Satanyahu: Season 1, Episode 1 of My Life as an Ansari
Changing direction at the start of 2024. The story of how I ended up as one of the Ansar to Gazan Muhajireen, plus my personal experiences and struggles along the way
Here is Season 1, Episode 1 for this article series — the story of my personal experiences and struggles as I became an Ansari (Helper) of Gazan refugees (Muhajireen). But this is not the beginning: before reading this episode, please make sure to read this two-part introduction (Season 0) first. List of all episodes can be found here.
I’ve spent the last few months calling on people to support Gazans — not just through boycotts, sharing awareness posts, and dua, but financially, too. Beyond scattered financial aid, I’ve also been calling on individuals to adopt individual Palestinians and become the Ansar (Helpers) of the Gazan refugees (Muhajireen), following the Sunnah of Muwakha (adopting refugees through individual brotherhood). But have I myself been living up to what I’m preaching?
This article series shares my story and my experiences, as I stumbled through various types of activism for Gaza, and along the way, ended up becoming an “Ansari” myself. I’ve been in touch with Palestinian individuals and families on both sides of Rafah (trapped in Gaza, as well as refugees in Egypt), and I’ve become deeply attached to some. Along the way, I’ve met the most wonderful people around the world who are working hard to support our Palestinian brothers and sisters.
My story starts here, from this two-part read on my burnout experience with Gaza activism:
Burnout with Gaza: Season 0, Episode 1 of My Life as an Ansari
Here is Season 0, Episode 1 (first of a two-part introduction) for this article series — the story of my personal experiences and struggles as I became an Ansari (Helper) of Gazan refugees (Muhajireen). List of episodes can be found here.
I heavily recommend reading the above two-part introduction before you start Season 1 of this article series, so that you are able to better understand and contextualize what I’m talking about; here I’m basically picking up from where Part 2 of Season 0 ended. So before you continue reading here, just click on the above and check it out. Thanks.
May Allah keep our intentions pure for His sake.
I’d like to say that I learned my lesson well, and that things went smoothly. That I no longer fell into repeatedly doom-scrolling, getting emotionally strung out, and wrecking my day-to-day routine, capacity, and health. But I did. It was less than before, sure, but my knee-jerk reaction to Gaza activism did not end with my coach/mentor’s advice to me. Even with all of my defence mechanisms, the impulse control app, the lessons learned, and the breakthrough moments of understanding my responsibilities for making long-term gains — various triggers kept sneaking past my defenses and pulling me back in to these unhelpful spirals. But I kept pushing on, no matter what — there was still a lot of work to do.
The first few months of 2024 found me gradually, naturally changing directions in my frantic activism for Gaza, as the situation on-ground morphed. As the evil oppressors’ plan for a southward nakba slowly stretched into an engineered famine, more and more and more Palestinians shared fundraisers online — mostly evacuation fundraisers (to leave Gaza through the Rafah border), but also pleas for immediate aid. My online awareness posts — on WhatsApp Status, my Instagram, and my Substack — became more about featuring resources like GazaDirect2FamilyAidSource, a fantastic resource that collects and features such aid requests (check them out!). Since trawling through the harrowing news updates had already proven too distressing and burnout-inducing, my awareness activism focused instead on promoting grassroots aid and charity — which I felt was clearly the need of the hour, all the while our Gazan brothers and sisters suffered a slow, painful and growing starvation campaign.
When you post a lot of Palestinian-supporting content on social media, and follow, like and share content from the large network of Palestine supporters online — slowly individual Gazans start reaching out to you, for contributing and sharing their fundraisers, as they are desperately campaigning for their own survival.
Throughout this period, many such people messaged me. Usually, I’d check out the sender’s profile, and if they seemed legit (e.g. photos, and videos, and clear posts from before last October, etc), I’d financially contribute. I would also point them in the direction of fundraiser aggregators like GazaDirect2FamilyAidSource. I’d try to also send words of support, and sometimes I’d hit it off with them. Really hit it off.
Throughout this article series, I’ll In Sha Allah be sharing various such interactions I’ve had with Gazans on the ground, some of which led to deeper and more consequential connections than others.
By the time Ramadan came in around mid-March, another thing happened that allowed me to focus more on fundraising awareness. Since the end of 2023, as the result of a hackathon on pro-Palestinian content creation, I had been working with two brilliant people from the UK Muslim community on a small project. It was a project for raising awareness on the updates of the ongoing genocide, and these two people were a young brother who is into videography (and good at it, Allahumma barik lahu), and a sister named Hafsah, who is a very dedicated activist for Palestine. This project was an Instagram page we created, @satanyahu (link), which was basically a satire / parody of Netanyahu texting Satan for advice on carrying out the nakba — we were trying to raise long-term awareness through the satirical posts.
At long last, with our efforts sputtering out after months of a lack of reach and traction, the three of us decided together to put this particular project to an end, and focus on other ways to contribute to help the Palestinians, each in our own unique ways. We ended things on good terms, and putting this project to rest did free up my capacity a bit, for focusing on other, more effective forms of activism.
Something great that came out of this project was getting connected with Hafsah and her brave activism. Around March, Hafsah took a brief trip from the UK to Egypt as a part of her activism, and met with Palestinian refugees in Egypt. Little did I know what huge ripples were about to come from this brave trip of hers, and how much this was about to impact my own activism.
Continued in Season 1, Episode 2: Leave Palestine Alone.