I’m all for supporting people in Gaza, but these smell very (cat)fishy.
Yea, that’s exactly why I thought it was worth asking.
It seems Aral has actually done the work: https://mastodon.social/@staff/115129752094733480
Take it like how I take homelessness. If you see someone asking for money you don’t know if they’re legit or a scam. If they are legit then what do you do, take on the responsibility of donating to everyone you see? You just can’t.
A better use of your money is to research what charities are there on the ground and donate to them. Do your research, see who aligns with you the most.
Planet Money did a really interesting episode on money in Gaza. Basically, bank branches don’t really exist, and physical paper money is really hard to come by, so getting money into Gaza is really hard.
Any money you donate would need to get past various embargoes to get to a Palestinian bank, then be passed to a person who can’t really access it.
My bet is highly unlikely.
gofundme is very strict so if theyre on gfm theyre either legit or you’d be refunded if not.
Keep in mind people in Gaza usually have English as a second/third/etc language, or don’t speak English at all, so often use templates to make their fundraisers. And obviously machine translation too.
Yes it is difficult to get money into Gaza but it does happen. I have a friend who evacuated in 2024 and he’s talked quite a bit about how it works; his friends and family who are still there do occasionally receive money from outside which lets them buy the extremely expensive vegetables and flour.
It’s kind of impossible to tell. With the amount of scammers out there, it’s extremely unlikely. Why exactly would Gazans 1. know English well and 2. be on Mastodon?
why not dinner to a trusted organization, like Emergency?
I couldn’t tell you for these people specifically, but this sort of thing is definitely an easy opportunity for scamming people. I’d only consider donating to people where there’s solid evidence that they are who they claim they are.
Families in gaza can’t even find food, do you think they can spin a gofundme page and pull the money from the local bank?
Some are for sure verified, and presumably some of the unverified ones are also legit. I’m sure at least one is fake, but we know that there are real ones, too.
I’ve been on Mastodon for a few years, and unfortunately all of this stuff is pretty common. It varies with the trending tragedy of the moment, but it’s all the same. Gaza, some African country, LGBT+ people, and so on.
It’s impossible for me to tell which one is legit and which one is a scam, so I took the decision not to boost or spread anything like that. It’s unfair, but unknowingly boosting a scam and having someone else falling for it would be even more damaging to their causes, in my opinion.
gofundme isn’t supported in Palestine (or any surrounding countries, and surprisingly, not even israel) so at best you’re going through a middle man
There’s even some Lemmy communities full of these with ai slop copy and lots of excuses why the collector is in a totally different location
I don’t trust them.
The better question is: how do you know it isn’t a scam? Or funding the opposition? You don’t.
