Go Fund Me Has Frozen Donations to the Al Tafawk Children’s Centre in Response to Israel’s Attacks on Jenin – all Palestine solidarity Activists Should Boycott GFM
For nearly five years, from April 2020 until the
present day, The Brighton Trust
has run a crowdfunder
on the Go Fund Me platform for the Al
Tafawk Children’s Centre in Jenin. In fact we have been raising money
for the Centre since December 2018.
It made sense originally to transfer our haphazard
appeals to a Crowdfunder and GFM seemed as good as any. In that time we have
raised over £65,000 of which GFM took approximately 3%.
In recent years all payments from the crowdfunder
have gone via PayPal’s charitable arm. It was a convenient and simple way of
raising money. For nearly 5 years the appeal ran without a hitch.
Indeed the major problem we had in the past year or
so was transferring money to the Centre. Originally we had done this via
Western Union but since Israel smashed up their offices in Jenin this had not
been possible. We were relying on couriers at one stage.
Go Fund Me is a billion dollar American corporation and I was
under no illusions that one day it might pull the plug. This is exactly what
has happened. Fortunately I made preparations for what might happen by taking
care to collect donors emails.
On
5 January 25, out of the Blue, ‘The GFM team’ sent me an email which couldn’t
even get my name right. It was clearly disingenuous. It began thanking me ‘for your efforts
to help those affected by the conflict in the Middle East.’ Jenin is under occupation by the Israeli state. It is
not part of a ‘conflict’ in the Middle East.
The email then said that ‘Due
to recent developments within the region’ presumably Israel’s Genocide in
Gaza,
we’re
carefully reviewing fundraisers related to this conflict. This is an important
step to help ensure fundraisers are in compliance with all applicable laws and
strictly enforced policies from our payment partners and our Terms of Service.
A totally
meaningless word salad.
‘Because of this, we’ve temporarily placed your fundraiser under
review as we gather more information on your plan to help those abroad. [their
emphasis] During this review, although transfers from your fundraiser are
paused, your fundraiser remains visible to the public and can continue to
receive new donations.
In other words it
would continue to accept money but it wouldn’t pay it out. It gave no reason
for freezing our funds.
The email then
proceeded to ask a series of questions, the answers to most of which they
already had when I set up the
Crowdfunder and some of which were none of their business. A clue to the real
purpose of the attack on the Crowdfunder was in the additional question which
asked:
‘if the funds raised will be used for
exit/evacuation purposes, please also provide the following:
A detailed
plan on how the funds will be used to ensure a secure departure out of Gaza. If
available, please include the full names of any known coordinators,
organizations, travel agents/agencies, or regions that may be involved in the
passage.
It
finished off by saying that ‘To complete
our review, we need a direct response from you as soon as possible.’ The following day I sent an answer to their
questions, with an accompanying message
I have now drawn up my response
to your email. In view of the genocide taking place in Gaza (please don't
play with words) and the settler and military terror that has descended on the
West Bank in the past year, which is entirely to do with settlers wanting to
displace the native Palestinians, I find it difficult to judge your email in a
neutral manner.
Your email has a hidden
agenda and is not simply an information seeking exercise. Nonetheless I have
supplied all the info that you requested.
Back came
a response from ‘Brad’ of GFM Team asking a further set of questions and
completely ignoring my response to the first set of questions. It talked about keeping your account safe when the only
people endangering it were GFM.
‘Brad’ asked for Al Tafawk’s ‘beneficial ownership structure’ and ‘If any individuals have a 25% stake or greater in the organization, please also provide their full legal name.’ As if the Al Tafawk Children’s Centre was some piece of real estate in Manhattan rather than a wobbly building in the middle of a refugee camp. What possible reason would GFM have for asking this kind of information unless they were passing it on to the Israelis or their American sponsors?
GFM clearly had a hidden agenda which they were
intent on not revealing. I responded refusing to answer their stupid and illiterate
questions. Instead I made it clear that Jenin is under military occupation. It
is not a sleepy town in America’s mid-West. Normal civil society norms don’t
pertain in such a situation.
By this time I had decided that GFM were highly
unlikely to restore the Crowdfunder and even if they did I wasn’t sure we
wanted to continue with this racist US Corporate Scum. So I set up a new Crowdfunder with Chuffed,
which I encourage people to contribute to. The situation in Jenin is not good.
Whether there will even be a children’s centre to go back to after Israel has
finished what it is doing in the Jenin Refugee Camp is open to question.
Three times in the past three years Israel has entered the Al Tafawk Centre and wrecked it. The first time was in July 2021, (see Question asked about this in the House of Lords). The second time was in November 2023 and the third time more recently when it also cut the power cables to the Centre in order to ensure that the children would freeze in the winter.
It has been very difficult to find out the exact
situation in Jenin and in particular the Al Tafawk Centre. I have had messages
from the headteacher Mona at the Centre, who along with her family has been
evicted from her home.
On Mon, 20 Jan 2025 at 10:45, Mona wrote:
Dear
Tony
Didnt
hear from you since awhile hope u are ok. Here the situation is more and more
strict from both sides ! The Israeli helicopters over us all the time ready to
bomb ! We are still able to be in the center in the mornings
Again
hope you are ok
Wednesday 22 January 2025
The
words couldnt really describe the horrible situation we are facing here….
Hundreds of people cant survive inside the camp
My
father is missed from yesterday … we are here taking people and children who
kicked from the camp
Mater
is Arrested"
Thu
23 Jan, 04:35
Dear Tony
I cant go to the bank right now! People are kicked
from the camp ! They arrested all the men nacked for unknown places and we as
women and children collected and stay in one place ! As now the center is still
standing ! I gave karen my sister number if something bad happen to me ! But be
sure the center is still there ! WE NEED YOUR VOICE TO SHOUT FOR ALL OF US TONY.
WE are facing things we never believed could happen .
Mona
Fri 24 Jan, 11:35
Tony sadly the news is very
bad
We are (the families surround the
camp) kicked from homes but we are not allowed to go farther about 200 people
don't have a place. But there are a lot familes and children inside and use the
center
Thank you very much we cant reach
the bank right now . Things are really horrible. We lost the connection with my
father .
While we were walking outside we
had to be each 5 people together and made picture for each one and then they
arrested randomly or
Send us to a place they decide.
MichaEL
11:38 25 Jan 25
Yesterday Mona informed me via
WhatsApp that her family was forcibly evicted from their home in the Jenin Camp
as part of the current IDF operation in Jenin. Mona's father is now missing.
Her brother has been arrested.
Today Mona informed me that she
and her family are in a 'safer place' near the camp, so presumably outside the
camp itself. Mona said that she herself is "very sick" but she didn't
go into detail. Possibly from all the stress.
So it is uncertain whether Mona
and her family will be able to return to the camp, let alone reopen her
Children's Centre. I hope you can help her in some way to give her some hope of
opening her Centre again, if not in Jenin then somewhere else in Palestine.
Mona
Jalamnh
16:26 25th January
2025
Dear Tony
I got inflammation from the gaze when we were going out side the camp . The situation is more than awful . There are too much people couldn't go out with us cause the ways are horrible so we lost connection with the families who are inside . I am staying near by the camp and we are not allowed to move farther . We called the ambulance to move me to hospital but sadly they are not allowed to come to the place me and my family . I didn't expect this . I will update you. We are here moving from home to other home with the children and women .who could leave with us
See my articles in Al Jazeera
Why
did Israel raid and wreck a children’s centre in Jenin? – 5 July 2021
Palestinian
children in the West Bank are also under attack – 14 Nov 2023
Today the situation in Jenin is horrendous as you
can gauge from the articles below.
Hundreds
flee Jenin amid Israel’s deepening West Bank crackdown
At
least 10 killed, dozens wounded in Israeli attacks across Jenin
Security
operations in Jenin put spotlight on Palestinian Authority
It is clear that with the advent of the Trump
Presidency Netanyahu and his far-right government intend to proceed to not only
the annexation of the West Bank but a policy of subjugation and ethnic
cleansing. Settler terror, aided and abetted by the Israeli army, is the rule
now in the West Bank. Trump has withdrawn even the pathetically puny sanctions
on violent settlers that Biden imposed.
How this plays out with ‘normalisation’ with the
Saudi regime is anyone’s guess but I suspect that in the end we can rely on Saudi
Arabia’s Mohammed Bin Salman to sell the Palestinians out. The Saud’s have no
loyalty except to the American dollar.
Jenin was first softened up by the Quisling
Palestinian Authority forces, which are funded by the West. It is a
disgrace that Britain’s Palestine Solidarity Campaign has refused so far to
call them out for what they are. The Anti-Apartheid Movement in this country
never failed to call out a similar force in South Africa under Apartheid, Mangosuthu
Buthelezi’s Inkatha Freedom
Party which also attacked the liberation movement.
Although we are now in Phase 1 of the ceasefire it
is highly unlikely that it will proceed to Phases 2 and 3. Netanyahu has
already promised the fascist and ‘proud homophobe’ Bezalel Smotrich, the
Finance Minister and Gauleiter of the West Bank, and his Religious Zionism party,
that war in Gaza will be resumed. Zionism is now off the leash and it is clear
that by themselves the Palestinians are not strong enough to throw them back,
despite the magnificent resistance in Gaza to date which has resulted in a
situation whereby the resistance forces and Hamas are now estimated
to be as strong today as they were 15 months ago.
Israel is the only state in the world not to have defined
borders. We saw what that meant with the fall of Assad when Israel promptly invaded
Syria, grabbing more land and bombing Syrian forces All of which happened without one word of
criticism from the West’s leaders who only wake up when, as happened on October
7th, the Palestinians strike back.
Vladimir Jabotinsky - founder of the Revisionist Zionist movement
But if it was Syria today then we can be sure that
if Israel succeeds in ethnically cleansing the Palestinians of the West Bank or
subduing them that the Jordanian border will be the next place where Israel will
feel bound to exercise its ‘right to self-defence’. After all the original slogan
of the Revisionist Zionists was ‘the West Bank is ours and the East Bank too.’
It is long overdue for the Arab working class and
the Arab street to wake up and remove the corrupt and repressive leaders of
their countries who have squandered their oil wealth propping up the economy of
the United States and the West.
Tony Greenstein
