Haroon posted about a fundraiser at NYU a few days ago. Unfortunately, I was on the road. Give if you can. He says:
We can look all over the world and find a lot of misery, a lot of suffering, a lot of deprivation; some of that is done in our name; some of that is done and defended in a language we really use to argue for the exact opposite. The most important thing is to focus on what can be done, pray very hard, work very hard; we should not be discouraged by the scale of the challenge that always seems to confront us. With that spirit, I really, really hope that all of you who are in the New York City area can make is to Tuesday night’s fund-raising dinner. We’re going to have performances by spoken word artists, reflections, commentaries from people on the ground and a description of the kind of relief efforts that are under way and the kind of needs that continue to stand unmet.
From a fellow Columbia alum I received news of this group: American Medical Mission to Gaza From AP coverage of their work:
US doctors face challenges in crippled Gaza
By KARIN LAUB –Associated Press–13 hours ago
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — Doctors from the United States who rushed to the Gaza Strip to help the war wounded quickly learned that their challenge went beyond treating shrapnel injuries.
The eight American specialists found themselves operating on patients who had fallen victim to the 20-month-border closure that had crippled Gaza’s health care system even before Israel’s offensive against Hamas.
On Tuesday, the team removed a kidney tumor the size of a honey melon from a 4-year-old boy, Abdullah Shawwa, in a five-hour emergency surgery at Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital.
The tumor was advanced and without quick intervention Abdullah would likely have died, said Dr. Ismail Mehr, an anesthesiologist from Hornell, N.Y. Doctors in Gaza didn’t have the expertise to operate on him and Abdullah’s father had been unable to get him transferred quickly to Israel or Egypt.
And this is the first press release: