Let's Keep This Going

Thank you so much for everything you've given to our fundraiser. Let's see how much more we can raise.

It has been a little over two days since we launched our fundraiser for journalist Mohammed Mhawish. In that time, we’ve raised over 23,000 dollars. If you haven’t donated yet, please click the button below.

23,000 dollars! And it’s come from hundreds of people who have dug deep and done what they can to help Mohammed and his family have a chance to escape the horrors of Gaza. Because of all of you, it looks really likely that he will get that chance.

But I should be clear: this is not a happy story. Mohammed and his family will be exiles if they make it out of Gaza. Everything they knew has been destroyed. The lives they made, the world they built for themselves, the plans they had for the future—all of it is gone. They have to rebuild from the ground up. They have to cope with what has been done to them, and how much they have lost.

Charity is no substitute for justice, and it is no substitute for freedom. That’s why rich and powerful people become philanthropists: because they want to put bandages on the wounds made by the world they created, rather than change that world. Charity can’t give Mohammed and his loved ones back their home, or the lives they had. It can’t bring anyone in Gaza back from the dead. It can’t bring liberation to Palestine.

But what fundraising like this can provide is a reminder that, though there is evil in the world, there is also love. There is so much good to be found on this planet of ours—so many people who are decent and kind and want to do something to help. And within that decency, and that kindness, we find the qualities that lead to justice, and to freedom, and to real change in the world.

We find the awe-inspiring resistance that the Palestinian people have shown to many decades of oppression. We find the solidarity that has sprung up within people around the world over the past six months—solidarity that, I think, has irrevocably altered the way we think about Israel and Palestine. We find the strength of people like Mohammed and his family and everyone else in Gaza—the will to keep a hold of their humanity, and their right to liberation, at a time when the most powerful forces in the world are intent on their annihilation.

Charity is a beginning, not an end. It is something, not everything. But something matters too. Without something, there’s nothing. So thank you, all of you, for doing something, and for giving Mohammed, and his wife, and his little boy, and his parents, and his sister, something to grab onto—for reaching your hands out through the darkness. I am grateful beyond words.

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Now I have another request. Please help us keep this going. Mohammed’s in-laws are trapped in Gaza too. They need to get out. Everyone needs places to live, and money to live on. They all need serious medical care and psychological help. They need to eat, and work, and be safe. They need what anyone needs.

So please, if you haven’t given yet, consider throwing a few bucks our way. If you have given, please send this along to someone you know and ask them to give. Every cent of it will go straight to Mohammed and his folks. Every cent of it will be something. And every cent of it will be a rebuke to everyone who has banked on the idea that Israel can get away with apartheid and genocide forever because Palestinian life is worthless. Help throw that lie back in their face, help Mohammed and his family survive, and then let’s all do what we can to free Palestine, end the occupation, and bring some real justice to this world.