This is a refreshed megathread for any posts on the conflict between (so far, and so far as I know) Hamas and the Israeli government, as well as related geopolitics. Culture War thread rules apply.
If I want to help the ordinary Gazans caught in the middle of the airstrikes, but really didn't want to provide any military aid to Hamas, what would be a good charitable organisation to donate to?
Here are some charities dedicated to providing medical supplies and treatment:
One of the main Gazan hospitals, Al-Ahli Arab Hospital, is ran by the Episcopalian church in Jerusalem, and it looks like you can email the Episcopalians to specify that you wish to donate towards providing medical aid for Gazans rather than a general donation that might go to religious services and the like: https://j-diocese.org/wordpress/healthcare-3/
An anti-war and anti-occupation Israeli I am acquainted with recommended Medical Aid for Palestinians and said they're running a lot of relief work: https://www.map.org.uk/
I think this is basically impossible given the priorities and practices of Hamas.
Anything of value will be traded, repurposed, or melted down for weapons. Pipes will become rockets. Food will be stockpiled in bunkers while civilians starve. Medicine will be traded to various unscrupulous parties. Hamas is in control of whatever you send to Gaza and Hamas does not share your concern for ordinary Gazans.
I’d think your best bet might be Christian charitable organizations that were already operating inside of Gaza prior to the conflict. The hospital that famously had something happen to it a few weeks ago (not interested in litigating what happened or by whom) is run by the Anglicans, for example.
IDF. The sooner and thorougher they finish eradicating Hamas, the sooner the Palestinians life will start improving.
Edit: Not a satire or sarcasm. Hamas has entagled all military and civilian spaces so that enormous civilian casualties are unavoidable, hamas has made the life of any palestinian in the gaza strip hell, hamas made the coexisting of Israel and Hamas impossible (how israel helped creating hamas is matter for another time), the best way to save palestinians is to help Hamas lose.
I second this. Until Hamas is eradicated there is nothing you can do to not indirectly aid Hamas. Even if you could e.g. give money to a charity to provide food with a 100% guarantee the money would be used on bread and cheese instead of weapons this would still free up money for Hamas to move from providing food for the civilians to weapons instead.
For an example consider a situation where Hamas spends $10 million a year on food and $10 million a year on weapons, where Gaza needs $20 million of food a year (the other $10 million of food comes from current charity). If you donate $1 million to charity so that Gaza is getting $11 million of food from charity Hamas now only needs to spend $9 million to sort of feed its population, which has just freed up an extra $1 million for them to use on weapons instead of food.
The net result of your charitable donation is that the Gazans get the same amount of food they were getting before but Hamas has more money to spend on rockets.
I understand this is a toy example with numbers pulled out of thin air, but as far as I can tell, Hamas spends nothing on feeding civilians and leaves that as a problem for others to solve. And then steals the aid when it comes in.
Not facetious. There are no organizations there which are independent and which can guard their resources and supplies from Hamas. So whatever you send - Hamas will have dibs on it. And there is absolutely nothing in the way Hamas has acted so far that indicates that they will put the wellbeing of the civilians that they use as human shields instead of that of their members.
There may be organizations that are honest and will help but they will be working with the displaced civilians in Egypt, not with the ones in the cross fire.
There are no organizations there which are independent and which can guard their resources and supplies from Hamas. So whatever you send - Hamas will have dibs on it.
Again, as with other discussions, I think it is important to remember that Hamas is the local government. Any goal that starts with "help Palestinians, but not Hamas" is going to be very difficult, on par with a 1943 mission to "help Germans, but not Nazis" or an 1864 plan to "help Southerners, not the Confederacy". While it's possible to thread the needle to some extent, the damage being done to the Nazi and Confederate institutions and civilians with blockades and economic warfare were part of plans being used by the putative good guys, not an accidental bug that we just needed the Red Cross to workaround. Trying to break those blockades and deliver food supplies to enemy civilians has pretty obvious inherent problems associated with it.
If someone just wants to see Hamas win, OK, I guess that's a stance. But really, the "help Palestinians, but not Hamas" position is not just trivially good.
I appreciate that my question was not one with an obvious and straightforward answer, and it's a problem any time you want to assist the populace suffering under a corrupt and despotic regime (even if the populace should have known better than to vote said regime into power).
But all that being said, I feel like there were more constructive responses to the question available than "give your money to the IDF so they can have an easier time bombing Gaza into the stone age lol lol lmao". I think it should have been abundantly obvious that when I say I'm looking for an organisation to which to direct charitable donations, that precludes the armed forces (unless they're involved in peacekeeping, which the IDF obviously are not).
I was mildly tempted to respond with "donate to the IDF" myself, but for better or worse I restrained myself since I could clearly see that that wasn't in the spirit of what you sought, even if I think it's true.
I suppose it depends on how much risk you're willing to take that supplies bought with your money will be misused, barring something particularly specific like a charity that hands out tampons, I suspect that it's going to get yoinked, and in that specific example, intentionally. (Russian conscripts were given tampons and pads by their families when bandages were in short supply, but sadly a material made for soaking up blood isn't very good at staunching a bleed)
Keep in mind that even benign items can be seized and sold on the market for money, and I doubt Hamas has many qualms in that regard. Besides, the IDF isn't particularly funding constrained, at least within the range of any potential donations you might make, unless you're a billionaire I suppose.
Not /u/Lizzardspawn, but that's basically what it boils down to. Until the IDF restores something like a 21st century notion of civilized order, helping Palestinians is nearly impossible.
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Notes -
If I want to help the ordinary Gazans caught in the middle of the airstrikes, but really didn't want to provide any military aid to Hamas, what would be a good charitable organisation to donate to?
Non-facetious answers only, please.
Here are some charities dedicated to providing medical supplies and treatment:
One of the main Gazan hospitals, Al-Ahli Arab Hospital, is ran by the Episcopalian church in Jerusalem, and it looks like you can email the Episcopalians to specify that you wish to donate towards providing medical aid for Gazans rather than a general donation that might go to religious services and the like: https://j-diocese.org/wordpress/healthcare-3/
An anti-war and anti-occupation Israeli I am acquainted with recommended Medical Aid for Palestinians and said they're running a lot of relief work: https://www.map.org.uk/
Doctors Without Borders is also providing aid, is helping out the hospital mentioned above, and while they were forced to pull most of their staff out of Gaza, they are preparing to go back in: https://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/latest/our-response-israel-gaza-war
Thank you very much.
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I think this is basically impossible given the priorities and practices of Hamas.
Anything of value will be traded, repurposed, or melted down for weapons. Pipes will become rockets. Food will be stockpiled in bunkers while civilians starve. Medicine will be traded to various unscrupulous parties. Hamas is in control of whatever you send to Gaza and Hamas does not share your concern for ordinary Gazans.
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I don't think there is one. As far as I can tell the situation is logistics-constrained rather than funding-constrained.
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I’d think your best bet might be Christian charitable organizations that were already operating inside of Gaza prior to the conflict. The hospital that famously had something happen to it a few weeks ago (not interested in litigating what happened or by whom) is run by the Anglicans, for example.
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IDF. The sooner and thorougher they finish eradicating Hamas, the sooner the Palestinians life will start improving.
Edit: Not a satire or sarcasm. Hamas has entagled all military and civilian spaces so that enormous civilian casualties are unavoidable, hamas has made the life of any palestinian in the gaza strip hell, hamas made the coexisting of Israel and Hamas impossible (how israel helped creating hamas is matter for another time), the best way to save palestinians is to help Hamas lose.
I second this. Until Hamas is eradicated there is nothing you can do to not indirectly aid Hamas. Even if you could e.g. give money to a charity to provide food with a 100% guarantee the money would be used on bread and cheese instead of weapons this would still free up money for Hamas to move from providing food for the civilians to weapons instead.
For an example consider a situation where Hamas spends $10 million a year on food and $10 million a year on weapons, where Gaza needs $20 million of food a year (the other $10 million of food comes from current charity). If you donate $1 million to charity so that Gaza is getting $11 million of food from charity Hamas now only needs to spend $9 million to sort of feed its population, which has just freed up an extra $1 million for them to use on weapons instead of food.
The net result of your charitable donation is that the Gazans get the same amount of food they were getting before but Hamas has more money to spend on rockets.
I understand this is a toy example with numbers pulled out of thin air, but as far as I can tell, Hamas spends nothing on feeding civilians and leaves that as a problem for others to solve. And then steals the aid when it comes in.
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Is that "because of the bombs" or "because Hamas uses hospitals as human shields for military bases"?
The lack of anesthesia would presumably be because of neither but rather the total blockade that Israel has imposed.
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Not looking for a facetious answer, thank you.
Not facetious. There are no organizations there which are independent and which can guard their resources and supplies from Hamas. So whatever you send - Hamas will have dibs on it. And there is absolutely nothing in the way Hamas has acted so far that indicates that they will put the wellbeing of the civilians that they use as human shields instead of that of their members.
There may be organizations that are honest and will help but they will be working with the displaced civilians in Egypt, not with the ones in the cross fire.
Again, as with other discussions, I think it is important to remember that Hamas is the local government. Any goal that starts with "help Palestinians, but not Hamas" is going to be very difficult, on par with a 1943 mission to "help Germans, but not Nazis" or an 1864 plan to "help Southerners, not the Confederacy". While it's possible to thread the needle to some extent, the damage being done to the Nazi and Confederate institutions and civilians with blockades and economic warfare were part of plans being used by the putative good guys, not an accidental bug that we just needed the Red Cross to workaround. Trying to break those blockades and deliver food supplies to enemy civilians has pretty obvious inherent problems associated with it.
If someone just wants to see Hamas win, OK, I guess that's a stance. But really, the "help Palestinians, but not Hamas" position is not just trivially good.
I appreciate that my question was not one with an obvious and straightforward answer, and it's a problem any time you want to assist the populace suffering under a corrupt and despotic regime (even if the populace should have known better than to vote said regime into power).
But all that being said, I feel like there were more constructive responses to the question available than "give your money to the IDF so they can have an easier time bombing Gaza into the stone age lol lol lmao". I think it should have been abundantly obvious that when I say I'm looking for an organisation to which to direct charitable donations, that precludes the armed forces (unless they're involved in peacekeeping, which the IDF obviously are not).
I was mildly tempted to respond with "donate to the IDF" myself, but for better or worse I restrained myself since I could clearly see that that wasn't in the spirit of what you sought, even if I think it's true.
I suppose it depends on how much risk you're willing to take that supplies bought with your money will be misused, barring something particularly specific like a charity that hands out tampons, I suspect that it's going to get yoinked, and in that specific example, intentionally. (Russian conscripts were given tampons and pads by their families when bandages were in short supply, but sadly a material made for soaking up blood isn't very good at staunching a bleed)
Keep in mind that even benign items can be seized and sold on the market for money, and I doubt Hamas has many qualms in that regard. Besides, the IDF isn't particularly funding constrained, at least within the range of any potential donations you might make, unless you're a billionaire I suppose.
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If you had said that to start with, I'd have had no objection.
Not /u/Lizzardspawn, but that's basically what it boils down to. Until the IDF restores something like a 21st century notion of civilized order, helping Palestinians is nearly impossible.
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