The Never-ending storm
An endless nightmare in Gaza
I woke up to this video of Nada desperately helping Mahmoud hold down their tent in a storm.
They managed to keep the tent from flying away. I was sure not everyone in Gaza was so lucky and he sent this to give an idea of what the neighborhood looks like.
The excellent article gives an overview of how damaging the recent closures of the crossing were, and it could have been written about Mahmoud and his daily dilemmas. It all keeps reminding me of those months just after the creation of the Warsaw Ghetto, what it was like for the Jews inside as food supplies dwindled, increasingly dependent on smugglers, until those black marker heroes were caught, and shot or deported. That the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of those who did survive that horror should be doing this to another people is the most bitter irony of history so full of them.
https://www.972mag.com/gaza-closures-israel-iran-war/https://www.972mag.com/gaza-closures-israel-iran-war/
It explains why I have had to send more money for him to buy the same amount of food.
It looks like a chunk of my settlement will be here in the next couple of weeks. It will pay down my credit cards by about 80%. I will look into again the possibility of buying Mahmoud solar panels off of which he could make a living by selling electricity. I was so hoping by now ATMs would have returned so we wouldn’t have to go through those ruinous brokers, but that doesn’t seem to be happening. I will probably ask for one last contribution from anyone who has contributed — but I have to reconfirm price and availability. The other possibility is that he pays a barber for training, in exchange for which the barber would take him on. That would be much less expensive. Mahmoud is looking into it. (That had been the plan before he was forced to evacuate from the last house he rented, but he has no idea where that barber is now.)
I have to make him financially independent somehow. I can’t turn my back on them, but this is really unsustainable for another year.
MCO 2026