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
