Aid to the Children of Gaza

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This group's purpose is to organize and mobilize aid (food, clothing, medicine) and raise money for the children of Gaza

Location: global
Members: 656
Latest Activity: Sep 21, 2013

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This group's purpose is to organize and mobilize aid (food, clothing, medicine) and raise money for the children of Gaza.

This is an action group. Your donation and contribution is welcome.

First step - INVITE ALL YOUR FRIENDS TO THIS GROUP

Please join our Facebook Cause Aid to Gaza children

In facebook, where we are raising money, the beneficiary is currently MERCY CORPS a 501(c)(3) nonprofit

In 25 years of experience on the ground, Mercy Corps has learned that communities recovering from war or social upheaval must be the agents of their own transformation for change to endure. It's only when communities set their own agendas, raise their own resources, and implement programs themselves, that their first successes result in the renewed hope, confidence and skills to continue development independently.

Description: Since 1979, Mercy Corps has provided $1 billion in assistance to people in 82 nations. Supported by headquarters offices in North America, Europe, and Asia, the agency's unified global programs employ 2,700 staff worldwide and reach nearly 10 million people in more than 40 countries.

Mercy Corps pursues its mission through emergency relief services that assist people afflicted by conflict or disaster; through sustainable community development that integrates agriculture, health, housing and infrastructure, economic development, education and environment, and local management; and through civil society initiatives that promote citizen participation, accountability, conflict management, and the rule of law.

Wish to help the Children of Gaza?

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Please. No pictures. No propaganda. We know how grave the situation is and don't need to be reminded. (Please adhere to our guidelines) This is a focused action group. There's plenty space for posting your feelings, opinions and views about the war in iPeace, but not here. Please limit your comments here to the challenge at hand. Any other comment will be deleted

Make money donations HERE

A letter from Mercy Corp:

Thank you so much for thinking of Mercy Corps for your donations.

First of all, if your cause does choose to give the donations to Mercy Corps, I can assure you that all of that money will go to our programs in Gaza. We keep track of the individual causes that donate to Mercy Corps via Facebook to ensure that all funds go to the appropriate programs.

That being said, the majority of Mercy Corps' Gaza recovery programs target children. Our staff on the ground has found that the psychological toll on civilians, particularly children, has been enormous. Mercy Corps is in the process of transforming our psychosocial programs to address the specific needs of Gazan youth.

Currently, we are also working to help families with damaged homes to gain access to clean water and better shelter. We continue our work to distribute emergency relief items to 100,000 Gazans in need, but have shifted our focus to helping civilians rebuild their lives in the long term. In total, Mercy Corps has raised more than $2 million and secured $500K worth of material goods to support our efforts.

All of our Gazan recovery programs help children directly through the rebuilding of schools, food, shelter, and psychosocial programs -- or indirectly by helping parents rebuild homes and livelihoods.

Many thanks for thinking of us for your donations. Please let me know if I can answer any additional questions for you. Also, you can check out the latest Mercy Corps Gaza updates here: http://www.mercycorps.org/gazacrisis/

Leah Hazard

Internet Marketing Associate
Mercy Corps

www.mercycorps.org

Purchase iPeace T-shirt and help the Children of Gaza

$18

Organic Bethlehem Unisex iPeace Tee

Click to Purchase

Support the children of Gaza and peace in the Middle East. This beautiful design is from iPeace. $6 per T-shirt purchased will go to Mercy Corp's emergency humanitarian mission in Gaza.

This organic cotton T-shirt is produced at a sweatshop-free Palestinian owned factory on Virgin Mary Street in Bethlehem, West Bank. The workers are represented by the Palestinian Federation of Trade Unions.

Back design:

No Sweat

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Comment by Majed Abusalama on February 25, 2009 at 6:59pm: very beautiful to hear about all your Aid in jerusalem , iam very happy to hear about all of that and now in Gaza iam doing well with my working with the children, activites and festivals, i will distribute 3 continers with the italian people by the name is music for peace, come on and build the future , and iam ready to build the future with you in Gaza

peace, salam, shalom

Comment by Stephanie on February 25, 2009 at 1:20pm: Joanna
very interesting reading and very informative
thank you for sharing what I just read below.
Marvelous gesture the people going to Gaza -
Stephanie

Comment by Beatrice LATEUR LACROIX on February 24, 2009 at 7:57pm: Whet a marvelous information, Joanna. Thank you for telling us.
Compassion is a real power. Let us open our hearts and spirit to compassion and love.
Love and Peace.

Comment by Joanna Zilsel on February 24, 2009 at 7:39pm: PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Feb. 23, 2009 CONTACT
Medea Benjamin, CODEPINK co-founder, 415-235-6517
Jean Stevens, CODEPINK national media coordinator, 508-769-2138

50 international delegates to arrive in Gaza with gift baskets for Gazan women
Vows to camp on border if blocked, demand its opening

WHAT: 50 international delegates to camp out at Gaza border until allowed inside; plan to meet with women's groups, call for end to blockade
WHEN: March 6 to March 12, 2009
WHERE: March 6, leaving Cairo; March 7, Rafah, Egypt border crossing into Rafah, Gaza

WASHINGTON -- A 50-member international delegation will attempt to cross the Egyptian border into war-torn Gaza early next month, carrying 2,000 gift baskets to pay tribute to the women of Gaza on International Women's Day, March 8.

Set to depart Cairo March 6, the impressive delegation -- which includes acclaimed author Alice Walker, former state department official Ann Wright, CODEPINK co-founder Medea Benjamin and 47 others from around the world -- expects Egyptian authorities will allow them to cross into Gaza March 7. The delegation, organized by the U.S. women's peace group CODEPINK and coming at the invitation of the Gaza Gender Initiative of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), is the first delegation of its size and kind to attempt to enter Gaza since July 2007, when Israel imposed the blockade.

If Egyptian authorities deny the group's entrance, the group will camp out at the border until they get in, said delegation organizer Benjamin. Hundreds of aid workers, lawyers, and convoys carrying humanitarian aid have been denied entrance by Egyptian authorities at the Rafah border.

Once inside Gaza, the delegation will spend several days meeting with Palestinian women's groups, delivering aid to relief groups and witnessing the devastation from the 22-day Israeli invasion.

"We have not, as a planet, been seeking to change the world so that this insanity cannot continue," said delegate Alice Walker, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and poet. "Going to Gaza is our opportunity to express solidarity with the people there, to demonstrate the concern we feel each day for the suffering endured. To remind the people of Gaza and ourselves that we belong to the same world. We can bring our witness, one of life's strongest gifts."

The delegation will pay tribute to the women of Gaza on the United Nations' International Women's Day , which calls on the world to focus on the needs and contributions of women. CODEPINK felt inspired to dedicate the day to Gaza women just two months following the devastating Israeli assault on the occupied land that killed more than 1,300, including 437 children, and injured more than 5,000.

On February 20, CODEPINK put out a call to its members to help fund $10 gift baskets for the women of Gaza. In two days, the group collected enough donations to take gift baskets to 2,000 women.

"We have been overwhelmed by response toward our initiative," Benjamin said. "We thought we'd take 15 people on the delegation to Gaza and we have 50. We thought we'd take 200 gift baskets, and we're taking 2,000! American women feel tremendous compassion toward the women of Gaza and are ready for a U.S. policy based on respect for the human rights of all people in the region."

Benjamin and Wright returned from a trip to Gaza earlier this month where they witnessed the terrible devastation (read Wright's piece on her trip on Air America here . They found Gazans anxious to have foreign delegations visit, witness and learn about their plight and push for an end to the blockade.

"The Israeli attack came after 18 months of a crippling blockade that had already left the Palestinian population hungry, sick, weak, and suffering from a catastrophic situation," Wright said. "We must not only provide massive humanitarian aid, but lift the blockade that is keeping the people of Gaza under siege."

For more information and interviews, please call Medea Benjamin, CODEPINK co-founder, at 415-235-6517 or Jean Stevens, CODEPINK media coordinator, at 508-769-2138.

Comment by maryse on February 23, 2009 at 10:29am: Thankyou Johanna for this important letter. Here is a poster in Japanese for an event in Japan. It is on womans day and says charity for the children of Palestine. We will gather woman and children make origami, cards, crafts and collect gifts. We will make dream pillows with lavender and chamomille which gives good sleep and releives stress which we will send as well. Though we are not many and Japanese people do not have so much news about the Middle East, we will support as mothers and children for the people of Gaza.

Comment by Joanna Zilsel on February 23, 2009 at 8:26am: Please read the following article by Medea Benjamin, one of the organizers of the Gaza peace delegation I'll be a part of. She expresses magnificently my own thoughts and feelings.

To Gaza, With Love
by Medea Benjamin

When I traveled to Gaza last week, everywhere I went, a photo haunted me. I saw it in a brochure called "Gaza will not die" that Hamas gives out to visitors at the border crossing. A poster-sized version was posted outside a makeshift memorial at the Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. And now that I am back home, the image comes to me when I look at children playing in the park, when I glance at the school across the street, when I go to sleep at night.

It is a photo of a young Palestinian girl who is literally buried alive in the rubble from a bomb blast, with just her head protruding from the ruins. Her eyes are closed, her mouth partially open, as if she were in a deep sleep. Dried blood covers her lips, her cheeks, her hair. Someone with a glove is reaching down to touch her forehead, showing one final gesture of kindness in the midst of such inhumanity.

What was this little girl's name, I wonder. How old was she? Was she sleeping when the bomb hit her home? Did she die a quick death or a slow, agonizing one? Where are her parents, her siblings? How are they faring?

Of the 1,330 Palestinians killed by the Israeli military during the 22-day invasion of Gaza, 437 were children. Let me repeat that: 437 children-each as beautiful and precious as our own.

As a Jew, an American and a mother, I felt compelled to witness, firsthand, what my people and my taxdollars had done during this invasion. Visiting Gaza filled me with unbearable sadness. Unlike the primitive weapons of Hamas, the Israelis had so many sophisticated ways to murder, maim and destroy-unmanned drones, F-16s dropping "smart bombs" that miss, Apache helicopters launching missiles, tanks firing from the ground, ships shelling Gaza from the sea. So many horrific weapons stamped with Made in the USA. While Hamas' attacks on Israeli villages are deplorable, Israel's disproportionate response is unconscionable, with 1,330 Palestinians dead vs. 13 Israelis.

If the invasion was designed to destroy Hamas, it failed miserably. Not only is Hamas still in control, but it retains much popular support. If the invasion was designed as a form of collective punishment, it succeeded, leaving behind a trail of grieving mothers, angry fathers and traumatized children.

To get a sense of the devastation, check out a slide show circulating on the internet called Gaza: Massacre of Children (www.aztlan.net/gaza/gaza_massacre_of_children.php [1]). It should be required viewing for all who supported this invasion of Gaza. Babies charred like shish-kebabs. Limbs chopped off. Features melted from white phosphorus. Faces crying out in pain, gripped by fear, overcome by grief.

Anyone who can view the slides and still repeat the mantra that "Israel has the right to self-defense" or "Hamas brought this upon its own people," or worse yet, "the Israeli military didn't go far enough," does a horrible disservice not only to the Palestinian people, but to humanity.

Compassion, the greatest virtue in all major religions, is the basic human emotion prompted by the suffering of others, and it triggers a desire to alleviate that suffering. True compassion is not circumscribed by one's faith or the nationality of those suffering. It crosses borders; it speaks a universal language; it shares a common spirituality. Those who have suffered themselves, such as Holocaust victims, are supposed to have the deepest well of compassion.

The Israeli election was in full swing while was I visiting Gaza. As I looked out on the ruins of schools, playgrounds, homes, mosques and clinics, I recalled the words of Benjamin Netanyahu, "No matter how strong the blows that Hamas received from Israel, it's not enough." As I talked to distraught mothers whose children were on life support in a bombed hospital, I thought of the "moderate" woman in the race, Tzipi Livni, who vowed that she would not negotiate with Hamas, insisted that "terror must be fought with force and lots of force" and warned that "if by ending the operation we have yet to achieve deterrence, we will continue until they get the message."

"The message," I can report, has been received. It is a message that Israel is run by war criminals, that the lives of Palestinians mean nothing to them. Even more chilling is the pro-war message sent by the Israeli people with their votes for Netanyahu, Livni and anti-Arab racist Avigdor Lieberman.

How tragic that nation born out of the unspeakable horrors of the Holocaust has become a nation that supports the slaughter of Palestinians.

Here in the U.S., Congress ignored the suffering of the Palestinians and pledged its unwavering support for the Israeli state. All but five members out of 535 voted for a resolution justifying the invasion, falsely holding Hamas solely responsible for breaking the ceasefire and praising Israel for facilitating humanitarian aid to Gaza at a time when food supplies were rotting at the closed borders.

One glimmer of hope we found among people in Gaza was the Obama administration. Many were upset that Obama did not speak out during the invasion and that peace envoy George Mitchell, on his first trip to the Middle East, did not visit Gaza or even Syria. But they felt that Mitchell was a good choice and Obama, if given the space by the American people, could play a positive role.

Who can provide that space for Obama? Who can respond to the call for justice from the Palestinian people? Who can counter AIPAC, the powerful lobby that supports Israeli aggression?

An organized, mobilized, coordinated grassroots movement is the critical counterforce, and within that movement, those who have a particularly powerful voice are American Jews. We have the beginnings of a such a counterforce within the American Jewish community. Across the United States, Jews joined marches, sit-ins, die-ins, even chained themselves to Israeli consulates in protest. Jewish groups like J Street and Brit Tzedek v'Shalom lobby for a diplomatic solution. Tikkun organizes for a Jewish spiritual renewal grounded in social justice. The Middle East Children's Alliance and Madre send humanitarian aid to Palestine. Women in Black hold compelling weekly vigils. American Jews for a Just Peace plants olive trees on the West Bank. Jewish Voice for Peace promotes divestment from corporations that profit from occupation. Jews Against the Occupation calls for an end to U.S. aid to Israel.

We need greater coordination among these groups and within the broader movement. And we need more people and more sustained involvement, especially Jewish Americans. In loving memory of our ancestors and for the future of our-and Palestinian-children, more American Jews should speak out and reach out. As Sholom Schwartzbard, a member of Jews Against the Occupation, explained at a New York City protest, "We know from our own history what being sealed behind barbed wire and checkpoints is like, and we know that ‘Never Again' means not anyone, not anywhere - or it means nothing at all."

On March 7, I will return to Gaza with a large international delegation, bringing aid but more importantly, pressuring the Israeli, U.S. and Egyptian governments to open the borders and lift the siege. Many members of the delegation are Jews. We will travel in the spirit of tikkun olam, repairing the world, but with a heavy sense of responsibility, shame and yes, compassion. We will never be able to bring back to life the little girl buried in the rubble. But we can-and will--hold her in our hearts as we bring a message from America and a growing number of American Jews: To Gaza, With Love.

For information about joining the trip to Gaza, contact gaza.codepink@gmail.com [2].
Medea Benjamin (medea@globalexchange.org [3]) is cofounder of Global Exchange (www.globalexchange.org [4]) and CODEPINK: Women for Peace (www.codepinkalert.org [5]).

Comment by Wanda Wilson on February 22, 2009 at 3:35pm: Thanks for sharing the link peaceactivist. I've added it to my FB page as well.

Comment by Wanda Wilson on February 22, 2009 at 3:26pm: WOW Joanna! What an opportunity - hope all goes well. Sending good thoughts...

Comment by Tony on February 22, 2009 at 2:52pm: Hey allright Joanna that sounds like quite an ooportunity to help out Much Love and Respect to you as well as prayers going out to offer protection for you while you are on you journey~tony

Comment by Joanna Zilsel on February 22, 2009 at 9:04am: I have very exciting news! I will be part of an international peace delegation--mostly women from the USA, but others from around the world--who will be arriving at the Egyptian town of Rafah on March 7th, seeing entry in to Gaza. Our purpose is to offer support of whatever kind we can to the women and children of Gaza. Three of the women organizers, from a peace group called CODE PINK, were in Gaza briefly a few weeks ago, and have a number of contacts there. If we aren't allowed to enter Gaza, we will set up camp at the border with banners and posters etc. A huge caravan of trucks carrying supplies (food, medical etc) from England is scheduled to arrive at the same time. I am very excited, somewhat scared, and not quite able to believe this is really happening, as it all came together very quickly. I will keep you posted with more news as I get it!