Help a Palestinian Community Rebuild in Gaza

**ALL PHOTOS ARE CREDITED TO MAHMOUD KHAWALDA AND MUHAMMAD ISMAEL**

Help a Community in Gaza Today

Spaces for Souls is a globally-focused spatial liberation practice that interrogates intersectional spatial inequities that distance communities from their inherent value. BlackMuslimTV is a multimedia nonprofit that cultivates a space for Black Muslims to express their narratives, identities, and experiences.

BMTV and Spaces for Souls are working with activists and scholars to reach Black Palestinians on the ground in dire need of support, and will be sending the money directly to the community leaders that we are in regular contact with.

The Black community in the Gaza Strip is in need of our assistance in order to endure some truly terrible conditions. The African diasporic population are some of the hardest hit daily by current events which are ravaging everyone in the Gaza Strip today. Their experiences within the conflict have been rendered invisible, impacting their access to resources.

One family in Bureij Camp has been living on the ruins of their bombarded home. One elder had testified, “We have no place of dignity and glory but this house.” Furthermore, there are many mass graves; and many entire Black families have been erased. There is also the Rawagh family, a historically prominent Afro-Palestinian family of Gaza which has suffered such devastating losses. More generally, Afro-Palestinians concentrated in cities such as Rafah and Deir El Balah face extreme conditions and depravations. This campaign will help Black community folk in Gaza to survive and sustain themselves.

Members and supporters of the Black community have been coming together to provide some of this community’s basic social needs – they've received requests for fundamental resources while making regular rounds at makeshift hospitals to help the sick and wounded.

The funds are needed to meet some of these basic needs of survival:

(1) to purchase medical supplies for the many wounded

(2) to supply and distribute daily meals and nutritional supplements across the community

(3) to provide clothing and other material for regular people in need

(4) to help secure temporary shelter for the recently homeless

(5) to help some achieve one of the ultimate goals, the re-building of recently destroyed family homes

The first segment of funds will be allocated to the Obeid family to rebuild their home.

The Obeid family is an extended family in the Gaza Strip with more than 20 members. They have been sharing the same house in the countryside of Deir Al-Balah (Central Gaza). However, after the events of October 7, 2023, the family’s home became populated by more than 30 people; many family relatives had to evacuate from the northern area of the Gaza Strip and come to the extended family’s house in Deir Al-Balah for shelter as refugees.

Then, on February 7th of this year, this home was bombarded by a ferocious airstrike. This house which was by then lodging over 30 kinfolk was completely demolished as a result. Tragically, many of its residents were either murdered or injured. The remaining survivors are now living in bitter homelessness. They spend their day trying to retrieve useful things from beneath the rubble; and, after night falls, they all sleep inside a nylon tent.

The Obeid family is therefore terribly in need of these funds to take care of their urgent needs.

Please donate to assist this family and many others in rebuilding their lives amidst this crisis.