r/JewsOfConscience • u/Mivasair Jewish • Aug 15 '24

AMA AMA with Rabbi David Mivasair

Hello, friends! I'm looking forward to our AMA, starting in ~10 minutes. Never done anything like this before, so it'll be a new experience. Thank you for inviting me. https://x.com/Mivasair/status/1822855344684458400

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u/Mivasair Jewish Aug 15 '24

Thank you for asking about increased logistical challenges with getting funds to people in Gaza.

There have been huge challenges.

I used to send funds through Western Union. People go to a WU office and retrieve in cash the funds that have been sent. However, Israel bombed and destroyed all the WU offices and killed many of the WU staff. So, let's simply say that modality for conveying funds to people has become quite challenging.

I'll add more in a separate comment.

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u/Mivasair Jewish Aug 15 '24

Another challenge has been that cash liquidity has become severely constricted. In other words, there is less and less actual cash money circulating in Gaza. So, sometimes, I send someone funds electronically and it is difficult for them to convert it into cash.

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u/Mivasair Jewish Aug 15 '24

Another challenge is unreliable connectivity. Everything we do is done by either Messenger or WhatsApp. Israel has destroyed much of the wi-fi capacity in Gaza. People's phones often are hard to connect or to charge. So, sometimes, it takes people there a while before they can even access the PayPal transfer that I have sent them.

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u/Mivasair Jewish Aug 15 '24

One other thing is that some of the platforms we have used for funds transfer have shut us out or shut us down, so we have had to be creative, resourceful and persistent and find new ones to actually convey the funds. At first, I was using MoneyGram. They shut us out. I switched to Western Union. After a while, they blocked me. So, I got my girlfriend to send the funds. Then, they blocked the man in Gaza I was sending to. So, we started sending to his wife. Then, they blocked us all. So, we got someone else to send to someone in Istanbul who could then transfer funds to a company in Rafah which then would disburse them to the people we wanted to help. After a few months, I tried WU again, and it worked just fine and has continued to work just fine ever since. However, MoneyGram simply does not serve Gaza.

So, this whole operation has required us to simply not allow ourselves to give up. The task is to find a way. And, we have done that repeatedly.