Nora Lester Murad
AFTER EVERY military escalation, I am bombarded with requests for suggestions about how people can send money to Palestine—and Palestinians do need money. The Gaza Strip, for example, is cut off geographically from the rest of historic Palestine and is denied access to most of Palestine’s rich human and natural resources. Gazans have endured the collective punishment of an Israeli-Egyptian blockade since 2007, which has ravaged local agriculture and fishing and ruined export-import activities. In violation of Palestinian human rights, the blockade and occupation have severely restricted the mobility needed for healthcare, education, and industry. Palestinians in Gaza suffered major destructive Israeli aggressions in 2008, 2012, 2014 and 2021 that killed thousands, demolished housing and other infrastructure, and deeply damaged the population’s mental health.
However, is sending money to US Friends of UNRWA, a US fundraising and advocacy group, the same as giving to UNRWA, the United Nations agency? Is giving to UNRWA the same as giving directly to a women’s committee in a refugee camp? Is supporting healthcare through the UK-nonprofit Medical Aid to Palestinians the same as supporting healthcare through the Ramallah-based Palestinian Medical Relief Society?30 Is it the same as supporting health by sending money to activists who directly help families whose homes have been demolished?
Clearly, throwing money at Palestine any which way is not the answer. The Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) is already among the largest per capita recipients of non-military international aid in the world. More than US $40 billion in aid since the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993 has not protected Palestinians from harm. It has not led to statehood or achieved “development,” or advanced independence, whether economic or political. And it has certainly not resulted in liberation. On the contrary, in the context of international aid, human rights, like the right to shelter, become subject to negotiation, programatization, and postponement. While it is true that taxpayer-funded bilateral and multilateral aid has kept Palestinians alive, Israel has been the largest beneficiary. International aid lets Israel off the hook for its obligations to Palestinians under international humanitarian law. In fact, it subsidizes the occupation,31 and facilitates Israel’s ongoing violations of Palestinian rights.32 International aid has also fostered the development of the Palestinian Authority into a militarized security apparatus that works to ensure Israel’s continued dominance.33
I partnered with Palestinian aid critics when I founded Aid Watch Palestine in 2014. Aid Watch Palestine was a community-driven aid accountability initiative in Gaza with the intention of transforming the relationship between Palestinian beneficiaries and donors of charity into one between rights-holders and duty-bearers. Aid Watch Palestine was informed by years of experience trying and failing to improve the international aid system. It has been 15 years since I started working with Palestinians to highlight the unintended consequences of the way international actors gave aid. When no one listened, we moved on to giving them examples of how they could do aid better. When no one responded, we called upon aid actors to comply with their own principles, declarations, and commitments. We evoked international law. We mobilized people to pressure aid actors. We linked our cause with others around the world who see international aid in its current state as an imperialist tool that maintains, rather than challenges, the dominance of the global north over the global south. However, nothing we did seemed to mitigate the aid-provision process or reverse the harm Palestinians experienced from international aid.34 I ended up believing that the only way for Palestinians to claim power from international aid actors was for them to reject aid completely and only accept support from true allies.35 Other than a noble but imperfect boycott of conditional aid in 2005 that was renewed in 2014,36 Palestinians have not taken this tack.
In response to requests from friends for suggestions, I have tried to develop a set of guidelines to help “true allies” make their giving decisions. I suggested they prioritize grassroots groups over nonprofit organizations, Palestinian groups over international NGOs and I encouraged them to commit to giving regularly, and as a part of political action rather than as a substitute for it. I, myself, have integrated giving into my life with commitments to people in Gaza, Syria, and Lebanon, along with supporting formerly incarcerated people, housing insecure people and people without documents in the United States, where I live.
Unfortunately, giving to Palestinians has been intentionally made hard. The US-led “war on terror” targets Muslim communities and liberation movements with military, economic and political aggression. It creates disasters in places like Palestine and then obstructs people from helping the victims. Givers fear they might unwittingly give money to an identified “terrorist group” and get in trouble under US and other laws. The shocking and unjust incarceration of the “Holy Land Five”37 is used over and over by international humanitarian and philanthropic organizations to justify denial or distortion of assistance to Palestinians. Moreover, increasing bureaucratization of these racist laws has resulted in deplatforming, delisting and other administrative tactics that probably do little to prevent funding for political violence but definitely make it hard for legitimate groups to raise money for humanitarian work, to say nothing of actual liberation movements. Want to send money to Gaza? Gazans who are lucky enough to have a PayPal account find them arbitrarily canceled without recourse. Western Union regularly rejects transfers without explanation. If a giver regularly sends money to areas considered risky, they are likely to find their sending privileges canceled. Palestinian groups cannot set up a GoFundMe campaign because they do not have bank accounts in the US. They cannot get onto Global Giving unless they are registered by Israel or the Palestinian Authority (both of which are subject to political approval), and also have a US fiscal sponsor willing to risk investigation by the IRS and FBI.
For these reasons, international organizations are very attractive to givers. They have legal and regulatory standing and may be certified by watchdog groups. They have websites with compelling photos. Their materials use good English grammar and demonstrate a history of “legitimate” partnerships, evoking credibility and trust. They also take credit cards and, in many cases, offer tax deductibility. Perhaps most importantly, they make givers feel like they are making a difference.
But institutionalized philanthropy is also problematic. Grassroots activists, like those featured in the classic anthology, The Revolution Will Not Be Funded38 have exposed how institutionalized philanthropy uses legal, administrative, and normative control to undermine social movements, depoliticize community work, co-opt communities’ achievements, distort narratives, disempower poor people, and perpetuate inequality, among other things. Alternative approaches are gaining some traction within the aid and philanthropic industries,39 but options are severely constrained in capitalist economies where money is considered private property, not a shared good. People end up expending energy trying to convince rich and powerful people to be more generous, and the best outcome we can hope for is a behemoth like the William and Melinda Gates Foundation that does much good while consolidating power over the global health system in the hands of two people (literally) who are not even affected by the work they fund.
Recognizing the problems inherent in international aid and institutionalized philanthropy, I worked with a group of Palestinians to found Dalia Association, Palestine’s community foundation, in 2007. Our idea was to replace international aid with Palestinian resources, both financial and non-financial. We believed that community-controlled grantmaking that was transparent, democratic, and accountable, could support a vibrant, independent, and accountable Palestinian civil society. Although the grant amounts were very small, unrestricted support enabled communities to pursue their own priorities rather than jump through hoops to access highly project-tied money that was pre-packaged to advance donors’ interests from the get-go.
Dalia Association’s experience showed that Palestinian control over their own resources is transformational, but in our view that does not imply an obligation to provide unconditional support to all Palestinians and all Palestinian activities. This would imply that any kind of support to Palestinians is good and righteous, no matter who it is sent to and no matter what they do with it. We, who dream of liberation, must acknowledge that Palestinians are as diverse as any other group. There are Palestinians who build organic farms and those who invest in agribusiness pesticides. There are Palestinians, like my friend Fatima, who pride themselves on making every tank of water last and others who … “fight for the right to waste as much water as the Israelis.”40 If Palestinians end up with a state that is racist, sexist, extractive and militaristic, it will not mean they “self-determined” that outcome and that we should respect it unconditionally. It will mean that Palestinian capitalists succeeded in conspiring to trample the forces of liberation in their own community.
Do non-Palestinians only stand in solidarity with the struggle against Israeli settler colonialism? Or must we recognize that the struggle for actual liberation is bigger than statehood? Does our understanding of liberation include a critique of racial capitalism and neoliberal globalization and the ways they, too, perpetuate exploitation, inequality, and injustice? If so, how should liberation-minded activists interact with Palestinians whose interests diverge, like those who aspire to build a Palestine that is allied with US and European corporate interests or those who want to establish another Islamic state?
The question is not theoretical. In country after country around the globe, people have risen up against their oppressors, only to find religious and military dictatorships or corrupt, US-chosen “representatives” in their place. We need not look further than the Arab Spring to see that unity against oppression is not the same as unity for a shared vision of a better world. There is also the case of South Africa, which achieved political equality but found it incomplete without economic equality. Palestinian movements, coming after decades of anti-colonial independence movements around the world, have the benefit of learning from that history. It is not only the ends of movements that matter, but also the means. It is the principles and practices developed in the process of struggle (for example, leadership of young women) that will manifest in post-colonial institutions.
This is not to say that Palestinians are not ready for independence or that the resolution of internal struggles is a prerequisite for defeating Israeli colonization! It simply means that blindly throwing money at Palestinians is not a neutral stance. Like it or not, money we give supports certain interests and strengthens certain groups at the expense of others. However, here there is a BIG RED FLAG! Without understanding how “help” is embedded in systems of economic and political oppression, we risk replicating oppressive dynamics in our solidarity efforts. For example, when potential givers say, “I will support Palestinians only when they renounce violence,” or “I will support Palestinians only when they denounce Hamas,” or “I will support Palestinians only when they stand up against anti-Semitism,” this is not actually giving. This is using money as a form of control. Like international aid and institutionalized philanthropy, neocolonial giving is not liberatory and should be resisted.
Those of us who stand in solidarity must listen to Palestinians’ nuanced analyses of what kind of help is actually helpful. Just this year, three important events call us to upgrade our solidarity with Palestinians, including the role of financial support in that solidarity. In May 2021, the escalation of violence against the Gaza Strip pushed awareness of Israeli human rights violations into the mainstream in the United States, Europe and elsewhere. It made criticism of Israel more acceptable (though also triggering massive backlash). It brought the suffering of Gazans into the headlines, at least temporarily. At the same time, ongoing attempts at dispossession and expulsion of families in Sheikh Jarrah, Jerusalem strengthened unity of Palestinians across Israeli-imposed fragmented geographies and moved the frontlines into unlikely places like Nazareth, Lod, Akka and Haifa. The brave, compelling and charismatic leadership of Mohammad and Muna al-Kurd captured attention around the world, highlighting Palestine as a cause to be supported, not as a charity to be funded. In fact, the Kurds explicitly called on supporters not to send money but to come to Sheikh Jarrah to protect, bear witness and participate in resistance on the ground. Soon after, the danger of the aid-funded Palestinian Authority (PA) was brought into stark relief. Not only did the PA apparently murder critic, Nizar Banat, while in custody, the PA reacted to popular discontent with violent suppression, including the targeting of women. For many, this was a wake-up call.
So, while giving can build Palestinian self-determination and the sustainability of local civil society and, while small, unrestricted amounts of money can have tremendous impact when Palestinians themselves decide how to use it, money simply is not enough. What Palestinians and many other oppressed people really need is political solidarity. I remember speaking to my friend, Hamada, in Gaza during the bombing in 2012. Desperate to show support, I told him that Gazans were not forgotten for a second and that people were anxious to help. I mentioned that you could not pass a street corner in Ramallah without seeing a clothing drive for Gaza. Hamada surprised us both by erupting: “For goodness sake, don’t send clothes! Get them to stop dropping bombs on us!”
If we listen to Palestinians, we will hear them say that folks in the global north, and especially in the United States and Europe, must demand that our elected officials stop unconditional support for Israeli actions and, instead, hold Israel politically accountable. We will hear them tell us to incorporate Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions into our daily lives so there is economic pressure on Israel to stop violations of Palestinian human rights. We will hear them implore us to speak out through the media, our faith groups, in schools and in every way possible to challenge problematic narratives that undermine Palestinian humanity.
When we do send money, it should be a long-term investment in movements and direct aid to people in struggle so they can remain steadfast. Palestinians need money for food, medicine, shelter, services, and to maintain institutions. As they say, “existence is resistance.” Palestinians need and deserve consistent, reliable, and sufficient support prior to escalations, not one-off, non-strategic contributions motivated by guilt. I remember trying to raise money for Gaza on the occasion of my 50th birthday. I released a videotaped interview with a Gazan every day for 30 days in the run-up to my birthday in May, but only raised a couple of thousand dollars, most of which came from my mother, Kathie. The idea that money given before an escalation could go farther was not convincing. A few months later, during the 2014 Israeli attack on Gaza, everyone wanted to give. This kind of reactive giving is not liberatory.
Liberatory giving is committed, explicitly political, grounded in mutual relationships and part and parcel of political solidarity, not a replacement for it. Mutual aid is a great example of liberatory giving. US-based mutual aid influencer, Dean Spade, identified three key elements of mutual aid:
Mutual aid projects work to meet survival needs and build shared understanding about why people do not have what they need.
Mutual aid projects mobilize people, expand solidarity, and build movements.
Mutual aid projects are participatory, solving problems through collective action rather than waiting for saviors.41
It is critical to highlight the concept of mutuality in “mutual aid.” Breaking the hierarchy between givers and receivers requires us all to become givers and for us all to become receivers. I must not covet and possess that feeling of worth I get when I help others. To give is to be human and everyone has a right to give. For this to happen, I must develop my ability to receive. I credit my friend, Katsuko, for showing me how dehumanizing it is when I insist on always paying for lunch or rush to “pay off” a gift with a reciprocal gift because the feeling of being indebted to others is uncomfortable. To be interdependent is to sink into our indebtedness, to give equal value to what others give to us.
Although the Covid-19 pandemic has brought renewed visibility to the ways we help one another through disasters, the traditions and practices of sharing are long and deep. Indigenous and other collectivist cultures resist efforts to obliterate their ways of living that are grounded in interdependence. Many of these values were incorporated into third world liberation movements in the 1950s and 1960s but, with the absence of a viable counterweight to capitalist hegemony, a lot of internationalist and anti-imperialist solidarity among oppressed societies has eroded or become distorted by institutionalization.
In the Palestinian context, mutual aid often looks like Al-Ouna, the Palestinian cultural tradition of volunteerism that recognizes well-being as a collective pursuit42 and is often credited as the reason why Palestinians have survived decades of dispossession, colonization, and occupation. Palestinians cite the First Intifada as the heyday of community self-reliance, which enables political expression that is untainted by pragmatism. For this reason, colonial narratives seek to erase this Palestinian history and make people forget that they were not always dependent. Mutual aid and other non- or anti-capitalist movements and practices like degrowth, the commons, solidarity economies, sharing economies, etc.,43 offer alternatives to both international aid and the nonprofit industrial complex. They encourage us to share resources with others because we understand need as a product of failed systems that threaten us all.
Reparations are a logical corollary. The movement for Black Lives, for example, calls on governments, corporations and other institutions to repair harm for past and ongoing harms with a range of corrective measures that include the redistribution of wealth.44 Activist groups, like Resource Generation, organize people with unearned wealth to relinquish money and power as a form of voluntary reparations.45 What is common to these practices is an understanding that not only is the receiver of aid socially located within systems of oppression, but so is the giver. In other words, once I admit that others are needy because of unfair systems, I must admit that I have surplus because of those same unfair systems. Giving is not only a means to transform the conditions of the receiver, but also a means to liberate the giver.
Expressions of the Palestinian liberatory imagination abound and provide hope: Palestinian farming,46 contemporary dance,47 sustainable living48 community building49 and even parkour,50 among many others. Despite this inspiration, my giving does not always flow smoothly; it still has to be conscious and intentional. I grew up in California in a culture that values individual advancement and the acquisition of stuff. There is an implicit belief that if you have money, you are smart and have achieved something good. On the other hand, if you do not have money, you have failed and somehow deserve your lot. Activists continue to push open space for discussions about our economic system, the historical context, and the notion that equality is good for everyone, including those who currently profit from our existing system. Yet, I still get scared, sometimes, when I give away money. I fear that if I give away too much, I will become insecure, poor, unable to take care of myself and my family, that I will die alone. I understand how hard it is to trust that if we take care of someone else today, someone will step up to take care of us tomorrow.
Palestinians have helped me to become a braver and more politically strategic giver. I was a sophomore at the University of California at Los Angeles when I discovered that, as a Jew, I am implicated in the oppression of Palestinians. To learn more, I spent my junior year living with Palestinians at the American University in Cairo and my senior year with Palestinians at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. I learned about politics, and I also learned about giving. I vividly remember being back in my room at the housing cooperative in Los Angeles where I lived, after my two years living in the Arab world. There was a knock at the door and my mind bifurcated into my old self and my new self. My old self wanted to put away the cookies I was eating before I opened the door, because it would be rude to eat in front of a guest. My new self wanted to put the cookies on a plate and make tea so that I could show respect to the person who was visiting. This understanding of giving as an expression of humanity has developed into a way-of-living that is not about helping others but, rather, about creating the world I want to live in, by living it.
Liberatory aid is more complicated than just sending money, but it is also very simple. It includes the incorporation of radical love51 into our solidarity. In the early 1980s, I was a volunteer proof-reader for a Palestinian, English-language newspaper in Jerusalem called “Al-Fajr.” I remember going with a reporter to interview a young woman named Viola, who had been released from jail. It was before the First Intifada when Palestinian women regularly led resistance activities. In her living room, packed with neighbors and activists welcoming her home, Viola said that, when she was arrested by the Israelis, her greatest fear was not that she had been tortured but that her father would find out that she had been organizing with men. She inspired me. When the crowd left, I confided in Viola that I would be returning to the United States soon and worried that I would not be able to find a way to continue supporting the Palestinian cause. She dismissed my concerns. “Teach a person to read,” she said. “Liberate your neighbor. Liberate yourself. That is the best way to help Palestinians.” All these years later, I still ground myself in the belief that everyone’s liberation is tied up with everyone else’s. This means that the possibilities to advance Palestinian liberation are as infinite as they are compelling.52
30 Palestinian Medical Relief Society, http://www.pmrs.ps/
31 Shir Hever, “How Much International Aid to Palestinians Ends Up in the Israeli Economy?” Aid Watch, September 2015, https://www.shirhever.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/InternationalAidToPalestiniansFeedsTheIsraeliEconomy.pdf
32 Nora Lester Murad, “Donor Complicity in Israel’s Violations of Palestinian Rights,” Al-Shabaka: Palestinian Policy Network, October 24, 2014, https://al-shabaka.org/briefs/donor-complicity-in-israels-violations-of-palestinian-rights/.
33 Yara Hawari (host), “Palestinian Securitization vs Liberation with Alaa Tartir,” Rethinking Palestine podcast, https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/palestinian-securitization-vs-liberation-alaa-tartir/id1537774938?i=1000529683048.
34 Nora Lester Murad, “Putting Aid on Trial: An emerging theory of change for how Palestinians can hold international aid actors accountable to human rights obligations,” in Saul Takahashi (Ed.), Human Rights, Human Security and State Security: The Intersection (Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2014), 163–84.
35 Nora Lester Murad, “Should Palestinians Boycott International Aid?” The Guardian, October 18, 2012, https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/poverty-matters/2012/oct/18/should-palestinians-boycott-international-aid
36 See Palestinian NGO Network, “PNGO Network calls for the UN and INGOs to stand by their mandates, and hold Israel accountable for persistent IHL violations” (Position Paper), August 14, 2014, https://www.cordaid.org/media/medialibrary/2014/08/Position_Paper_14-08-14_1.pdf
37 See “USA v. Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development,” Charity and Security Network, August 24, 2020, https://charityandsecurity.org/litigation/holy-land-foundation/
38 Incite! Women of Color Against Violence (eds.), The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2007).
39 See How Matters, https://www.how-matters.org/ and Global Fund Community Foundations, https://globalfundcommunityfoundations.org/, last accessed October 1, 2021.
40 A quote by Clemens Messerschmidt, a Ramallah-based water activist. His articulation of how international aid undermines Palestinians’ water rights is expressed in the German documentary, Aid But No State, among other sources.
41 Dean Spade, Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next). (London: Verso Books, 2020).
42 Aisha Mansour, “Before Neoliberal Economics, We Had Al-Ouna: Concerns of a Citizen,” Dalia Association, October 30, 2015, https://www.dalia.ps/content/neoliberal-economics-we-had-al-ouna
43 See Corinna Bukhart, Matthias Schmelzer, and Nina Treu (eds.), Degrowth in Movement(s): Exploring Pathways for Transformation (London: Zero Books, 2020).
44 See M4BL, “Reparations,” last accessed October 1, 2021, https://m4bl.org/policy-platforms/reparations/
45 See “Sign the Redistribution Pledge,” Resource Generation, last accessed October 1, 2021, https://resourcegeneration.org/redistribution-pledge/
46 “Liberating Farming, Agriculture for Liberation,” webinar (Arabic), last accessed October 1, 2021 at https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/1651375,
47 See Stereo48 Dance Company, https://www.stereo48.com/, last accessed October 1, 2021.
48 See The Palestine Institute for Biodiversity and Sustainability (PIBS) and the Palestine Museum of Natural History (PMNH) at https://www.palestinenature.org/, last accessed October 1, 2021.
49 See Mariam Al-Asturlabi on Instagram @astrolabedemariem, last accessed October 1, 2021, https://www.instagram.com/astrolabedemariem/
50 See Aljazeera English, “Parkour offers freedom to Gaza youth,” YouTube, January 23, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLgPYKhdRD0.
51 See bell hooks, “Love as the Practice of Freedom” (6 pages), last accessed October 1, 2021 at https://uucsj.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/bell-hooks-Love-as-the-Practice-of-Freedom.pdf.
52 I thank Jimmy Dunson from Mutual Aid Disaster Relief; Lama Amr from Build Palestine; and Muna Dajani, a Palestinian academic, for helping me to articulate my ideas. Anna Levy helped me analyze tax documents. I thank the many generous and courageous activists who have helped me over the years to become a better giver. I thank my daughters, Serene, Jassi and Maysanne for giving me reasons to keep up the good fight.