“A Form of Resistance Towards Liberation” - Hala Sabbah on The Sameer Project

Jay: Welcome to Millennials Are Killing Capitalism. This is Jay. In this episode, we speak with Hala Sabah about the work of the Samir Project and their various initiatives providing tents, food, water, milk, medical aid, diapers, and cash aid to Palestinians surviving amid the U.S.-backed Zionist-enacted genocide in Gaza. We're going to close the year by making a $50 contribution to Samir Project, and we encourage our listeners to give as well if you can, or boost their incredible work, which you can see examples of on their Instagram and Twitter feeds, which we will link in the show description. In this conversation, Hala discusses their campaigns, responds to criticisms from the Western left of mutual aid in times of genocide, talks about creative initiatives that groups like Workshops for Gaza are using to direct resources to the Samir Project, and discusses some of their ideas for the day after a ceasefire. We also talk about some of the ways the Samir Project's model differs from the approaches taken by large NGOs operating in Gaza, whose work is not grounded in the horizon of Palestinian liberation. We'll include links to the Samir Project and workshops for Gaza. Please consider groups like these as you think about your last-minute holiday shopping or places to direct funds if you receive money this holiday season. We also had a previous conversation with Hala on our YouTube channel, which we will link in the show description, where we covered some other topics relating to their work. We do plan to release a few more audio episodes as we close out 2024, but we just want to thank everyone for their support of our work during this year. All right, Hala, welcome back to Millennials Are Killing Capitalism. I'm honored to have you here again to have another conversation with you about your work with the SMEAR project. We did one on the video side a few months back. I don't want to presume that too many folks saw that. I know that more folks will be listening to this than saw that conversation, but we'll link that one as well for folks who want to check that out. But Just introduce yourself to our audience again and talk about kind of the origin point for Samir Project and how it got started.

Hala Sabbah: Sure. Thank you so much for having me, Jared. So my name is Hala Sabah. I'm Palestinian and my mother is from Deir el-Balah in Gaza. And I've been involved in mutual aid since December 2023. I've worked with some family members and people on the ground to provide aid and support to people who were displaced from early on. And over a few months, obviously, the genocide did not end and the need continued to increase. So in April, I joined forces with a translating Palestinian who has a large platform and a large network on the ground in Gaza, as well as Lina al-Dajani, a Palestinian who's based in California in the U.S., And Mira, my cousin, who experienced the first three months of the genocide and evacuated in December 2023. And the four of us started the Samir Project after Mira's father, who passed away shortly after she left Gaza. He died in Gaza in January 2024, and we called it the Samir Project to honor him. The beginning of this project was focused on tents as there was a mass displacement in Rafah in May. with almost a million people being displaced. So we focused on providing tents and money for transport. And over time, our projects developed. We do quite a bit in both the north and the south in terms of aid. That includes community kitchens, water trucks, diapers, formula, clothes, shoes, and so much more, tarps. And we've been doing that since April till today.

Jay: Yeah, it's amazing work. And I know we'll link all your social media, but you all share just amazing videos every day of what's going on in Gaza and the work that you're doing there too. So talk a little bit about the campaigns that you're currently running and a little bit about how they've kind of developed over time.

Hala Sabbah: So in July this year, we decided to open a camp for children who are extremely sick and have been prematurely discharged from hospitals because of overcrowding and need to evacuate but are waiting for evacuation. Okay. Since the Rafah border closed on May 6th, until today, less than 600 children have evacuated for treatment. When you have a list of 14,000 children who are on the verge of death, that's like nothing. So we opened this camp and we named it after Rafat al-Arair, one of the biggest intellectuals and writers from Gaza, who was also martyred last year by the occupation. This camp opened in the south and has around 25 families currently, but they rotate according to whether they evacuate or they need to relocate. And we do initiatives in the south according to what's available. So we don't really have a streamlined process where we know what we're buying ahead of time. It's whatever is available at the time. If we have a good price, if we have a liquidity, then we just purchase. So the key things that we purchase are tents, food packages, diapers, formula. tarps, so things like that, shoes for children, clothes. And we purchase in bulk. We do not provide to specific families. We have agreements with camps. So we go into camps and distribute according to their lists. So if let's say we finish 100 families in camp X, then the next time we get aid, we give the next 100 families. So we've created kind of our own system within the chaos. And as for the north, the north situation is quite different because there are 400,000 people, whereas in the south you have almost a million and a half. And in the north, they're quite spread out. So they're not crammed in small camps as the situation is in the south. So in the north, the challenge that we saw that there were specific areas where people refused to leave and they are, quote unquote, seen as dangerous, although even the safe zones are deemed as dangerous. And aid organizations refused to go to these areas. So what we decided to do is to provide consistency and predictability to the people who live in those areas by providing regular water trucks and community kitchens. And now there has been a siege on Jabalia for over 70 days. So some people are being displaced. Um... And this displacement has created new areas that are not really covered by organizations. So actually, in the last two months, we've expanded our work quite a lot in the north to try and cover all these different areas. We also got quite involved with schools in the north by providing backpacks, notebooks. We also provide some food for the kids in these educational tents. And yeah, and our work changes. It changes every month according to what's available and what the situation is.

Jay: Yeah, thank you. So you started to address this a little bit, but talk about some of the gaps in like what NGOs are doing and aren't doing in Gaza and how you kind of try to fit in to fill some of those gaps and also, you know, some things that differentiate the work that you're doing from what NGOs are doing currently in Gaza.

Hala Sabbah: Yeah, so the presence of NGOs is quite low. We have ANARWA, who's still present, World Food Programme, World Central Kitchen, ANERA as the key ones, and then you have the ones that focus on evacuating children like HEAL and PCRF. Now, the challenge that comes with these NGOs is that, first of all, they have huge funding, right? Like they have a lot of money. We're talking about hundreds of millions of dollars. However, their work is super bureaucratic and they do normalize and talk to the occupation. So they do have relationships with Kogat. And what we are finding strange on the ground, especially over the last two months, so since around October. is that the food in the south, where there's a million and a half people, has decreased drastically. So if we had, let's say, I think I've mentioned this the last time, that prior to the genocide, there used to be around 500 trucks coming in per day to Gaza, because there was a siege, right, for 17 years. And then when the genocide started, it dwindled down to around 120 trucks per day for all of Gaza. And then in October, there were days where no trucks came in at all. And if some trucks came in, it would be 50 trucks. So famine is a fact right now in the south of Gaza. And what's quite shocking is that you have organizations like World Food Program having trucks full of flour that are just locked up in the middle of Gaza and not understanding why, right? World Central Kitchen is also extremely problematic. They had three of their people get killed, targeted in a car just a couple of weeks ago. May their souls rest in peace. And the occupation has accused them of being connected to the resistance to Hamas. And World Central Kitchen... has these people working for very little wages during a genocide where they are impacted, their families are impacted, they are exhausted, they are highly traumatized. And their first response on social media was, we did not know that they were involved on October 7th. So not providing... even condolences to their own team members. Just, I think that is very telling about what these NGOs care about. They don't care about Gazans. They don't care about feeding people. They don't care about supporting us during a genocide. They are doing this because it's part of their colonial narrative of look at us, we are the heroes who are feeding these poor little brown children, right? The goal of these NGOs is not the liberation of Palestine. The goal of these NGOs is not to end colonization. The goal of these NGOs is to numb people and to control people by hanging the food and then making these people do whatever they want to get that food. And I find that really problematic. And I believe that all of these INGOs and NGOs that are working in Gaza, regardless of the intentions of individuals, are extremely problematic. I think the key challenge with the NGOs right now is Well, they are extremely submissive to the occupation. So instead of advocating for more food and more aid going in, they have hundreds of trucks lined up both in Kerem Shalom and in the Tarafah border. They should be furious. They should be issuing statements. They should be issuing sanctions towards the occupation for this kind of behavior. So I think from an advocacy level, they fail. And I think that's part of their framework. They are not, again, they're not there for our liberation or for our sake. Whereas when you zoom into the ground, I think the issue is that there is no equity in terms of distribution, right? So I'll give an example. I'll go to mental health, for example. Some of these INGOs provided people with five sessions of therapy, 45 minutes to an hour. Now, when you have someone who's lost their whole family, who's lost their home, who's lost their sense of safety, who is extremely traumatized and doesn't even have the luxury to process any of that or to even experience PTSD, and you tell that person to come in, spend five hours with a therapist, start to build trust, open Pandora's box, allow that person to open up to their feelings, and then suddenly you pull it away from them, right? How do you expect that that person feels? And then you as an organization, as an INGO, go onto your website and you say 92% success in mental health projects in Benghazan. It's extremely, to be honest with you, extremely disgusting. Extremely disgusting that your statistics, what you're showing your donors, what you're showing the world is more important than the feelings of those people who are experiencing a genocide that you as an INGO are enabling. And I have hundreds of examples like that. And what's fascinating is that people on the ground in Gaza are ultra aware about this. And when we talk about INGOs and NGOs and people who started working in Gaza on this genocide with no humanitarian background, no understanding of the region, no understanding of the language, no understanding of the context, The people in Gazalaf, they tell me, you know, this is not our first rodeo. These INGOs and foreign non-Palestinians who come and interfere during bombings, they've killed us in every war in 2014 and 2011 and then in the 90s. So this is not something that people are unaware of.

Jay: So talk a little bit about what keeps you and your team going. I mean, obviously, there's the very real... I imagine some of this answer is just that these are your people, right? These are your family and your friends, and that there's just a very real connection that you can't do anything else to some extent. But also, I do know that... Doing this has to be incredibly taxing and stressful and just emotionally difficult to do day in and day out. And you all are not, you know, big salaried people with a lot of overhead, you know, making money doing this or anything that. And part of why I ask, too, is that I have a sense that many people, you know, they struggle to remain committed emotionally. in, you know, as this keeps going, right, as this continues on and on. And there's a tendency to kind of at some point kind of want to look away, right, or go back to normal. And obviously, this is a privilege that is only available to those of us who are far enough removed from it that we can actually go on about our lives in a Just talk a little bit about how you deal with this and what keeps yourself and others around you kind of motivated and maybe how you respond to folks around you or try to confront that feeling within people if you see it.

Hala Sabbah: Yeah, it's definitely been very taxing. Mira has taken a step back a few months ago, so there's only three of us now that are actively working on this. Of course, we have the support of a couple of other people who help us with some aspects of what we do. But as a core team, it's me, Lina, and Mohamed, right? And it's been taxing in terms of social relationships, in terms of money. As you said, we don't take salaries at all from the Samir Project. It's been taxing in terms of our mental health, our physical health. And it's been very difficult to disconnect, even if it's for a few hours, because there's constantly things happening and changing on the ground. But I think the first thing that comes to my mind is faith. We are a majority Muslim country. We have strong faith in the divine wisdom of God, even though we don't understand it, right? We are surrounded by a lot of pain. We do see the death and the sickness of children and the amputees. And when you put that faith in God... And knowing, surrendering, Islam, the word Islam comes from the word surrender. So it's about surrendering everything to God. So for us to just surrender and be like, we don't need to intellectualize and understand why this is happening and why God is allowing this to happen in this moment. But it's definitely a test, right? And I think it's really fascinating for me as a Muslim woman to see a lot of people in the West being, you know, progressive but Palestine. Because this is a true test. It is a true test that Palestinian exceptionalism is coming into play now. Because for 76 years, we have been saying Zionism is colonization. Zionism is settler colonization. They are taking our land from us. When you tell people that there is conflict or genocide in a place other than Palestine, like let's say Myanmar or in Sudan, people will not usually deny that in the US. They will be like, yes, that's the reality. But there is Palestinian exceptionalism that Angela Davis spoke about, that people would even deny that. that settler colonization is a thing, right, for Palestine. So I think for us as Palestinians, we were born into this world politicized from a very young age and forced to, you know, watch Shirin Abu Akleh being killed, watch martyrs on our screen, watching Mohammed al-Durra. I think I was like nine or 10 years old at the time, seeing a child exactly my age being killed in the arms of his father on TV. And actually his uncle got killed in Gaza during this genocide. So just having all these stories and growing up to this, It's really hard to disconnect from that. So combining being politicized in this world and just existing is resisting, as we say in Palestine, combining that with our faith and our values, because for me, I don't feel like I wake up every morning and I'm doing this by choice. I feel like God's journey for me is... To be in London in this moment working with these two specific people on these specific projects that I'm working on. And it's all being facilitated for us by God. So we really do see ourselves as vessels that are just here to facilitate and do what we need to do. And I think it's... On a more political level rather than a personal level, liberation comes at a cost, right? And if no one is willing to take that cost, liberation will not come. So I think that's the conviction that the three of us have. We have our faith that plays into this. There's our lived experiences, Palestinians from the U.S., from Germany, from all the places I grew up in. Yes, those play a factor, but liberation has a cost, and that cost is what we are paying right now. And it's a much, much, much, much lower cost than what people in Gaza are paying.

Jay: Yeah, I mean, absolutely. And I think that leads really well into the next thing that I want to ask you, which is there's this criticism. And it's not a criticism that I've ever heard anyone direct at Samir Project, just to be clear to you and to our audience. But It's a there's a criticism around kind of mutual aid. And a lot of it has to do with the way that it's developed in the United States, specifically in recent years, where it can kind of resemble sort of charity work or work that either state institutions or nonprofits are often doing. And The components of it that I think about are like kind of this idea that mutual aid has to be mutual, that there's some kind of exchange between folks and there's some kind of politicization. There's some kind of, you know, trajectory that it has towards a liberatory project, right? Otherwise, it sort of just becomes charity work. And thinking about NGOs, we can obviously think about all the problems that happen when something just becomes charity work and the way that it kind of just fits within sort of the capitalist imperialist system that we have and doesn't necessarily change things. Right. And so I've seen some people talk about this with relation to mutual aid efforts around Palestine. And I've had a real problem with that criticism in this context, because I don't really think that those two, you know, the example of mutual aid groups with whatever their limitations are within U.S. society can be equated with like the work that folks like yourselves or people who are doing work to raise money for eSIMs or these other projects that are really important in terms of keeping Palestinians alive amid a genocide where the goal of U.S. imperialism and Zionism is ethnic cleansing. It is, you know, the removal and the death of these people. But also there's this assumption, I think, in it that people who are giving, right, are the people who need to be politicizing or that like we know better. better or that we're able to reveal things or politically educate the people that we're providing things to, right? Or that the people that we're giving to, you know, are in a place where, for instance, they could do something that would support our project, right? And, you know, if anything, I think that Palestinians, like the This moment obviously has been such a glaring, I think, moment of showing the whole world and anybody who will pay attention, like, what is our global political system? What are these things built on? What are the foundations? So I was just curious if you've encountered comments like this or thoughts like this, and more so, I guess, just also like how you would respond to somebody who is thinking that maybe mutual aid isn't the right term, right? Or which, you know, to me is not a hang up, but I guess is thinking that maybe this is something that we shouldn't be doing somehow because we're not able to politicize, I guess, the recipients of the aid, which, yeah, I mean... i have a lot of problems with this but i want to hear what your thoughts are on this yeah

Hala Sabbah: I think the first thing that I would say is that the U.S. is not our benchmark in any way, shape, or form. So it's not really my concern as a Palestinian how mutual aid is perceived or unpacked in the United States. I think that's a United States problem. And I think this comes back to the concept of imperialism where the U.S. believes that it's the benchmark of the world. And they believe that what's applied in the U.S. should be applied elsewhere. In Palestine, mutual aid is something that existed before the U.S. existed. So for us, the idea of bartering or supporting each other has existed way before this genocide, before 1948. We have our own systems that have been resistant to colonization, colonization of the British, the colonization of the Israelis. And these systems rely on tribalism, on religion, on... There are hundreds, if not thousands, of examples that I can give you that are happening on the ground of people supporting each other during this difficult time. I've had many phone calls with people who tell me, I was nine months pregnant, I had nowhere to go, there were no tents, it was my 11th time to be displaced, and this man gave us a small room in his house for me to stay in until I give birth and figure out where I'm going next. There are a lot of people who talk about bartering, right? Or about exchanges that happen all the time on the ground where people would say, you know, I have an extra set of diapers. Can I exchange it for a bag of rice? kind of getting out of the realm of capitalism where people are like, okay, we are in the situation where there's scarcity. So how do we build our own systems to resolve that? We have a story that we got from the North where a man went to buy a fruit for his son, but he could only afford half of it. And the man next to him could only afford half a piece of fruit. So they literally paid half each and cut that fruit and took half piece of fruit for their kids. And when we think about mutual aid, of course, the term mutual aid, the terms charity, solidarity, these are all terms that come from the West. The language that I'm speaking to you right now is the language of colonization. So we have our own language. We have our own history. We have our own concepts in our region. So we call it mutual aid just to fit in and for people to understand what we're trying to do. But the way that we define mutual aid as the Samir Project and Translating Palestinian and many other Palestinian groups is that what we are doing is a form of resistance towards liberation. The people on the ground don't need to learn anything from us. They are teaching us every single day. They are politicized. They have lost everything that they have for the sake of God and for the sake of their land. So how is it that we are supposed to politicize the people on the ground with the work that we do? And I think people think that we take these donations and make decisions on what to provide. We don't. We facilitate. The three of us who are in the diaspora facilitate these projects, but the decisions are made by the people on the ground. Where the camp is set up is decided by people on the ground. What kind of projects we do and what areas we cover is decided by the people on the ground. We talk to them and we take advice and we discuss and we come to conclusions together. However, they're the ones on the ground, not us. I'm sitting here in my comfortable flat in London. So who am I to tell people in Gaza what to buy and who to give? And equity is really, really central to all of our work because the difference between charity and what we do is we don't have conditions for the people we give. I have people messaging me, telling me I'm such a horrible person for not supporting them, for doing this, for doing that. I have people who are within our project. There have been instances where people have been physically aggressive towards our team. That doesn't mean we don't provide them with support. These are highly traumatized people. Whereas in charity, there are conditions. You have to not be a criminal. You have to not be homeless. You have to behave a certain way. You have to look a certain way. You have to do this. And I am giving you the money, right? Whereas with us, there's this pot that we work together to grow. And we use this pot with the contribution of everyone in the team. The people in the north, the people in the south, the people in the diaspora. And we discuss together. and decide how best to use this money to support the survival of people in Gaza until Palestine is free. And this is not something that we even need to discuss. It's a baseline that we work from.

Jay: Yeah, thank you. That was great. So how has support for the work been recently? I'm curious if people if you still find people continuing to be investing and still contributing. You know, I worry a little bit about like people's attention and kind of the news cycle and the way that like, you know, I feel like Gaza is in the news cycle, at least where I am in the US less and less these days, and also feel like There are still actions going on, still protests, still things that people are doing, but they're maybe not as large as they were. I don't know, for a variety of reasons, maybe also because it's not so much in the media as it was early on. But I do worry about like whether people's giving also wanes out over time. And so I'm just curious, how has that been? And has that been the case? Or are you seeing more support?

Hala Sabbah: No, that's a good question. Yeah. I think as a team, we are so deep into what's happening in Gaza that we are probably not aware of the perspective of the outsiders on how things are changing in terms of media. But again, advocacy is a big part of what we do. So last week, I joined the British Palestinian community and the UK Gaza community on a press conference about the media blackout of the north in the UK. And I spoke about our work, about the truck situation, about the journalists that we work with. Just today, Muaz Kahloot got arrested by the occupation, a journalist in the north. So we try to highlight these media blackouts, especially about what's happening in the north, in the siege of Jabalia. Jabalia has been completely obliterated and destroyed. Thousands have died at this point, and people are not talking about that at all. How it's affected our fundraising, I think. I think because we are not a charity and because we focus on equity and because we work in a way that we are facilitating support rather than dictating support and our values are clear, our goal towards liberation is clear. I think over time we've built trust within many communities and it's so beautiful to see the support that we get. So to a certain extent, we have enough to keep going with our baseline initiatives. And what was a beautiful surprise is that you have something in the U.S. I think it's Black Friday and Giving Tuesday. There was that weekend, Cyber Monday or something. And in that weekend workshop for Gaza, a page that has been very supportive of our initiatives and a few other pages really did a big push, encouraging people to not fall into over-consumerism and purchasing things that they don't need, but rather to donate for blankets and for different items for people in Gaza. And we got a really large amount that has really given us a big push over the last few weeks. So I think there's definitely an awakening that's happening with people. Because I think what's happening in Palestine and what this genocide is highlighting is the hypocrisy of the West telling people that it's a democracy, whether it's in North America or whether it's in Europe. telling people that they live in democracies. And when you have hundreds and thousands and even a million people who went out on the streets in London saying that they want this genocide to end and it's not ending, this has pushed many people, including Gen Z and many young people, to kind of reflect and think, does my opinion in this so-called democracy actually matter? And I think the longer this genocide goes, the more clarity people have on that. And there's no turning back from that. And I think a lot of people are becoming more and more politicized, more and more aware. This is something... that not just for the Palestinian cause, but for the intersectional struggles that we have, whether it's from Myanmar, whether it's in Sudan, whether it's in Congo, it is really important that people become more politically aware. And that political awareness does translate to consistent donations and consistent support to the Samir Project. Definitely not enough. I think we can do so much more. And we are hoping that over the Christmas and New Year, people give us another big push so that we can continue our initiatives. But yeah, I think it's also hard to hide the gratitude and joy that we see in all these small fundraisers and initiatives done all over the world to support us. It really brings hope for us and for people in Gaza.

Jay: Yeah. I mean, the hope that your work provides to people in Gaza, I think, is something that comes across in a lot of the videos that you all share. You know, they don't have the feeling of, you know, a typical... I know you're not a typical NGO or an NGO at all, but... They don't have that feel of being kind of canned and performed. But, you know, you can just see the importance of the work that you all are doing every day. And, yeah, I mean, it's... it kind of tears your, you know, it's like, as you said, there's joy in it. And it's also so much sadness, like is all the emotions, right? Because obviously it's horrific that people are still dying. People are still having to endure these conditions that are just unlivable. And yet somehow with the help of projects like yours and then on their own, with their own ingenuity, they are somehow making some kind of life out of what it just seems like would be impossible you know so i'm grateful for the work that you all do and that i'm glad that people are continuing to support it and part of the reason that we wanted to have this conversation now is to just yeah encourage folks if you if you have money left to give a present dedicate something to somebody and give some money to smear project Or if you receive money, sometimes people get money during the holidays from family and friends or whatever, then it's a great place to support rather than buying another useless consumer object that's, you know, just designed to take our money and doesn't do much for us really in the end of the day. You mentioned the media blackout regarding the North. And I think that's a very real thing in the United States as well. And I think there's also another element of this. I mean, I talked to my father about the North sometimes and like he kind of has a perception. And I think he gets this from media, even from progressive media to some extent that basically there's nobody left. in the north that the north has already been ethnically cleansed and i know as you mentioned there's significantly fewer people in the north but you still estimated it in you know the hundreds of thousands maybe four hundred thousand people and so i know you all are operating in the north every day so what are the realities in the north you know based on the conversations that you have is interesting you talked about people being more spread out Maybe just say a little bit more about the North, since we don't hear as much about that.

Hala Sabbah: Yeah. So the north has around 400,000 people, maybe slightly less, as many were killed in the last few weeks. There exists, they live in different parts of the north, including Gaza City, where a lot of people have been displaced recently. You have people in Al-Shuja'iyah, in Al-Samir, in Al-Tufah, all these different areas. There is a camp called Yarmouk, There are hundreds and thousands of people. There's our team who we talk to on a daily basis, their families. If people have any doubt about people still living in the North or existing in the North, all they need to do is open our page and just scroll to see the hundreds of videos that we've posted over the last few weeks. We are in constant touch with people in the North, including journalists who report to us what's happening. As I mentioned earlier, Muaf Kahloot got arrested today by the occupation. He was in Kamal Adwan Hospital. Kamal Adwan Hospital is in the far north, and it's been attacked and bombed. And Dr. Hossam Safiya today came in, came on with a mask because of all the smoke from the bombings, trying to warn the world about the patients that are in the hospital. Mu'adh Kahloot was asked to leave that area and go down to Gaza City, and on his way from that area, Kamal Edwan Hospital, to Gaza City, he was arrested. And this is one of the reasons many people don't want to move from Beit Lahia, Jabalia, and Kamal Edwan down to Gaza City, because on the way there, a lot of the men, children, and women get arrested by the occupation, which could lead to their death, to rape. to torture. So why would they displace themselves when they know that there's a high chance that they will be kidnapped and taken as hostages by the occupation? So the reality is, is that Jabalia and Beit Lahia and Kamal Edwan has been under a siege for over 70 days. People are being killed on a daily basis. On some days, it's up to 150 people per day, sometimes 200 people per day. A lot of people are dying from starvation, intentional by design from the occupation. for them to die from hunger. This is not a random famine that's happening. Very little aid comes in. Some fruit and vegetables came in recently, but the supply and demand are so varied. So the prices of these vegetables and fruit are extremely, extremely high. So if people have any doubts, I mean, there are videos of these trucks coming in with fruit and vegetables. So I just find it very strange that this media blackout in North America and in Europe is saying that there are no people when there are trucks going to the north.

Jay: for the people who live in the north.

Hala Sabbah: Very few trucks, a lot of them get looted, a lot of them don't have much nutritious or valuable items, but they are going, so it's just strange that people are still doubting the existence of almost 400,000 people in the north.

Jay: Yeah, I mean, I think it's intentional. I mean, I think the media is really in... I think they're in collusion with Israel in terms of trying to create an environment of ethnic cleansing and trying to set up a... you know, a scenario where Israel can put settlements in the north and things like this. And obviously that's speculation on my part. I don't know it, but I don't really understand any reason other than that why the media would be so seemingly intentional in not covering or not discussing at all really what's going on in the north, you know. But go ahead.

Hala Sabbah: It's Western media.

Jay: Yeah.

Hala Sabbah: is there are a lot of media outlets like Electronic Intifada. I mean, some of us, there are different ones. There's Electronic Intifada, there's Middle East Eye, there's Middle East Monitor, there's the Institute of Palestine Studies, there's Al Jazeera Plus. I mean, some of these have their issues, but all of them are actually showing the reality, interviewing people, posting videos about the reality on the ground. So it's also about which media outlets you are watching. And I think the Western media like CNN, BBC, I mean, we just saw that CNN put a fake person in Syria, fake hostage on TV. So how can anyone trust outlets like the CNN and BBC when they don't even, you know, verify who they're interviewing? And as you said, these Western media outlets... are complicit in the genocide and they have blood on their hands because they have extreme biases. And over the last 14 months, we've had multiple situations where people came out and said that they used to work in the BBC and that they were forced to speak about Israel in an extremely biased manner. And they were not allowed to talk about the realities of what's happening in Palestine. I mean, if you open the page on the BBC that they call Israel-Gaza, And you see what they post. If one Israeli soldier is killed, it will be, you know, like, big title. But if you have 70 people killed in the north of Gaza, it's not even mentioned. So, of course, these media outlets are complicit and they're part of our killing in Gaza and in Palestine as a whole.

Jay: Yeah, no, that's absolutely right. So talk a little bit about, I'm interested if you've experienced instances of this, you mentioned workshops for Gaza, which I wanted to mention as well, but efforts by different groups, organizations, or local organizers, local mutual aid groups, where they're bringing together kind of pools of money or directing folks towards you, or maybe they're like in the instance of workshops for Gaza, you know, they're having people come in and host workshops, and then, you know, the funds then go over to Samir Project. And so I'm interested in other examples of this that you're seeing, partly because I also want to encourage people, obviously, to give individually as they can, but also to think about this as organizers, too, of how can I bring the people around me or, you know, folks I'm in community with, together right and we kind of collectively bring together funds and then the Samira project is obviously one great place that people can direct those funds so I'm just interested if you have other examples that you've encountered of this that you wanted to highlight or just ideas around it too yeah

Hala Sabbah: Yeah, there has been like such beautiful initiatives to support the Samir project, including workshops for Gaza that provide regular workshops and ask people instead of paying for a ticket to donate to one of our projects. And they track that, which is great. Other groups include people who do dinners or events to fundraise. If it is based in London, either myself or one of our team members goes and speaks about what we do. Or if it's located somewhere else, we also send a video talking about the importance of what we do and what the money could do. So these kind of fundraiser events, I think also with Christmas coming, a Christmas dinner or any events around the holidays, people can raise some money, just talk about what's happening in Gaza and raise some money for the Simi project. But we've also had some people be really creative. We've had some people who are gamers and they created a Tiltify, I think that's what it's called. It's like a crowdfunding platform and they've raised money for us and sent it to us. There are people who sell things in shops, mugs or trinkets or anything like that, and they give a percentage to the smear project. You have yoga instructors who do, you know, a monthly session and all the proceeds would come to the smear project. So I think what's so beautiful is that people are creating sustainable ways to support projects like ours through their passions, through their skill sets. And I'm starting to do that myself. So myself and Lina, I work in diversity and inclusion. And any of the training sessions that I give, whether they're around Palestine or not, I give a percentage of everything I make to the Samir Project. So I think for anyone who wants to support, it doesn't have to be that you have a large amount of money yourself, but anything that you are interested in, that you're passionate about, or even within your work, if you have control to give a certain percentage, that creates a certain level of sustainability for projects like ours that don't really rely on big donations or big funding from governments.

Jay: Thank you so much for this conversation. Is there anything else that you want to share or add before I let you go?

Hala Sabbah: No, I want to thank people for their support and for their interest. It's been a tough 14 months for people in Gaza, but for also people who are working in mutual aid. And when groups like Workshops for Gaza or other fundraising groups, we also have one in California that's been very supportive and sending us money regularly. When these groups take that level of initiative, it removes the stress from us to focus more on creating more initiatives and being a bit more creative and having a bit more space in our life. So I just wanted to give a special thank you to everyone who supported supports our projects and our values. And to know that this is, for us, this is not just a band-aid solution or an emergency response. We as a group are committed to supporting Gaza beyond the ceasefire, to go into switching from emergency response into long-term infrastructure and long-term sustainability and long-term social healing mental health and all of that like we're already thinking ahead after the ceasefire how we are going to be supporting galva and palestine as a whole so we do appreciate people's support and we hope to keep doing what we need to do until palestine is free beautiful thank you so much

Speaker 3: Thank you.

Jay: So,

Speaker 3: Thank you.

Jay: So,

Speaker 3: Bye.