In Spain, parents gather at school gates to remember Gaza's child victims
Granada, Spain – Sometimes there have been as few as two or three people, sometimes as many as 15.
But no matter the number, every morning for the past few weeks at the Jose Hurtado primary school in the Spanish city of Granada, a group of parents have dropped off their kids, then silently gathered nearby behind two simple but powerful pro-Gaza banners: 'No more dead children' and 'Against Genocide.'
'It started when a fictional video, set in 2040, came through one of our parents' WhatsApp groups, about how Gaza was destroyed. And in it children ask their mums and dads – what did you do during the genocide?' Mar Domech, who helped the protest get started, told Al Jazeera.
'I began saying – instead of re-sending the video, let's actually do something, a bit like during the pandemic when people used to applaud hospital staff at eight every night. And the 15 minutes before the kids went into class and the 15 minutes just after suited the majority of us parents the best.'
The protest format is simple. A single line of demonstrators hold up two long banners next to a tall school wall and make sure they keep out of the way of passers-by.
There is no shouting or chanting. But that these are clearly school parents caring about children dying – many of them of the ages of their own children – gives their show of support extra resonance. The school's location on a busy arterial street near central Granada means their message reaches a wide audience.
'We don't want to upset anybody, but we just can't look away when so many children are dying and the laws need to be upheld,' said Domech. 'What's happening there is genocide and we have to oppose this, whoever the victims are.'
After almost two years of Israeli attacks, Gaza is home to the highest number of child amputees per capita. More than 17,000 children have been killed. And according to Save the Children, more than 930,000 children in Gaza – nearly every single child – are now at risk of famine.
The failure of more parents to join their show of solidarity is treated with a mixture of disappointment, resilience and not a little wry humour by the dozen or so 'regulars', like when they recall when two plainclothes police officers arrived to check their IDs.
It just so happened that day only two pro-Palestine parents were present, but, as Domech recalled with a laugh, thanks to the police turning up, it seemed like the number of protesters had abruptly doubled.
In any case, the limited response has done nothing to stop their determination to continue.
One woman passes by most days and stops to take a photo to send to a friend in Palestine. Some of the cars or tourists on buses going up to the nearby medieval Alhambra monument honk and wave in support.
The morale boosts are important, as well as the parents' conviction that even this relatively tiny but tenacious protest matters.
'I couldn't stand the idea of simply being an onlooker any more, what's going on is so atrocious,' said Alberto, another parent. 'I'm just pleased that we've kept going, too. I'm studying for civil service exams so time-wise I can be flexible, but it's not straightforward to do this every day when you're working or have other commitments. However, I think it's fundamental we do it.'
Spain is among a small group of European nations that has consistently shown support for Palestine and criticised Israeli actions in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
Together with Ireland and Norway, in May 2024, Spain recognised the Palestinian state and last year it expressed support for the genocide case against Israel submitted by South Africa in the International Court of Justice.
After the European Union's latest report on Gaza was published this week, Spain was the one country that called directly for suspension of the EU-Israel Association Agreement, while its foreign minister demanded an arms embargo.
As for the Granada school gates protest, 'We'll go on with it once term restarts in September', said Domech, 'although hopefully that wouldn't be necessary'.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Al Jazeera
3 hours ago
- Al Jazeera
As Gaza starves, GoFundMe accused of blocking ‘millions of dollars' raised
GoFundMe has been accused of blocking 'millions of dollars' of life-saving aid from reaching Gaza. Charity leaders, activists and desperate Palestinians in Gaza have condemned the crowdfunding website for shutting down or blocking withdrawals for Palestine-related fundraising pages – and have accused bosses of having 'blood on their hands'. Despite questions from Al Jazeera, the company has not revealed the amount of money raised on its platform for Gaza that has been frozen in its system or has been refunded to donors. But it has told Al Jazeera that more than $300m has been raised on the platform for both Palestinians and Israelis since Hamas's October 7 attacks on Israel in 2023 and the beginning of Israel's war on Gaza. Hala Sabbah, the founder of mutual aid group The Sameer Project, said that in September, more than $250,000 of donations to her organisation was refunded. The London-based NGO-sector worker described the closure of her GoFundMe page as a 'disaster' for her group's efforts to provide emergency aid in the enclave. The Sameer Project runs a camp for displaced people in Deir el-Balah, providing healthcare and essentials to its residents – paid for by money that, until now, had been raised through GoFundMe, totalling more than $1m. It also funds food, water, shelter and clothing for people across Gaza. Sabbah said she was 'treated like scum' by GoFundMe, despite her group's pages raising about $44,000 for it in transaction fees. 'Our GoFundMe page had daily updates with complete cost breakdowns of every single initiative we did – everything was well-documented, with receipts,' she said. 'This information – including all transfers – was forwarded to GoFundMe, yet they still chose to shut us down.' GoFundMe notifies page organisers that there will be a 'review' process after they launch fundraisers related to Palestine – or 'the conflict in the Middle East', as it is phrased by the company's compliance team in emails seen by Al Jazeera. The company claims this is part of its 'standard verification process', but critics say it appears to inordinately restrict Gaza-related pages rather than those for other causes, such as Israel or Ukraine. GoFundMe has refused to disclose figures that show how many Israel or Ukraine fundraisers have been closed compared with those for Gaza. Intrusive reviews Social media has been flooded with Palestinian advocates speaking out about their pages being shut down. Fundraisers for Israel and Ukraine appear to face little of the same scrutiny. And when they do, media campaigns can quickly force GoFundMe to act. One Ukraine fundraiser that was shut down in March 2022 was reinstated the next month after media coverage of the case. The company's long and intrusive review process often results in Gaza fundraisers being shut down and money refunded to donors or pages being 'paused', preventing funds from being accessed by account holders until the review is concluded. One United States-based fundraiser for the Sulala animal shelter in Gaza says it had about $50,000 dollars refunded to donors when its first page was closed. The team behind the fundraiser then created another page without specifically mentioning Gaza or Palestine, which was not flagged by GoFundMe, placed under review or paused, and ran for months uninterrupted. In the case of The Sameer Project, GoFundMe's compliance team said it was concerned about how funds were being distributed, and said that the documentation Sabbah had provided was not 'accurate, complete or clear'. An email to Sabbah added that there were 'material discrepancies' between the information shared and how funds were distributed to beneficiaries. Before shutting the page down, the compliance team asked for personal information about who was receiving funds, evidence of bank transfer statements and details about partner organisations, which Sabbah says The Sameer Project provided. 'We spent weeks fighting back, and they completely ignored us – even denying us access to our donor lists,' Sabbah told Al Jazeera. 'People can raise funds to help the Israeli military… and their pages don't get closed. But we try to raise money for diapers and lifesaving medication, and we get scrutinised and shut down.' 'We have children in our camp on the verge of death. The company has blood on its hands.' The mutual aid group – named after Sabbah's Gaza-based uncle who died in January – says it has provided more than 800,000 litres (211,330 gallons) of water, $100,000 in cash aid, 850 tents and medical treatment for 749 children across the enclave. It transfers money to intermediaries via makeshift exchange sites and by sending money directly to doctors or pharmacies. Crowdfunding websites have for months been one of the only feasible ways to help those trapped in Gaza. Famine is creeping further into the enclave, humanitarian aid is being blocked for long periods, civilian infrastructure lies in ruin and banks and ATMs have either been destroyed or have halted operations. Sabbah slammed GoFundMe for not justifying shutting her page down despite the huge amount of money the company made from the group's pages in'payment processing fees'. It charges 30 cents per donation and a 2.9 percent cut of the total raised. There are no banking services left in Gaza, but there are exchange offices – often people using POS (point of service) cash machines charging exorbitant interest rates – and the option to swap cryptocurrency for physical currency, amid critical shortages of the latter. Without regular aid flowing into the enclave, most charities rely on sending money via these limited routes to intermediaries who will distribute essentials and medical supplies. Some tinned food, tents and health products are on sale in Gaza markets. But cash is scarce, stocks are extremely limited, and most people cannot afford to pay. Since breaking the ceasefire agreement with Hamas brokered in January, Israel resumed bombing and re-established a blockade on humanitarian aid lasting months. Now, aid is only reaching the enclave through the heavily criticised US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). Hundreds of desperate Palestinians have been shot and killed by Israeli forces at GHF aid collection sites. 'Treated like animals' Both still trapped in Gaza, Mostafa Abuthaher and his brother Yahya Fraij, aged 30, have twice created GoFundMe pages, and on both occasions, the company closed them down. Yahya lost his home and three of his cousins to Israel's onslaught, and now his family survives with only a makeshift tent near the beach in al-Mawasi in southern Gaza. His wife gave birth to their six-month-old daughter during the war. Yahya told Al Jazeera that she has experienced nothing but suffering during her short life – and he has had to protect her from extreme cold and the trauma of Israeli bombardment. 'My daughter and I face death almost every day,' he said. 'And now we have nothing – not even a tent. The war has taken everything from us. 'We've been treated like animals and insulted by the world for the last 20 months.' The brothers had raised more than $12,000 to support their families until their first page was suddenly shut down. The company blocked them from withdrawing nearly $5,000. In an email exchange with GoFundMe, a compliance officer said Mostafa's page breached the company's terms of service for 'prohibited conduct', which covers fundraisers that are 'fraudulent, misleading, inaccurate, dishonest or impossible'. He was asked to send a photo ID, provide his location and explain why his page description had changed so often and how the funds would be used. Then his page was closed, after which he expressed astonishment and accused the platform of bias. The brothers say that many people in Gaza have set up GoFundMe pages because of the platform's size and reputation, and then found themselves 'trapped' once their pages began the often ill-fated verification process. Critics of GoFundMe say campaigns fundraising for Israel appear to be able to avoid similar interventions from its compliance team. Other fundraisers on the website state they aim to raise funding for 'equipment' that supports the Israeli military, or 'training' and travel for new recruits. A page raising money for gun sights and other equipment to 'safeguard' the Kishorit kibbutz in the north of Israel appeared to breach the website's terms of service, but was active for nearly a year before no longer becoming accessible. The terms of service prohibit fundraising for 'weapons meant for use in conflict or by an armed group'. Sabbah added that there is no guarantee that money from similar pages to fundraise for 'equipment' or 'security' won't be used to buy weapons, at a time when the Israeli government is actively arming its citizens. Double standards? Al Jazeera sent several questions to GoFundMe, asking how many Gaza-related fundraisers there are, how much they had raised, the number listed as 'transfers paused and the total removed or taken down. We also asked the company to provide like-for-like figures for Israel and Ukraine. At the time of writing, GoFundMe refused to provide the specific information and data we requested. A spokesperson said: 'GoFundMe has helped raise and deliver over $300m from donors in more than 215 countries and jurisdictions to support individuals and organisations helping those in both Gaza and Israel. 'Any suggestion of double standards is wholly without merit, baseless, and contrary to the values that guide our platform. 'Any decision to remove a fundraiser from the platform is never taken lightly and is informed explicitly by our Terms of Service. Taking action like this is difficult, but it protects our ability to support people who are fundraising to help others.' Amr Shabaik, the legal director at the Council for American Islamic Relations (CAIR), told Al Jazeera that the fundamental issue with platforms like GoFundMe was the 'imbalanced application of rules' – behaviour consistent with other forms of digital censorship since October 7. 'Algorithmic discrimination and targeting, looking for certain descriptors and categories – like Gaza or Palestine specifically in the last 18 months – means some pages are subjected to an unfair and high level of scrutiny that other fundraisers are not,' he said. 'All platforms have their rules and regulations, but they're applying them disproportionately and unfairly towards Palestinians.' 'There is a clear indication of a double standard. If you are actively preventing lifesaving aid – intentionally or unintentionally -– from reaching Gaza, it's tough to say you're not supporting a genocide.' Shabaik points to studies undertaken by Human Rights Watch (HRW), The Arab Centre for the Advancement of Social Media and Palestine Legal that detail platforms' inordinate targeting of pro-Palestine pages or accounts. HRW says that between October and November 2023, 1,049 pro-Palestinian posts on Facebook and Instagram were taken down by the platform's owner, Meta. Palestine Legal says that between October 7 and December 31, 2023, the organisation received 1,037 requests for legal support from people 'targeted for their Palestine advocacy'. The Arab Centre for the Advancement of Social Media documented more than 1,639 'censorship violations' in its 2023 annual report, including content removal and suspensions. Last December, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) Freelance Journalists' Union said that GoFundMe prevented $6,000 of funding from reaching the Palestinian Journalists' Syndicate after its fundraiser was shut down. This is despite the organisation being based in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, not in Gaza. One union delegate, using the name 'Arv' as he wanted to remain anonymous, told Al Jazeera the money would have provided protective helmets, press vests and other safety apparatus for journalists reporting in the territory. He added that GoFundMe said the fundraiser was shut down due to a lack of compliance with unspecified 'laws and regulations'. In December, a union spokesperson said on its Twitter page: 'Over the course of the fundraiser, we received a dozen requests for further information from GoFundMe, all of which were answered as thoroughly and in as timely a manner as possible, given the ongoing war.' Arv added that the union had been pushed to explore the use of other fundraising platforms because of the difficulty of working with GoFundMe. 'Current GoFundMe users should do the same before they too are caught in such Kafkaesque circumstances,' he said. The GoFundMe compliance team asked for business information, such as bank accounts, and even after informing the union the information had been accepted, the page was still closed down. GoFundMe boasts that it is the world's number one crowdfunding platform, but it only allows fundraisers to be created in 20 nations (not including Israel, Ukraine or Palestine) – meaning people in Gaza are reliant on intermediaries thousands of miles away if they want to receive donations. All those interviewed for this story and other campaigners have endorsed a boycott of the platform. Sabbah says she has since begun using the Australian crowdfunding website Chuffed, which reviewed her documentation and swiftly permitted her to withdraw, allowing her to continue her group's work in Gaza. The platform says it advocates on behalf of campaigners to sort out verification issues with its payment providers to prevent pages from being frozen or refunded. Chuffed general manager Jennie Smith said: 'We've been helping campaigners migrate from GoFundMe to Chuffed by the thousands over the last year and have seen firsthand the devastation the shutting down of their GoFundMe campaigns causes.' Yahya described life for his family in his makeshift tent. He walks miles every day to get water and wraps up his baby daughter for the cold winter nights, fearing they may not wake up in the morning. He says his family may have escaped the enclave if GoFundMe had allowed him to withdraw the money he raised. 'I try not to think about losing our money,' Yahya said. 'If I kept thinking about how terrible everything is, I wouldn't be alive now! 'But it makes you feel like everyone is conspiring against us. They are leaving us to die slowly.'
Al Jazeera
3 hours ago
- Al Jazeera
Israel's media amplifies war rhetoric, ignores Gaza's suffering
Last Thursday, just days after he had ordered strikes upon Iran, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stood outside Beersheba's Soroka Hospital and spoke of his outrage that the building had been hit in an Iranian counterstrike. 'They're targeting civilians because they're a criminal regime. They're the arch-terrorists of the world,' he said of the Iranian government. Similar accusations were levelled by other Israeli leaders, including the president, Isaac Herzog, and opposition leader Yair Lapid, during the conflict with Iran, which ended with a ceasefire brokered by United States President Donald Trump on Monday. However, what was missing from these leaders was an acknowledgement that Israel itself has attacked almost every hospital in Gaza, where more than 56,000 people have been killed, or that the Strip's healthcare system has been pushed to near total collapse. It was an omission noticeable in much of the Israeli press reporting on the Beersheba hospital attack, with few mentions of the parallels between it and Israel's own attacks on hospitals in Gaza. Instead, much of the Israeli media has supported these attacks, either seeking to downplay them, or justifying them by regularly claiming that Hamas command centres lie under the hospitals, an accusation Israel has never been able to prove. Weaponising suffering According to analysts who spoke to Al Jazeera, a media ecosystem exists in Israel that, with a few exceptions, both amplifies its leaders' calls for war while simultaneously reinforcing their claims of victimhood, all while shielding the Israeli public from seeing the suffering Israeli forces are inflicting on Gaza and the occupied West Bank. One Israeli journalist, Haaretz's media correspondent Ido David Cohen, wrote this month that 'reporters and editors at Israel's major news outlets have admitted more than once, especially in private conversations, that their employers haven't allowed them to present the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the suffering of the population there'. 'The Israeli media … sees its job as not to educate, it's to shape and mould a public that is ready to support war and aggression,' journalist Orly Noy told Al Jazeera from West Jerusalem. 'It genuinely sees itself as having a special role in this.' 'I've seen [interviews with] people who lived near areas where Iranian missiles had hit,' Noy added. 'They were given a lot of space to talk and explain the impact, but as soon as they started to criticise the war, they were shut down, quite rudely.' Last September, a complaint brought by three Israeli civil society organisations against Channel 14, one of Israel's most watched television networks, cited 265 quotes from hosts they claimed encouraged war crimes and crimes against humanity, including genocide. Among them, concerning Gaza, were the phrases 'it really needs to be total annihilation' and 'there are no innocents.' A few months earlier, in April, the channel was again criticised within the Israeli media, this time for a live counter labelled 'the terrorists we eliminated', which made no distinction between civilians and fighters killed, the media monitoring magazine 7th Eye pointed out. Analysts and observers described how Israel's media and politicians have weaponised the horrors of the past suffering of the Jewish people and have moulded it into a narrative of victimhood that can be aimed at any geopolitical opponent that circumstances allow – with Iran looming large among them. 'It isn't just this war,' Noy, an editor with the Hebrew-language Local Call website, said. 'The Israeli media is in the business of justifying every war, of telling people that this war is essential for their very existence. It's an ecosystem. Whatever the authority is, it is absolutely right. There is no margin for doubt, with no room for criticism from the inside. To see it, you have to be on the outside.' 'The world has allowed Israel to act as some kind of crazy bully to do whatever it wants, whenever it wants,' Noy added. 'They can send their troops into Syria and Lebanon, never mind Gaza, with impunity. Israel is fine. Israel is bulletproof. And why wouldn't they think that? The world allows it, then people are shocked when Iran strikes back.' The Israeli media largely serves as a tool to manufacture consent for Israel's actions against the Palestinians and in neighbouring countries, while shielding the Israeli public from the suffering its victims endure. Exceptions do exist. Israeli titles such as Noy's Local Call and +972 Magazine often feature coverage highly critical of Israel's war on Gaza, and have conducted in-depth investigations into Israel's actions, uncovering scandals that are only reported on months later by the international media. Joint reporting from Local Call and +972 Magazine has revealed that the Israeli military was using an AI system to generate bombing target lists based on predicted civilian casualties. Another report found that the Israeli military had falsely declared entire Gaza neighbourhoods as evacuated, which then led to the bombing of civilian homes in areas that were still inhabited. A more famous example is the liberal daily Haaretz, which regularly criticises Israel's actions in Gaza. Haaretz has faced a government boycott over its coverage of the war. A partially sighted media 'It's not new,' Dina Matar, professor of political communication and Arab media at SOAS University of London, said. 'Israeli media has long been pushing the idea that they [Israel] are the victims while calling for actions that will allow them to present greater victimhood [such as attacking Iran]. They often use emotive language to describe a strike on an Israeli hospital that they'll never use to describe an Israeli strike on a hospital in Gaza.' Take Israeli media coverage of the siege of northern Gaza's last remaining functioning healthcare facility, the Kamal Adwan Hospital, in December. While descriptions of the attacks on the hospital from United Nations special rapporteurs spoke of their 'horror' at the strikes, those in the Israeli press, in outlets such as Ynet or The Times of Israel, instead focused almost exclusively upon the Israeli military's claims of the numbers of 'terrorists' seized. Among those seized from the hospital were medical staff, including the director of Kamal Adwan, Dr Hussam Abu Safia, who has since been tortured in an Israeli military prison, his lawyer previously told Al Jazeera. In contrast, Israeli coverage of the Soroka Hospital attack in Beersheba almost universally framed the hit as a 'direct strike' and foregrounded the experience of the evacuated patients and healthcare workers. In this environment, Matar said, Netanyahu's representation of Israel as home to a 'subjugated people' reinforced a view that Israelis have long been encouraged to hold of themselves, even amid the decades-long occupation of Palestinian land. 'No one questions what Netanyahu is saying because the implications of his speech make sense as part of this larger historical narrative; one that doesn't allow for any other [narrative], such as the Nakba or the suffering in Gaza,' the academic said.
Al Jazeera
7 hours ago
- Al Jazeera
In Spain, parents gather at school gates to remember Gaza's child victims
Granada, Spain – Sometimes there have been as few as two or three people, sometimes as many as 15. But no matter the number, every morning for the past few weeks at the Jose Hurtado primary school in the Spanish city of Granada, a group of parents have dropped off their kids, then silently gathered nearby behind two simple but powerful pro-Gaza banners: 'No more dead children' and 'Against Genocide.' 'It started when a fictional video, set in 2040, came through one of our parents' WhatsApp groups, about how Gaza was destroyed. And in it children ask their mums and dads – what did you do during the genocide?' Mar Domech, who helped the protest get started, told Al Jazeera. 'I began saying – instead of re-sending the video, let's actually do something, a bit like during the pandemic when people used to applaud hospital staff at eight every night. And the 15 minutes before the kids went into class and the 15 minutes just after suited the majority of us parents the best.' The protest format is simple. A single line of demonstrators hold up two long banners next to a tall school wall and make sure they keep out of the way of passers-by. There is no shouting or chanting. But that these are clearly school parents caring about children dying – many of them of the ages of their own children – gives their show of support extra resonance. The school's location on a busy arterial street near central Granada means their message reaches a wide audience. 'We don't want to upset anybody, but we just can't look away when so many children are dying and the laws need to be upheld,' said Domech. 'What's happening there is genocide and we have to oppose this, whoever the victims are.' After almost two years of Israeli attacks, Gaza is home to the highest number of child amputees per capita. More than 17,000 children have been killed. And according to Save the Children, more than 930,000 children in Gaza – nearly every single child – are now at risk of famine. The failure of more parents to join their show of solidarity is treated with a mixture of disappointment, resilience and not a little wry humour by the dozen or so 'regulars', like when they recall when two plainclothes police officers arrived to check their IDs. It just so happened that day only two pro-Palestine parents were present, but, as Domech recalled with a laugh, thanks to the police turning up, it seemed like the number of protesters had abruptly doubled. In any case, the limited response has done nothing to stop their determination to continue. One woman passes by most days and stops to take a photo to send to a friend in Palestine. Some of the cars or tourists on buses going up to the nearby medieval Alhambra monument honk and wave in support. The morale boosts are important, as well as the parents' conviction that even this relatively tiny but tenacious protest matters. 'I couldn't stand the idea of simply being an onlooker any more, what's going on is so atrocious,' said Alberto, another parent. 'I'm just pleased that we've kept going, too. I'm studying for civil service exams so time-wise I can be flexible, but it's not straightforward to do this every day when you're working or have other commitments. However, I think it's fundamental we do it.' Spain is among a small group of European nations that has consistently shown support for Palestine and criticised Israeli actions in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. Together with Ireland and Norway, in May 2024, Spain recognised the Palestinian state and last year it expressed support for the genocide case against Israel submitted by South Africa in the International Court of Justice. After the European Union's latest report on Gaza was published this week, Spain was the one country that called directly for suspension of the EU-Israel Association Agreement, while its foreign minister demanded an arms embargo. As for the Granada school gates protest, 'We'll go on with it once term restarts in September', said Domech, 'although hopefully that wouldn't be necessary'.
