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Folks, I’m just putting the finishing touches on an update to the Gaza Verified site that will make signing up for verification as easy as signing in with your Mastodon account (with none of the manual adding of the verification link to your profile that proved to be a stumbling block for many).

I’ll be reopening sign ups today once I’m done with that.

In the meanwhile, please remember that there are folks in Gaza who are suffering through an ongoing genocide at the hands of Israel and its Western allies (US, UK, and the EU) so if you can help, please do:

https://gaza-verified.org/donate/

None of us are an international agency and we can’t help everyone but you can help improve one person’s life and that of their family and that means something too, especially when the international agencies that should be helping are being prevented from doing so by Israel and the US.

#GazaVerified #Gaza #Palestine #israel #usa #uk #eu #genocide #settlerColonialism #ethnicCleansing #apartheid

Aral Balkan

@aral@mastodon.ar.al replied · 2 weeks ago

Right, so what works perfectly in dev and staging is failing in production (and this with Kitten, which I’ve taken such aims to ensure runs the same way everywhere). Anyway, it seems like the session is getting lost after the oAuth return from Mastodon.

Will debug after I’m back from the gym. Will likely delay release to tomorrow.

Aral Balkan

@aral@mastodon.ar.al replied · 2 weeks ago

OK, so quick update on the Gaza Verified web site:

Bloody oAuth :)

Anyway, so now I have it working in production also (and managed to get the browser to treat my dev environment like production by using Kitten’s place1.localhost alias instead of localhost, thereby getting it to enforce SameSite = Strict on cookies).

Long story short, I am now setting the session cookie to lax prior to the call and back to strict afterwards and also, in the process, implemented state checking via a nonce.

I still want to test it further, improve a few things, and make sure I haven’t missed any edge cases so I’ll be releasing the new site and opening video call registrations tomorrow.

Apologies for the two-day delay but the new site is going to remove the only remaining barrier we had to signing folks up which was the technical issues they were encountering while trying to add the Gaza Verified link to their profiles. That will now be done automatically and the flow is basically:

a. Enter your Mastodon server instance (e.g., mastodon.ar.al)
b. Press a button
c. Authorise Gaza Verified

And boom, you’re scheduled for a call.

💕

Richard Quinn

@rq4c@mastodon.world replied · 2 weeks ago

@aral

Thank you, Aral, for the brilliant work you are doing on this.

Aral Balkan

@aral@mastodon.ar.al replied · 2 weeks ago

@rq4c 💕

Γιανίρης

@iriyan@kolektiva.social replied · 2 weeks ago

Verified as in the ground in #Gaza and legitimately a Palestinian, not an Israeli nationalist.... OK

But please explain, if we send funds through 1 of the digital money transfer systems Israel is not blocking, how are the funds received and how are they utilized? Are babies dying from hunger and thirst and next door someone has water, food, medicine and IS SELLING IT in exchange for FUNDS?

Food, water, medical supply shortages are not the same as lack of funding for available resources. That is a political problem, for the hungry to solve against those guarding supplies.

If #Hamas did exist would they allow such practices (even if it is a middle east tradition to hustle for every bite of bread).

If you can't explain this then all this support and funding is going straight into IDF for arms and their benefit.

Please don't tell me you trust the integrity of Paypal or WesternUnion or that there are functional ATM networks in the rubble

@aral

Aral Balkan

@aral@mastodon.ar.al replied · 2 weeks ago

@iriyan Verified as in we know the person is Palestinian (because another Palestinian on the call, who is part of our team, has confirmed it based on their dialect and speaking with them) and either in Gaza (they showed us around outside on camera and either they are in Gaza or on a multi-million dollar Hollywood film set) or from Gaza and displaced elsewhere.

> But please explain, if we send funds through 1 of the digital money transfer systems Israel is not blocking, how are the funds received and how are they utilized? Are babies dying from hunger and thirst and next door someone has water, food, medicine and IS SELLING IT in exchange for FUNDS?…

Funds are received by the people running the fundraisers in the West and sent to their bank accounts.

A huge commission is charged by banks on the ground (~30% or so last I checked) and they get the rest. Yes, babies are dying from hunger and thirst and your donation means that maybe a baby doesn’t die next door. Yes, horrible people exist everywhere and Gaza is currently a right-libertarian paradise where the worst of humanity is profiteering from the genocide of their own people. And yet, still, you can either pontificate about it from your ivory tower or actually do something to try to help, no matter how small it is.

I really don’t know what you want me to say. I think you’re asking me to make you feel better about not helping.

If you don’t want to help, don’t. What you’re doing is worse than not helping. You’re wasting my time by demanding that I explain to you why it’s fine for you not to help.

So maybe at least don’t do that.

Satoru Hasegawa

@tsbasatoru@toot.blue replied · 2 weeks ago

@eslamradwan1_D_5

That coward has just block me.
I've wrote this but couldn't send:

Hey!
Gazans can't receive the money directly from the donation sites, so they have to find overseas collaborators and ask them as agents, and have to pay exorbitant fees to Gaza financiers before the money finally reaches them.
Today, a scum like you have made the same complaint against the Gazan.
@aral
has given a fitting response.
https://mastodon.ar.al/@aral/115842155823605317
Read it and shut your stinking mouth.
That's all.

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