertips and face begin to hurt, and a shiver enters your chest. You see advertisements for endless products by companies you know profit from genocide. You wonder how cozy or generous any of this really is.

Even for those of us who do not celebrate this holiday have our lives shaped by the pattern of this holiday. It's a time many of our families and loved ones are given overlapping time off from work. It's a time that sellers have sales encouraging us to buy things for each other.

Many people have budgeted all year for gift giving in this month. This is a time when people are ready to part with some money for their loved ones.

That reality does not need to add to consumerism. We can redirect this spirit of financial generosity towards solidarity with Palestine.

If someone asks you what you would like for the holidays this year, you can request that a donation be made to someone in Gaza. If the people in your life who have funds to spend on gifts would not readily do this, then ask them for money so you can pass it along.

If you have budgeted for gift giving this year, I hope you will remember Fadel and his family.

Fadel's campaign was verified and shared by @90-ghost and @a-shade-of-blue, and was vetted by @gazavetters (#197 on the gazavetters spreadsheet).

Everyone is sitting comfortably in their warm homes, while we are huddled in our tent, easily blown away by the fierce winds. Everyone else is warm now, but I am shivering from the cold, and the shrapnel lodged in my body is causing me excruciating pain from the bitter cold and constant trembling.

So often every update from Gaza is terrifying and heartbreaking. It means the world to me on the rare occasion when Fadel texts me with good news about being able to afford the smallest things.

Aqsa Durrani is a pediatric doctor and board member of Doctors Without Borders USA, with nearly twenty years of experience in humanitarian projects. Here is her full quote (emphasis mine):

"When I entered Gaza the Israeli military had a rule: I was only allowed to bring in three kilos of food. As I was weighing out protein bars, trying to get under the limit, I said to my husband: 'How sinister is this?' I'm a humanitarian aid worker. Why would there even be a limit on food? I've worked in many places with extreme hunger, but what's so jarring in this context is how cruel it is, how deliberate.

I was in Gaza for two months; there's no way to describe the horror of what's happening. And I say this as a pediatric ICU doctor who sees children die as part of my work. Among our own staff we have doctors and nurses who are trying to treat patients while hungry, exhausted. They're living in tents. Some of them have lost fifteen, twenty members of their families. In the hospital there are kids maimed by airstrikes: missing arms, missing legs, third degree burns. Often there's not enough pain medication. But the children are not screaming about the pain, they're screaming: 'I'm hungry! I'm hungry!" I hate to only focus on the kids, because nobody should be starving. But the kids, it just haunts you in a different way.

There are so many sources of pain and suffering. There is the hunger. Then there is the sickness. Fadel's tent is in tatters and the flooding has soaked through his family's mattresses and supplies. They are suffering severe flu and struggling to recover in this cold, wet winter.

Fadel's campaign was verified and shared by @90-ghost and @a-shade-of-blue, and was vetted by @gazavetters (#197 on the gazavetters spreadsheet).

He has heard word that the crossing will be opened sometime soon, but openings are always temporary and precarious during this occupation. This means he needs to travel quickly as soon as they open. To do this he needs to raise funds urgently so he can afford travel within this window of time.