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Left: martyr Fadi Hassan Abu Salah; A disabled Palestinian man killed by Israeli sniper fire during mass protests in Gaza on Monday.

Right: Sculpture by Hisham Alshdaifat, in memory of Fadi Abu Salah.

He’s so cute I need to put him in a snow globe and shake it

aaron bushnell knew exactly what he was doing. he states his intentions with total lucidity and sense of purpose. he knows what he's about to do is extreme--he says so. he speaks calmly, but he's clearly terrified. he takes a deep breath after pouring the accelerant over himself. he has to psyche himself up to light the flame. he struggles with the lighter. he says "free palestine" normally once before he starts to scream it. even through his agony he manages to say it one last time before he stops being able to speak at all. this is a man with total conviction. he wanted to help people, in any way possible. this action was a moral one, and any news outlet painting this as simply a mental health issue is a disservice to his memory. he knew what he was doing when he burned himself in uniform. he knew that there was a chance that sacrificing his own life could go on to save many others. this was the ultimate act of selflessness, and it should be treated as such. may he rest in peace.

Doodles

im a meljayvik shipper that believes in melvik. "jayce has two hands" mel and vik also have two hands and they're all standing in a circle like this

the stuff going on at columbia campus rn is genuinely incredible

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.

Seeing phil give actual, hard earned advice during the podcast made me realize ONCE AGAIN how much I need need need him to teach a masterclass or something. He spends so much time being a whimsical silly goofy guy that when he gets down and serious about something I am SAT I am LISTENING. He has such a way of speaking that is fascinating!!!

All of the sneak peek character photos Miro posted to his discord server recently! The first photo is less than a day old, and you might've seen the other ones shared around for some time now.