Seeing Phil Give Actual, Hard Earned Advice During The Podcast Made Me Realize ONCE AGAIN How Much I

portraits of war

answering a couple questions i got on this post since i realized ppl genuinely wanna know:

tl;dr:

israel lets very, very little aid get into gaza. even the UN can't get in as much as they want to. funding individual families, gazan led initiatives, and mutual aid collectives operating out of gaza ensures gazans can provide for themselves and pay for the extremely expensive aid that is available.

with all the civil infrastructure destroyed by israel, the situation on the ground has devolved into unrestricted capitalism, driving up the price of aid (that should be free!). this makes it more urgent for people to have funding for daily survival.

the post linked above has examples of how donating to individual families can help a lot. if you want to help more than one family at a time, there are many gazan-led initiatives focusing on rebuilding their infrastructure and distributing aid fairly that are worth donating to instead of large charities that already get the majority of donations.

as i mentioned in the last post: @/careforgaza on twitter is a nonprofit started by gazans, it's been endorsed by multiple palestinian journalists.

the sameer project is a collective organized by diaspora palestinians offering emergency shelter to gazans.

ele elna elak is a project aiming to bring water, food, shelter, etc. to gazans and has been promoted by bisan owda.

and the municipality of gaza itself is fundraising to rebuild water infrastructure.

all of these organizations are active inside gaza right now and are being run by gazans. if anyone knows of other gazan-led mutual aid projects, nonprofits or charities feel free to link them in the notes! hope this helped!

long answers under the cut!

if you wanna donate to a charity that's absolutely fine, but the thing is most charities (and even the UN!) are unable to make it into gaza in the first place, leaving aid rotting at the egyptian side of the border or subject to israeli settler attacks

not to mention, charities and nonprofits also maintain a paternalistic colonial relationship with the indigenous people they are trying to help, determining what aid they need for them instead of returning power to them and letting them make their own choices

i'm not here to say that one option is better than the other, just that they achieve different things and are equally legitimate. there's an attitude among people who question the legitimacy of these gofundme campaigns that somehow the people promoting them are telling them not to donate to charities. nobody is stopping you from donating to charities. we are just asking that you do not dehumanize the very real gazans in your inbox just because their method of asking for aid is more direct and risky.

unfortunately that's exactly what has happened. because israel destroyed all of gaza's more formalized infrastructure, it seems that organized crime and rampant inflation has taken its place. aid is supposed to be free, but in order to save for evacuation or the cost of living, people have started selling them at an inflated price. and aid that is truly free attracts intense, large crowds that are dangerous to navigate.

this was posted on abc a few days ago

it's pure, unrestrained capitalism. i've had multiple palestinians describe this situation to me confidence. that's why everything's so expensive now. why people have to rent out tiny plots of land for their tents to sit on, why my friend @siraj2024 still has to buy tarps to cover the broken windows of the overpriced bombed out apartment he rented, and why a bag of flour can cost a thousand bucks in the north.

even before israel closed and then bombed the rafah crossing, the egyptian hala travel agency was only allowing people to cross the border if they paid a hefty $5000 USD per adult / $2500 USD per child bribe. it denies doing this, but the hundreds of stories from palestinians say otherwise.

with regard to the economy, here in america we saw something similar happen in the wake of hurricane helene and milton. the podcaster margaret killjoy describes how she saw dual economies rise after asheville was fully cut off from the rest of the country - some people offered each other supplies for free in a sort of mutual aid honor system, and some people required payment when they lent supplies because they themselves needed to buy stuff for their families. these dual economies exist in gaza too. and this means they all still need money to survive.

something about damian makes people go “ooo little brother!”

"I THINK I MISS MY WIFE" ASS LINE

This is a picture of Montaser Al Sawaf, another Palestinian journalist killed by the IOF:

I am continually enraged by the normalization of Palestinian people's deaths in mainstream western media, and the constant dehumanization of each of their lives. They are not just numbers -they are people who have dreams, ambitions, livelihoods, families, friends, hobbies, and interests.

The IOF is committing war crimes, crimes against humanity, is breaking dozens of international laws and UN Conventions -is committing mass genocide -but a small fraction of people in power get to determine the narrative of 'who is the REAL victim here,' by reinforcing IOF and American propaganda which sides with settler-colonial violence -and it is beyond abhorrent.

happy booping! 🐾

amorphous jigsaw pieces falling into slots

yeah so sloane and luther found each other, got remarried, and luther is the world's greatest stripper and sloane is a physicist. diego and lila went to couple's counseling and are doing better than ever. diego quit his UPS job and started a food truck selling street tacos. lila teaches mixed martial arts at a gym. allison is continuing to pursue her passion for acting and raising claire. maybe she and ray even find each other again. klaus falls in love again. he misses dave, but not everything can work out. he overcomes his hypochondria and can have fun again. five retires. he's going to learn who he is without constantly having to be on a mission. ben... is honestly probably still a bit of a selfish asshole, but he starts working on himself. maybe he gets some other kind of tech or salesman job. viktor may have been dumped by every woman in town but that doesn't mean there aren't any men for him to date. he's got his bar and his life, his violin, and maybe a dog or cat.

they're all adults, finally. they get together enough to never miss each other, but not too much so they all get annoyed with each other. with reginald dead and their powers gone, they can all finally start to move on from the past. they're no longer the children they used to be. they no longer have to be defined by their childhood and where they came from.