Gaza: a new North Star?

Shafi Musaddique (0:00)

Rubble, rubble everywhere. In Gaza, 61 million tons and at least 10,000 concealed bodies await. But what would be the largest cleanup operation in history? If they ever get there? The new cycle has moved on, but a litany of questions linger. Among them, the uncomfortable question of how and why the funding world arguably turned its face away from Gaza, even amongst progressive circles. As funders turn to their back, mutual aid networks have remained a lifeline amidst the face of what human rights organizations have described as a genocide. For some, Gaza has become a North Star, guiding them through rupture and heartbreak in the opaque world of philanthropy.

Hello, I'm Shafi Musaddique, and you're listening to And Some Change. I've just come back from Amman, Jordan. It's an incredible place. It's certainly left a mark on my soul.

Jordan has long been home to displaced Palestinians since the early expulsions in the 20th century. It's a place where almost at every turn, you'll meet people carrying generational memories of their own homeland. For Palestinians in Gaza today, normality really isn't a part of the lexicon with starvation, malnutrition and the risk of death mounting still. Nevertheless, you may still find the smell of rice cooked on open fires thanks to the efforts of two people.

Hani Almadhoun along with his brother Mahmoud founded Gaza Soup Kitchen, 29 kitchens run by a network of chefs, volunteers and women leaders on the ground in Gaza. They've kept Palestinians alive with hot meals, clean water, sanitary products and baby formula, the latter product that Israel has banned from entering Gaza. There's no beating around the bush about how he feels.

Hani Almadhoun (1:48)

Sure, unsure of the future. Doesn't seem that we're gonna catch any break, or things are only gonna get worse. I just overall concerned for humanity, Gaza and beyond.

But I doubt Gaza will be the last atrocities we witness for everybody. Because now war is cheap. With an AI from home, you could just erase a whole village. You don't have to be anywhere, you know? So it's very scary what they've done in Gaza Hani's.

Shafi Musaddique (2:12)

outspokenness is all the more candid given his position as vice president of philanthropy at ONRA USA. Remember, ONRA, the main provider of aid for millions of Palestinians in Gaza, was effectively defunded in late 2023 and early 2024 The emotional toll has compounded over time with huge swathes of Hani's family killed by Israeli military. Hani's brother Mahmoud was killed in an Israeli drone strike in northern Gaza in November 2024, while attempting to coordinate aid near a hospital.

For Hani, there's a strange and painful collision between the professional and the personal. It's that collision that makes him extremely wary of his own sector. In a recent LinkedIn post, Hani called out NGOs for renting the few apartments still standing, displacing Palestinians from their own homes. When an organization arrives with an institutional budget and offers a landlord triple the going rate, the landlord says, yes, and the family inside gets a notice to leave. People who have already lost everything else are being pushed out of the last roofs they have because they can't compete with procurement funds.

Hani Almadhoun (3:20)

It's hard because I also have a family there, so we have a front seat ticket to the other side. So we live it, you know, we're safe relatively for now.

Shafi Musaddique (3:30)

Hani, like many others I've spoken to anonymously across the non-profit and philanthropy landscape over these last three years, believes there is a two-fold dehumanization taking place. One, where Palestinians are routinely ignored by global organizations, including historically progressive funders. And even when they are accepted, that they must go the extra mile to gain the trust of their international donors.

Hani Almadhoun (3:55)

We've seen that sometimes people who need help have to perform resilience and perform smooth for the donor, for the allies, but they're not necessarily feeling it because three years of this, you're watching it and you're not the same person. Some of people here see therapists because they see the videos online in Gaza for three years. It's genuine and people in Gaza don't have that option. They have to survive, they have to wake up at 7 a.m., 6 a.m. in the morning, chase after the water truck, and then by noon, they're standing at the food line at the hotly soup kitchen. Did I mention that Israel continues to bomb, fly drone, kill people, shrink the size of Gaza?

Shafi Musaddique (4:33)

Some more is roughly translated to patience or perseverance. And arguably, there's been a lot of that, given global philanthropy's uneasy relationship to Gaza and Palestinians. Back in 2024, Alliance magazine found that there was a climate of fear that had emerged over Palestinian solidarity. A vast majority of people working in foundations said their organization had stood silent, scared of negative media coverage, perhaps unfolding.