‘Everything we do is under siege': small fundraisers try to provide lifeline in Gaza
Sadly, the prices were astronomical – sometimes as much as $40 for a few eggplants. Since Israel has stopped almost all food and aid getting into Gaza, prices of what little food has been grown, stockpiled or looted have soared. The fresh vegetables could be purchased thanks to a mutual aid fund run by Shih, an artist based out of New York. Shih has raised over $600,000 since March 2024 from a fund she runs from her Instagram and word of mouth. Half of the money goes to a photojournalist in Gaza with a history of community work, who helps organise distributions of cooked food, produce, water, tents, cloth and cash.
'He's able to leverage his longstanding relationships with local vendors to get decent deals on what little product is available in the markets, which is then distributed for free to families who cannot afford it,' Shih said. The funds enabled him to buy the vegetables and pass them on to other families.
The other half of the money is given to around 30 families in Gaza that Shih has developed close relationships with since 2024.
Shih is one of a number of individuals and groups based in the US who have set up uncertified and unofficial mutual aid funds for people in Gaza. The funds solicit donations from all over the world. Some are working with Palestinians in Gaza to organise complex distribution networks, others are simply wiring money directly to trusted individuals in Gaza to distribute. Just this week, Reviving Gaza, a mutual aid group founded by three displaced Gazan siblings, posted videos of 1,500 loaves of fresh bread being baked with flour secured by their group.
This kind of distribution is often uneven and not nearly enough to sustain the population of Gaza. The amount they can raise is also limited by personal networks and social media followers. Yet for people living under the most unimaginably horrific conditions, these donations can be a lifeline.
Since the beginning of the war, aid has been severely restricted – only a small number of aid trucks are allowed into Gaza and what's allowed in is heavily controlled by Israel. But things got considerably worse in March, when Israel enacted a total blockade on all food, aid and medicine into Gaza. The small amount of aid still being distributed by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a USand Israeli-backed group, comes with great risk: Israeli forces have killed more than 1,000 Palestinians at its food distribution sites since May. Earlier this month more than 100 charities wrote an open letter to say that they were seeing Palestinians, including their own colleagues, wasting away as famine grips Gaza. The letter blamed Israeli restrictions on, and 'massacres' at, aid distribution points.
Israel's foreign ministry says it is now allowing in about 70 aid trucks a day – well below the 500 to 600 trucks the UN says are needed and that entered daily during a six-week ceasefire earlier this year.
'On a given day when a NGO has to shut down highly visible operations because of military threats, fundraisers like ours can still operate,' says Shih. 'But those NGOs could be up the very next day serving more people than our small team could handle. NGOs have more money and resources but are also bound by international bureaucracy and political tensions. Mutual aid groups are more nimble, have less overhead and are able to distribute moderate amounts of aid quickly.'
While some mutual aid funds are being run by individuals like Shih, others are small collectives that focus on certain kinds of aid – like Water is Life, which sources water from wells in northern Gaza and, with the help of donations, pays for trucks to distribute it around the strip. Mutual Aid Funds says that in the past few weeks interest and donations have soared as more images of starvation and Israeli violence reach western media.
Grassroots Gaza is a fund run by a large number of Palestinians who now live abroad. 'Donations are a lifeline in these catastrophic times,' said their cofounding member, who asked not to be named. 'For example, we've been sending clean water trucks to al-Naser in north Gaza for months. And we chose this area precisely because it's a residential neighborhood, not a camp or UN school, and is often overlooked by large NGOs and international aid initiatives.'
Notably, these funds use existing networks and wire transfers to get money to Gaza, avoiding platforms like GoFundMe which has frozen or returned millions of dollars raised on its platform meant to reach Gaza.
But once money reaches Gaza, some brokers are charging 40% fees to get cash. These fees are a big part of the reason people can't afford food. Many merchants used to accept digital transfers, but no longer. Virtual money is losing value because it has to be converted to cash at some point.
Food prices are changing constantly, but Tamar Glezerman, who fundraises via Venmo with the help of a friend in Gaza, says prices last week were 1,100 shekels ($324) for 10kg of flour, 200 shekels ($59) for Canned sardines and 54 shekels ($15) for wet wipes.
That's not to say mutual aid groups can account that every dollar they raise is spent in the most effective way. Grassroots Gaza acknowledges the emergence of 'black markets, skyrocketing prices, and exploitative merchants' but says that it is not the fault of those sending money and 'is directly linked to and engineered by the ongoing genocidal war'. Many financial operators also saddle huge surcharges on money being sent to Gaza.
'Everything we do is carried out and organized under siege, bombardment, starvation, and abandonment by the international community and neighboring countries. Nothing about this moment is perfect, and yet we continue to provide rooted in care, accountability, and love to our people,' said the group's spokesperson.
Yesterday, as she was about to send more money, Shih got a heartbreaking reply from one of the families she regularly donates to: 'I think there is no need for that. We will not be able to use this money for anything. The situation is very bad and the prices are very high. This is the last thing I ever expected to say in my life.'
Shih says she will continue to send funds to the family, but the only way to help every Palestinian in Gaza is with an immediate ceasefire and open borders. 'If there was enough food to feed the people of Gaza, there would be no black market. Flour didn't cost 120 shekels a kilo before the genocide. Israel is manufacturing the starvation of Gaza and then pointing to people's desperation as proof of their depravity, but the depravity is Israel's alone.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Reuters
16 hours ago
- Reuters
Terrible thirst hits Gaza with polluted aquifers and broken pipelines
GAZA/CAIRO, Aug 6 (Reuters) - Weakened by hunger, many Gazans trek across a ruined landscape each day to haul all their drinking and washing water - a painful load that is still far below the levels needed to keep people healthy. Even as global attention has turned to starvation in Gaza, where after 22 months of a devastating Israeli military campaign a global hunger monitor says a famine scenario is unfolding, the water crisis is just as severe according to aid groups. Though some water comes from small desalination units run by aid agencies, most is drawn from wells in a brackish aquifer that has been further polluted by sewage and chemicals seeping through the rubble, spreading diarrhoea and hepatitis. Israeli pipelines that once supplied Gaza with much of its clean water are now dry. Israel stopped all water and electricity supply to Gaza early in the war. Although it resumed some supply later, pipelines were damaged and Gaza water officials say none has entered recently. COGAT, the Israeli military aid coordination agency, did not respond to a request for comment on whether Israel is supplying water. Most water and sanitation infrastructure has been destroyed and pumps from the aquifer often rely on electricity from small generators - for which fuel is rarely available. Moaz Mukhaimar, aged 23 and a university student before the war, said he has to walk about a kilometre, queuing for two hours, to fetch water. He often goes three times a day, dragging it back to the family tent over bumpy ground on a small metal handcart. "How long will we have to stay like this?" he asked, pulling two larger canisters of very brackish water to use for cleaning and two smaller ones of cleaner water to drink. His mother, Umm Moaz, 53, said the water he collects is needed for the extended family of 20 people living in their small group of tents in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip. "The children keep coming and going and it is hot. They keep wanting to drink. Who knows if tomorrow we will be able to fill up again," she said. Their struggle for water is replicated across the tiny, crowded territory where nearly everybody is living in temporary shelters or tents without sewage or hygiene facilities and not enough water to drink, cook and wash as disease spreads. The United Nations says the minimum emergency level of water consumption per person is 15 litres a day for drinking, cooking, cleaning and washing. Average daily consumption in Israel is around 247 litres a day according to Israeli rights group B'Tselem. Bushra Khalidi, humanitarian policy lead for aid agency Oxfam in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories said the average consumption in Gaza now was 3-5 litres a day. Oxfam said last week that preventable and treatable water-borne diseases were "ripping through Gaza", with reported rates increasing by almost 150% over the past three months. Israel blames Hamas for the suffering in Gaza and says it provides adequate aid for the territory's 2.3 million inhabitants. "Water scarcity is definitely increasing very much each day and people are basically rationing between either they want to use water for drinking or they want to use a lot for hygiene," said Danish Malik, a global water and sanitation official for the Norwegian Refugee Council. Merely queuing for water and carrying it now accounts for hours each day for many Gazans, often involving jostling with others for a place in the queue. Scuffles have sometimes broken out, Gazans say. Collecting water is often the job of children as their parents seek out food or other necessities. "The children have lost their childhood and become carriers of plastic containers, running behind water vehicles or going far into remote areas to fill them for their families," said Munther Salem, water resources head at the Gaza Water and Environment Quality Authority. With water so hard to get, many people living near the beach wash in the sea. A new water pipeline funded by the United Arab Emirates is planned, to serve 600,000 people in southern Gaza from a desalination plant in Egypt. But it could take several more weeks to be connected. Much more is needed, aid agencies say. UNICEF spokesperson James Elder said the long-term deprivations were becoming deadly. "Starvation and dehydration are no longer side effects of this conflict. They are very much frontline effects." Oxfam's Khalidi said a ceasefire and unfettered access for aid agencies was needed to resolve the crisis. "Otherwise we will see people dying from the most preventable diseases in Gaza - which is already happening before our eyes."
Reuters
2 days ago
- Reuters
Israel says it will allow controlled entry of goods into Gaza via merchants
Aug 5 (Reuters) - Israel says it will allow gradual and controlled entry of goods to Gaza through local merchants, an Israeli military agency that coordinates aid said on Tuesday, as global monitors say famine is unfolding in the enclave, impacting the hostages Hamas holds. Israel's COGAT said a mechanism has been approved by the cabinet to expand the scope of humanitarian aid, allowing the entry of supplies to Gaza through the private sector. The agency said the approved goods include basic food products, baby food, fruits and vegetables, and hygiene supplies. "This aims to increase the volume of aid entering the Gaza Strip, while reducing reliance on aid collection by the U.N. and international organisations," it added. It was unclear how this aid operation would work given the widespread destruction in Gaza. Palestinian and U.N. officials say Gaza needs around 600 aid trucks to enter per day to meet the humanitarian requirements - the number Israel used to allow into Gaza before the war. Images of starving Palestinians including children have alarmed the world in recent weeks, while a video released by Hamas on Sunday showing an emaciated captive drew sharp criticism from Western powers. Israel in response to a rising international uproar, announced last week steps to let more aid reach Gaza, including pausing fighting for part of the day in some areas, approving air drops and announcing protected routes for aid convoys. Hamas said it was prepared to coordinate with the Red Cross to deliver aid to hostages it holds in Gaza, if Israel permanently opens humanitarian corridors and halts airstrikes during the distribution of aid. Israel and the United States urged the U.N. in May to work through an organisation they back, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which employs a U.S. logistics firm run by a former CIA officer and armed U.S. veterans. The U.N. refused as it questioned GHF neutrality and accused the distribution model of militarising aid and forcing displacement. Palestinians were killed near GHF sites where limited aid was distributed, with the U.N. estimating that Israeli forces have killed more than 1,000 people seeking food since May, most near the organisation's distribution sites. GHF denies that there have been deadly incidents at its sites, and says the deadliest have been near other aid convoys. The war in Gaza began when Hamas killed 1,200 people and took 251 hostage in an attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, according to Israeli figures. Israel's offensive has since killed more than 60,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health officials who do not distinguish between fighters and non-combatants. According to Israeli officials, 50 hostages now remain in Gaza, only 20 of whom are believed to be alive. Hamas, thus far, has barred humanitarian organisations from having any kind of access to the hostages and families have little or no details of their conditions.
The Guardian
2 days ago
- The Guardian
As I sit here in Australia watching Israel starve Palestinians to death, I can't help but think it could have been me
'Why can't I have a pomegranate?' The little girl's question sank his heart. How would my colleague, Hatem, explain to his daughter that there are no pomegranates, and barely any flour? How will he explain that real people are doing this to her on purpose? Starving her little stomach as a weapon? As I sit here in Australia, watching 'our ally in the Middle East' deprive my family and friends of food, I can't help but think: it could have been me. The only difference between me and Hatem's daughter is a few thousand kilometres. Geographic luck is why I am safe, why I have clean water, a fridge full of food, a home without drones buzzing overhead. But it doesn't save me from the guilt. I sit glued to the screen as my colleagues, with sunken cheeks and frail bodies – barely able to stand – try to document their own starvation for Americans, Australians, anyone, to take action. It doesn't stop me from wondering why – as the UN secretary general calls this the highest number of people facing catastrophic hunger recorded by its system 'anywhere, anytime' – my colleagues still need to 'prove' their own starvation. It doesn't stop me from feeling that perhaps, as humans, we are all unlucky. Because we are living in hell. We live in a global system that lets you bomb hospitals and starve children. We live in a world that allows this to happen. I stare at the empty Word document. I have tried to write this article for a week now but can't seem to find the right words. What words could ever be enough? What sentence could capture the feeling of watching an entire people slowly vanish? What words can I offer if footage of a child with a distended stomach isn't enough? If a mother crying over rice grain isn't enough? If people fighting for food scraps dropped from the sky, hospital wards filled with toddlers but empty of medicine, and lines for nonexistent water, are not enough? What I feel is something more than heartbreak. It's rage. No child should go to bed hungry, let alone die from it. No mother should have to choose which child gets to eat. No people should be punished simply for existing. No one should know what it's like not to eat for days. Yet, here we are. Israel is deliberately starving Gaza to death. The starvation is not a byproduct of genocide – it is the genocide; deliberate, calculated and human-made. It is starving more than 2 million people slowly, painfully and publicly. Before that, it flattened our homes, burned people alive in their tents, displaced millions, and targeted schools and universities. It turned Gaza, a place once filled with life and joy, into rubble. It turned schools into a place children would sleep, learning only how to survive – or how to die. And now, finally, it is openly starving us to death. Parents watch their children go hungry, feeling helpless. Infants are born without the chance to grow. Supermarket shelves are empty. Aid trucks are blocked. People are dying, not only from bullets but from hunger. These are not statistics. These are my cousins, my neighbours, my friends. People I grew up with. People I used to share a sandwich with at school recess. It is hard for me to believe they are now skin and bone, counting their days without food. Some tell me they have stopped counting. You and I are watching a human-made starvation, with full internet access, with journalists risking their lives to show us. There is nothing hidden. Nothing secret. We know. And knowing comes with responsibility. To speak up. To protest. To donate. To demand our governments take real action. To refuse to be complicit. These acts may feel little, compared with this scale of human cruelty. But if I were watching my hungry daughter ask about pomegranates, I would want every human on this planet to try doing something. Anything. Because anything is infinitely more than nothing. Plestia Alaqad is an award-winning journalist and author
