Help Us Help Razan

We’re raising funds to help a university student from Gaza escape to safety with her family.

By Holly Donovan  

Imagine losing everything. Your home, gone. Your workplace, destroyed. Your family, dead. This is the reality for so many Palestinians at this very moment.

THE LEFT LANE spoke last week to Razan Nabil (pictured above and below) of Rafah who has lost nearly everything.

Razan is 19. She once was starting her 2nd year of University, studying Computer Science but now all that is left of her University is rubble. Along with her family, she managed to escape the utter destruction of her home in Gaza. Taking only what she could carry and her future uncertain, she fled.

Razan said: “I’ve been displaced outside my home for seven months now, I couldn’t take any clothes. All my mementos are gone. I have no pictures of my friends and family, just what little I was carrying”.

“We did not want to leave our homeland, but we were forced to do so to escape with our lives. After losing many relatives, friends, colleagues, everything, and the lack of the minimum necessities for life and treatment. I have literally never seen anything worse than this war in my life.” Nor has her chronically ill mother. 

LIVING WITH 20 OTHER RELATIVES

Life in Rafah is cramped and dirty. Razan is living with 20 other relatives. There is no privacy there. When asked why, she explained that “space is at a premium here but at least this way if we die, we die together.”

With so many people thrust together in such a small space, illness spreads quickly and with the hospital only taking the most extreme of cases, people are becoming ill with no support. “The food is such poor quality; everything comes from tins. It is difficult to access water, and if it is available, it is contaminated. Food is very, very scarce, and its prices have doubled in an insane and exaggerated manner. My parents are elderly, they have chronic illnesses. They need treatment and medicine, and there are none here”.

Throughout our interview the sound of drones constantly booms in the background.

“They are day and night, its psychological torture. I hardly sleep due to it. It reminds us that they can kill us at any moment”.

Thanks to Razan’s uncle who lives in Canada, she has been able to turn to GoFundMe in an attempt to raise the funds to escape to freedom.

“Egypt is the closest safe place. We don’t know where we will go from there, but the most important thing is to get myself and my family to safety”.

“It is awful that we have to pay for our lives but what else can we do? We must pay.”

“More than anything I want us to leave this danger and live our lives as if none of this had happened”.

Razan has been able to use the internet by walking great distances to charge her phone from a solar charging point. This is expensive but important to her. “I want my voice to reach as many people as possible”.

HAPPY TO LEARN OF BRITISH PROTESTS

Thanks to social media, word of the anti-war protests in England and around the world does reach Razan and her family.

“When we see that other people stand with us, we are very happy and proud of this. It gives us hope. We know they are trying; we know they want change”.

Razan’s mother spoke to me in Arabic. With Razan translating for her, she said “her heart is big, knowing there are others who will help and give what they can to get those she loves to safety. She is so grateful that out there in the world there are people who care”. Calling me “Habibi” she blows a kiss to the camera and in broken English says, “thank you”.

Razan implores everyone who reads this to help save her, save her family, donate.

Watch her video and please assist with Razan’s GoFundMe effort (click for link)

As of 15 April, a total of US$575 of the needed US$7000 had been raised. Let’s give this a boost. Every tenner counts.

Razan (left) in happier days before Israel’s war on Gaza began.

+++++++++++++++

CHECK THIS OUT

A few bad and good news bits.

 Reproduced with permission of Polish artist Barbara Galińska

1) Are we on the brink of war?

Reproduced with permission of Polish artist Barbara Galińska

As I write this late on the afternoon of 15 April, the head of the United Nation has been suggesting the world could be on “the brink of war.”

Secretary General Antonio Guterres may well be right.  We live in very unstable and reactionary times. The current conflict between Iran and Israel is a swiftly moving and unpredictable one. We offer no comment now.  

Instead we have re-posted above the artwork we used in the 14 March issue of THE LEFT LANE and are adding a link to that issue where we posted “Who to read on Gaza.”  These sites are also good places where to read on Iran-Israel and, in the comments section below, do post links to informative articles and videos you find.   

2)  An Outrageous Ban by Germany

We also also re-posting another image from a previous issue; this is a photo of Yanis Yaroufakis, Secretary General of the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DIEM 25)

Why the repeat? Over this past weekend, the German government decided to ban Varoufakis (and two other activists) from Germany. But as he explains, this ban on political activity not only means he can no longer visit Germany but extends to “participation in Zoom events hosted in the country. I can’t even have a recorded video of me played at German events.”

This is the contemporary face of European repression.

Israel’s war on Gaza is at centre of the ban. Yaroufakis, a former Greek Finance Minister, continues:  “The trouble started in earnest yesterday (12 April) when German police burst into a Berlin venue to disband our Palestine congress, which was hosted by the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DiEM25). Judge for yourselves what kind of society Germany is becoming if its police ban the sentiments below.”

Here is a video & copy of the speech he was banned from delivering.   

Follow more on the case: https://diem25.org/en/

3) Some good news: older Swiss women win court case on climate change.

Last week a group of more than 2000 older Swiss women won what has been called a “landmark” European court case. The court ruled that the Swiss government had violated the human rights of its citizens by not sufficiently combating climate change. The decision, which you can read more about here, may have a “global impact, says legal experts. Celebrations were on order.

But there remains so much more to do if we want to wage a serious battle against the ravages of climate change. For example, this well- documented study of several years ago by INSULATE BRITAIN explains the importance of retrofitting our homes if we want to meet our climate change goals.

4) Be watching for Part 3 of “Learning our History” (LOH)  

Be looking out for the next issue of THE LEFT LANE which will contain a detailed account and analysis of the rise and decline of the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP). At its peak in 2003, the SSP elected six MSP to Holyrood. It’s worth knowing how SSP pulled off that feat.

This excellent TLL piece has been written by Gregor Gall who was a SSP member and who wrote the 2012 book “Tommy Sheridan: From hero to zero? A political biography.” (Sheridan is pictured above at a 2001 demonstration against Trident submarines at their Faslane base in Scotland).   

This is the link to Part One of the LOH series on Respect and here is Part Two on the Socialist Alliance.

+++

Edited by Alan Story, The Left Lane is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

You can reach us at: theleftlanepolitics@gmail.com

Become a paid or free subscriber: http://theleftlane2024.substack.com/subscribe