Discussion
And that's only one of the ethical dilemmas.
The work that @aral and @joynewacc have done to set up the #GazaVerified scheme is magnificent and gives us confidence that money we are giving reaches people who are genuinely in #Gaza and need it.
But they are inevitably relatively privileged people in Gaza because they sill have enough internet connection to carry out a video interview. They are the people we can help so we should help them, but they aren't the people who most need it.
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I feel that I must give to #Gaza because people there have been so abandoned by the whole international community, and because we hear that charitable giving to Gaza has fallen off dramatically since #Trump's so-called 'peace plan'.
I must continue also because there are families there who now expect and depend on my support.
But actually we cannot continue like this.
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We must put pressure on our governments and on international organisations to adequately protect the whole of #Palestine (including #Gaza) from further aggression by #Israel, and as part of that must support the #InternationalCriminalCourt prosecutions against both #Israeli and #Hamas leaders.
And we must persuade governments to actually force the opening of ports and border crossings.
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A further ethical problem is the amount of money the online giving sites want to skim off your donation.
'chuffed.org', which some of the people I give to use, wants to take 20% of my donations, and that does not seem to be reasonable. Other donation sites seem equally greedy.
Where does that money go? I can't find anywhere on chuffed.org's site to show what their income is spent on.
Not picking on chuffed.org particularly here: I don't know of any donations site that is transparent.
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So, in summary: we have to give to folk in #Gaza, as an act of #Solidarity and love, because without it they have nothing.
Money from our donations is skimmed of by the banks and the giving sites. Worse, money from the people we give to is skimmed of by war profiteers and gangsters.
We aren't giving to the poorest in Gaza because we can't reach them.
I suspect (I don't know) that most of those who do give are pretty poor.
None of these are reasons to stop giving, but giving is not enough.
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