I was just talking to Ahmed @90-ghost (alongside Av, who might be reading this, idk if they’d like to be part of this post tho). He has given me permission to write a post about our conversation.

This whole thing has gotten Ahmed to the point where he admits he’s started to hate tumblr after 12 years of being on here. He has over 3k messages in his inbox and can’t handle it right now, his brother and other family members are still in Gaza and he himself doesn’t have the money to help them out. I’ve noticed that donations have slowed among palestinian fundraisers in general, before this whole debacle that a few individuals on this site started. this is anecdotal, but I know Ahmed gets like $30-$50 per week in donations at this point, and that barely makes a dent in his and his family’s needs. Remember that people in Gaza need to pay massively inflated prices for what basic necessities are available right now. I think things are looking pretty dire to the people who would like to flee Gaza but don’t have the money. It already was dire that Egyptian government, working in lockstep with Israel and the west, charges $5k+ to Ghazzawis. Hala Agency, Ibrahim Al-Argani, and the other scumbags running the Egyptian state are all demons and they’ve lined their pockets throughout this genocide. But I digress—it was dire already and now the enthusiastic aid that helped people like Ahmed seems to have run dry.

All that is to say: Ahmed can’t continue to verify peoples’ documents or promote their fundraisers at this stage. He’s privately talked to hundreds of Ghazzawis and looked at their IDs, and he was the only person doing it for a while (a very small handful of other Palestinian users on here were doing it, but they’ve also gotten overwhelmed and stopped). When he was in Gaza, Ahmed was displaced multiple times, left sleeping in tents or on the streets while in active physical danger, starving, forced to drink unsafe water, and often sick. It’s not an exaggeration to say that his body and mind have been pushed to the limit. When he told me he’s depressed all day after doing this work while attracting a ton of negativity, I told him he’s allowed to stop for the sake of his own health, because frankly he needs to focus on his physical recovery. There’s nothing selfish about that, it’s not sustainable for him to be doing this, particularly not when he’s still under the immense stress of his brother and other relatives remaining in Gaza and relying on him for help.

Since I know people will ask: I currently don’t know of anyone on tumblr who still vets fundraisers. Everyone I know of who did has had to stop. I don’t know about the inner workings of Operation Olive Branch, but they seem to be one of a few collectives with enough members to distribute this work. It IS work, and those of us who have tried to do it have done so with a low failure rate (el-shab-hussein and nabulsi’s spreadsheet had over 200 entries and they misidentified a scam as legitimate ONCE). I hope everyone will be more considerate towards the people at collectives like OOB.

This has always been a matter of personal discretion. The vetting process some users tried to implement on here is meant to help people who want to help and accept the risk of offering aid to strangers. If you don’t trust bloggers who’ve been proudly Palestinian on this site for years, that’s up to you—genuinely, it’s fair to think “I don’t know this person and I don’t know what standards they’re operating on.” In the future, anyone who has such concerns should consider asking good-faith questions to the people involved and to converse with them like adults before jumping to accusations, conspiratorial posts, etc.

Read ..

there are resources beyond those on tumblr for people to find campaigns to contribute to-- here's a list of several grassroot orgs i've come across. i'm sure there's more out there. what y'all do with this information is up to you

el-shab-hussein + nabulsi's google sheet

operation olive branch

gazafunds

operation poppy flower (now also linked in oob's sheet)

operation watermelon

project watermelon

strawberry seeds collective

ottawa4palestine

camps breakerz crew

gofund(water)me(lons) | linktree

flowersfromfalasteen | linktree

the butterflyeffect project

bees and watermelons | linktree

Here's another fundraiser I trust!

This is Abed Rahman El-Shaer. If you recognize the last name, it's because he's the older brother of my friend Mohammed El-Shaer who I also campaign for on my blog. Please do not hesitate to donate! This family has gone through so much.

Even while Rafah is closed, your funds help them afford basic needs for survival on a daily basis while they also get ready to leave when the time comes! Every dollar counts! Remember not to tip gfm when it asks you to, it will not replace the processing fees that they have to pay once they need to get the money transferred to their bank accounts!

I am Abdul Shaer. I live in the Gaza Strip. We were living a beautiful life until the war started and I and my family were displaced. I need your support so that I can protect my family and provide them with the necessities of life. I hope you will donate or participate. Thank you, my friends.

PROGRESS (8/08/24) : $2299 / 50,000

ALERT!! ONLY $900 LEFT IN THIS CAMPAIGN!

Although originally set at $25,000, the family of recipients have lowered their goal to get the money out more efficiently. This money will help feed and clothe a family currently broke and attempting to survive in Egypt.

Donate if you can spare it! This amount is very achievable!!

PROGRESS: $16,120 / $17,000

UPDATED WITH A NEW GOAL - Only $600 left!

PROGRESS: $21,435 / 22,000

TIME SENSITIVE: MUST RAISE $2,600 TODAY

This fund is for Ameera Nabil to reunite with her children, who she hasn't been able to see for months now. Due to issues with the organiser, the fund has to come down TOMORROW and she is making a big push to get to her goal.

This fund has been verified by Rynnstar on Tiktok here, who has had multiple conversations with Ameera, who has her own account here.

PROGRESS: €57,422 / 60,000

LESS THAN $800 LEFT!

PROGRESS: €59,245/ 60,000

Goal has been hit, thank you so much to everyone who donated on such short notice!!!!!

TIME SENSITIVE: MUST RAISE $2,600 TODAY

This fund is for Ameera Nabil to reunite with her children, who she hasn't been able to see for months now. Due to issues with the organiser, the fund has to come down TOMORROW and she is making a big push to get to her goal.

This fund has been verified by Rynnstar on Tiktok here, who has had multiple conversations with Ameera, who has her own account here.

PROGRESS: €57,422 / 60,000

LESS THAN $800 LEFT!

PROGRESS: €59,245/ 60,000

Did I ever post the finished Lascaux (& etc) horses here?!

This first batch of them will be available in my next shop update, but there are more getting bisque-fired tomorrow that should be going into the shop in mid-April alongside a couple more cave painting mugs :)

now more than ever, please vet gofundmes before you donate.

copy and paste descriptions into google to see if there are scam accounts reusing the same story, check to see if there are any images/updates on the fund with faces. go to the original blog, check if the post asking for help is only an hour old, or even less than that. refrain from donating if all it links to is a PayPal account, without any further confirmation of identity.

it’s horrible to say but it’s never been a better time for scam artists to exploit your generosity, when things seem so dire, and I’ve donated to campaigns before only to realise later that the entire story was stolen from an actual family in need. due diligence might take a few more minutes out of your day but at least you won’t be sending money to an opportunistic scumbag.

for campaigns on tumblr: please check out @/el-shab-hussein's list of verified fundraisers here on tumblr and also @/nabulsi. they both do incredible work at vetting campaigns.

there is also this spreadsheet made by @/nabulsi and @/el-shab-hussein.

other places to find vetted fundraisers are the operation olive branch spreadsheet and also gazafunds.

Finding out if a campaign is vetted should always be your first move, but there are people who get scammed, or at least tricked into sharing scams, either bc they can’t tell the difference between a scam post and a legit fundraiser, or they don’t even bother searching

If you can’t find any proof of verification, or you simply don’t care enough to look through these links of real fundraisers, then you should at least be aware of the red flags of ongoing scams. In my own call out posts, I always try to point out whatever red flags I notice, which I learned about from posts like these:

There are also posts that list out known scammers, so people can at least know who to look out for if they can’t verify a fundraiser. This is one that I refer to often:

you wonder why I'm bitter?

PALESTINIAN FAMILY FORCED TO RESTART FUNDRAISING - PLEASE DONATE!

PROGRESS: £520 / £35,000

a little while ago, I was contacted by Amal Abushaban, a Palestinian mother of 5, for help regarding her Gofundme campaign.

In summary, after spending months raising over $13,000 for her family, she attempted to withdraw the money. She did everything right, she answered Gofundme's questions, she provided the details of her beneficiary and she contacted their support team - only to be left in the dark until an email came one day, notifying her that her campaign had been closed and all donations were now in the process of being refunded.

I tried kicking up a major fuss about it online, as well as trying to pester Gofundme Support on my own account, but all it did was send me in circles as I desperately pleaded for the Gofundme Support person I was assigned to at least re-instate the damn fund. Even worse, Amal got her first email today about refunds going through.

Regrettably, Amal is being forced to start over completely in her fundraising efforts. Her beneficiary has started this Paypal fund for her. Please donate and share!

PROGRESS: £520 / £35,000

PROGRESS: £1,196 / 35,000

Amal is still so far from her goal!! Please share so more eyes see this!

Hi there everyone, I hope you're all doing well.

Before I begin, I wanted to say thank you all so much from the bottom of my heart for all of the attention and donations you have given to the Shehab family so far when I made this post (link) to put more of a spotlight on their fundraiser a while ago.

However, I just received these messages from Reem that I think you all should see:

(Click on images to see full message)

As she said, the Shehab family's fundraiser has been slowing down lately, so I wanted to make this post to ask you all if you could spare some time out of your day to please spread the word about their fundraiser and give it another boost again?

Please take a look at this new post that Reem shared with me. I encourage you all to read her story carefully with love and care in your hearts for her and her family:

As of July 16, 2024 (10:16 AM EST), the Shehab family's fundraiser is currently at €23,210 of €50,000.

This campaign is legit and has been verified by @el-shab-hussein (proof). It has been shared around by many others so please don’t hesitate to donate!

To anyone who sees this, if you all could spread the word about the Shehab family’s campaign and especially donate if you're able to please, it would be greatly appreciated.

Let’s all do whatever we can to help Reem and her family. They're going through so many hardships and are on the verge of losing hope. Let's stop that from happening.

Please reblog, share, repost this on other sites or on your blogs if you'd like to, please do whatever you can to bring attention to their fundraiser so that the family is able to get more donations and support so that they can reach their goal and get to safety!

A lot of Palestinian users have been getting their accounts shadow banned or flat out deleted, and unfortunately, Reem has been a victim of this and has had to use her daughter’s account to reach out to others. I encourage you all to follow these accounts for updates on her and her family’s situation, and so that we can better support them:

Every donation helps no matter how small, so let's all join together and do our best to help Reem and her family out. To Reem and the Shehab family, I wish you all the very best and hope that you reach your goal soon, God bless you all.

Remember, no one is free until we’re all free. Let’s remember to be kind and help each other. Thank you all in advance for your time and help, and I hope you all have a good day.

July 17, 2024: Here's another message Reem shared with me that I have her permission to share:

Please donate and spread the word, let's do what we can to help her and her family!

NOTE :

Our campaign is vetted by :

@el-shab-hussein vetted link

@appsa @annoyingloudmicrowavecultist @feluka @marnota @el-shab-hussein @sayruq @tortiefrancis @flower-tea-fairies @tsaricides @riding-with-the-wild-hunt @vivisection-gf @belleandsaintsebastian @ear-motif @ibtisams @animentality @kordeliiius @communistchilchuck @brutaliakhoa @raelyn-dreams @troythecatfish @the-bastard-king @tamarrud @4ft10tvlandfangirl @queerstudiesnatural @northgazaupdates @90-ghost @skatehani @awetistic-things @gentl3manly @baby-girl-aaron-dessner @morallyrainyday @vakarians-babe @fairuzfan @sar-soor @fallahifag @ficsforgaza @aria-ashryver @humanvoicebox @plomegranate @queerstudiesnatural @commissions4aid-international @nabulsi @stil-lindigo @soon-palestine @communistchilchuck @palestinegenocide @northgazaupdates2 @ghost-and-a-half @kyra45-helping-others @kyra45 @commissions4aid-international @occupationsurfer @elierlick @evelyn-art-05 @bibyebae @7amaspayrollmanager @humanvoicebox @kaapstadgirl @dimonds456-art @communistchilchuck @palestinegenocide @toughknit @thetitancurse @vivisection-gf @communistchameleon @raelyn-dreams @troythecatfish @the-bastard-king @4ft10tvlandfangirl @awetistic-things @gentl3m4n

Nour reached out to an organizer I’ve been in touch with to help another Palestinian from Gaza, as she needed help with setting this up. I was contacted to find someone who could facilitate this fundraiser. Some organizer friends whose Gaza Thrift project I’ve promoted here before were able to facilitate. @90-ghost has reviewed Nour’s identification documents and corresponded with her too. So, in short: this is a brand new fundraiser that I can vouch for. Please share and contribute if you can. Please feel free to repost to other platforms as well.

im not american but i consider myself a pragmatist and i am also somewhat familiar w fascism so here are my thoughts in the current electoral climate as far as i can cater them to my perception of the userbase of this website in particular:

this google doc contains fundraisers for Palestinians/Congo/Sudan and im asking you pretty please to share and distrubute this in every way you can, these people deserve to feel safe and if one person donating a dollar is multiplied by the thousands, imagine the kind of help we could give them.