February 8, 2024, 1:34pm
Israel’s relentless assault on Gaza, now in its 125th day, has claimed the lives of over 11,500 Palestinian children and injured tens of thousands more.
Save the Children has estimated that, on average, ten Gazan children are losing one or more limbs every single day. Since October, more than 1,000 children have had one or both legs amputated. Due to the deliberate crippling of Gaza’s healthcare system, as well as the major shortage of both healthcare workers and medical supplies, many of these amputations have been performed without anesthetic.
In an effort to provide some desperately needed medical support to these injured children, a UK-based group (led by writers Sonia Faleiro and Fatima Bhutto and literary agent Julia Churchill) called Books for Gaza is mobilizing a global coalition of writers to raise funds for the Ghassan Abu Sittah Children’s Fund. As the group’s auction page details:
When children and babies lose limbs, the process requires regular surgeries until their bodies have finished growing. There are well over 1,000 children who have lost one or more limbs, and who have very little access to primary and secondary medical care.
#BooksforGaza is mobilizing a global coalition of writers to raise funds for injured children by donating signed copies of their books in exchange for a donation to The Ghassan Abu Sittah Children’s Fund. The mission of the Fund is to transport critically injured children and their carers from Gaza to Lebanon for surgical, medical, psychological, and social care, and to put in place a long term care plan for each child, with the goal of helping every child back into their communities where they will resume their life as normally as possible.
For a £35.00 donation (or more, if you’re able to give a little extra), you can get yourself a signed copy of Sally Rooney’s Beautiful World, Where Are You?, Lauren Groff’s The Vaster Wilds, Tommy Orange’s There There, Colson Whitehead’s Crook Manifesto, Rupi Kaur’s Milk and Honey, or your choice of dozens of other titles.
The #BooksForGaza initiative is, at the time of writing, almost 80% of the way to its goal of raising £25,000 for Ghassan Abu Sittah Children’s Fund. The auction will continue until February 12 and, if prominent authors continue to donate signed books and readers continue to support the fundraiser at the rate they have been over the past 24 hours, there’s no reason why it can’t hit the £100,000 mark by then.
