LEE SIU HIN-Report from Cairo Our Third September 16-21, 2024 Chinese Activist-Based Panda Aid for Gaza Medical Humanitarian Mission 2024
PART ONE: Meeting with Medics World Wide to Discuss Future Joint-Gaza Medical Humanitarian Project: Fundraising to Donate Ambulances, Mobile Hospitals and Repair the Al Shifa Hospital Building in Gaza Which Seriously Damaged by IOF Invasion
李小轩 Lee Siu Hin
熊猫支援 Panda Aid
中美民间交流协会 China-US Solidarity Network
September 25th, 2024
At the eve of first anniversary of the October 7th Al-Aqsa Flood, and the following Israeli Occupied Forces (IOF) brutal invade and destroy Gaza, at this moment, Around 42,000 Palestinians had been killed and 96,000 injured, according to the Al-Jazeera estimates (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/longform/2023/10/9/israel-hamas-war-in-maps-and-charts-live-tracker)
IOF intentionally targeting civilians by creating Gaza total blockade, boxing them like the movie “Hunger Games,” an open prison blocking food and medicine to enter, making every Gazans starve and sick to death.
Every hour in Gaza: an average of 15 people are killed. Six are children, 35 people are injured and 12 buildings are destroyed. Today, almost every house, schools, hospitals, university and public infostructure in Gaza had been destroyed, according to the Al-Jazeera.
There’re 36 hospitals before the war, IOF intentionally bombing, killing medical staffs/patients and destroying every of them, include the famous El Shefaa(Al Shifa) hospital.
IOF forcing every Gazans leave their home to the “Safe Zone” every few days, then bomb and killed them inside the zone, no doubt that’s an ethnic cleansing and the genocide！
Peace and justice activists around the World had been organizing daily non-stop protests against the IOF invasion and U$-Western governments shameful backing the “Israel”. The heroic people of Yamen, Lebanon and Gaza had been organizing their military resistance to against IOF, it’s clear that “Israel” is losing the war and had lost their international credibility.
Yet, “Israel” with the backing from genocide Joe, are launching their desperate campaign to escalate the terror into wider regional war against Lebanon, Syria and Iran. They dream a bigger war with U$ military involvement, in order to eliminate all regional enemy of “Israel” for once at all, control the World’s strategic region to build an absolute Israel-U$ new World order.
The September 17-18 Israel-behind indiscriminate Lebanon pager bombing explosions, and the following massive bombing against Southern Lebanon that killed hundreds of people, shows that the “Israel” will continue the war indefinitely at any cost. We also need to clearly understand that the latest war won’t end in the near future, people suffers more as IOF brutality worsens; international peace and justice activists has responsibility to organize actions against the war, also understand this’ll be a “Protracted War,” need to separately organize campaigns to support humanitarian missions for the refugees and victims, help them to break the siege and show of our international humanitarian solidarity.
Panda Aid 熊猫支援
Panda Aid (www.PandaAid.org) is created under such circumstances, the projects of National Immigrant Solidarity Network (www.ImmigrantSolidarity.org) and China-US Solidarity Network (www.ChinaSolidarity.org).
We’re community-based activist-run international humanitarian aid organization, run by Chinese and the global south community activists around the World, to support emergency humanitarian relief caused by endless U.S./West-wars around the World, and economic exploitation against the global south and the inner-city people of color communities caused by the western neo-liberal capitalism, and to build international activist solidarity from China to the U.S. and the World.
Our first project, we began our Gaza emergency relief work since April, 2024; our group of Chinese activists from China, are working with Egypt-based community relief organizations, begin donating medicines and supplies to Gaza or Gazan refugees in Egypt.
Since March, 2024 we had successfully organized three Chinese-activists organized humanitarian missions.
Our original plan was bringing donated medicines/supplies from China to Egypt, then entering Gaza through Rafah Crossing from the Egypt-Gaza border, and distribute to the local hospital and refugee camps. The idea could worked in the past, but not now.
Since October 2023, the Israeli army, with the support of the United States, had carried out numerous attack against humanitarian convoys in Gaza, forcing many organizations to halt their operations; they’re deliberately creating a large-scale famine and medical shortages.
Since mid-April, after IOF invaded and occupied the Rafah Crossing in southern Gaza, the land crossing from Egypt to Gaza was forced to close, and all humanitarian relief supplies sent from Egypt to Gaza were blocked, as for now there’s no sign of reopening the border.
U$ and “Israel” want to permanently shut down the Egypt-Gaza’s Rafah Crossing, replacing it with further away crossing point beginning at Jordan, east of “Israel”. A humanitarian truck will begin driving from Jordan border, entering under the total surveillance of “Israeli” highway going west, entering Gaza through Israeli controlled check points, totally bypassing Egypt; a such wired but almost only “Israel” approved route called “Jordian Corridor.”
There’s been many peace activists want to send their humanitarian aid and calling for end the siege actions from Mediterranean Sea to Gaza by boat, or from Egypt to Gaza by land, unfortunately they’re all blocked, attacked by military and arrested.
Therefore; after our evaluation, we decided to carefully organize our humanitarian activism work by introduce our organization with local authority and the UN agencies, and building partnerships and joint projects with local humanitarian organizations.
We’re working with Egypt-based Gazan refugee support organizations such as: Network for Palestine, donate items to support their work (one estimate by Palestinian government, currently there’re at least 150 thousand Gazan refugees living in Egypt), and Medics World Wide, a Tukey-based Palestinian medics organization to build future joint medical humanitarian projects in Gaza; and connecting with The Palestinian Doctors Association in Europe (www.palmedeurope.org) funded by Palestinian doctors living and working across Europe focus on Gaza medical emergency projects and sending volunteer doctors.
Gaza Medical Emergency Donations Organized by The Palestinian Doctors Association in Europe
They’re part of the large networks of Palestinian, Global South and grassroots activists-run humanitarian organizations not known by the western peace and justice communities, facing many risks with often suppressed by the local authorities, and always lack of funds.
We choose to work with them because we’re new in the region to organize a complex activist-run humanitarian project, need first humblely understand and respect the local customs; building a good local partnership can help us avoid unnecessary trouble while setting our work faster.
Medics World Wide (MWW)
Our 2024 third trips to Egypt for Lee Siu Hin led-China’s Panda Aid for Gaza humanitarian mission from September 16 to 21, 2024.
We originally planned to depart directly from Shanghai to Cairo on September 15, but at the last minute, our friend, Medics World Wide (https://medicsww.com) a medical relief organization headquartered in Istanbul, Turkey, funded by Palestinian medics living abroad, invited us to visit them first.
They have a 50-person working team in Gaza, specializing in arranging the relief supplies, and building temporary hospitals in Gaza. They recently signed an agreement with the Gaza Health Ministry, to lead the fundraising to repair one of the medical buildings of the famous Al Shifa Hospital in northern Gaza, which was damaged and burned by the invading IOF a few months ago.
The project will cost US$850,000, but donations can be made according to everyone's ability and willingness, and the donors will be recognized in the rebuilt building for permanent commemoration.
Panda Aid proposed we could be responsible for one of the floors, which could be named the "China Floor". Donors could choose to donate money for the restoration of different rooms, corners, and areas according to their own wishes, and obtain the racemization of the area, such as "xx Memorial Room" and "xx Memorial Corner".
Their work is not always easy; so far, four staff members have been killed by the IOF in Gaza.
After our meeting in Istanbul, we continue fly to Cairo to visit their humanitarian logistics center.
Based in in Badr City, about 67 kilometers (42 miles) east of Cairo, the center has several staffs to arrange to purchase medical, food and other relief materials from different humanitarian organization from various countries in Egypt for Gaza, and logistic and transportation services from Cairo through the Rafah Crossing on the Egypt-Gaza border, into Gaza for humanitarian distribution. Each project they charge about 10% costs as operating expenses，we can understand they’re a humanitarian logistic support organization.
Since its establishment in 2016, they had been helping different aid groups for transporting medicines and medical supplies into Gaza, and supporting the construction of Gaza hospitals. Since the latest IOF invaded Gaza, the humanitarian crisis has taken a sharp turn into the worse. They are now also responsible for packing and transporting relief food and “food parcels” for donors and humanitarian agencies from various countries, giving to the Gazan refugees.
Since IOF occupied and blocked the Rafah Crossing in April 2024, the channel for transporting relief supplies from Egypt to Gaza was forced to be blocked, and their operations were forced to suspend operations indefinitely.
Recently, after their neoglaciation with the Egyptian-Israeli military and other parties, they got green lights and possible to resume and implement limited projects from Rafah Crossing or other ports entering Gaza for humanitarian missions, transporting small amounts of medical supplies and international medical volunteers, ambulances and mobile bus hospitals into Gaza, but they still cannot transport food.
Beside the restoration of the Gaza Al Shifa Hospital project, they show us other Gaza projects, including each projects’ logistics arrangement, actual donating materials and the cost of each project in detail:
1) Food Aid: A truck can transport 60 tons of goods, mainly flour for breads. Each bag of flour weighs 25 kilograms (55.1 lbs.), it can transport up to 2,400 bags of flour per truck.
The MWW driver responsible for driving the truck from Cairo to the designated location in Gaza (send to the warehouse established by the receiving organization in Gaza, who also responsible for hiring staffs for their own management, security and food distribution to the refugees, etc.; or an organization can choose to contract MWW operate the donations and logistics).
Due to various obstructions and bureaucratic checkpoints, the highway from Cairo to Rafah Crossing, which only takes five hours in the past, now takes about two days to queue up to pass the customs to reach Rafah Crossing. Trucks queuing for inspection in and out of Gaza also need to wait for many days, and the driver can only stay in the car to eat, drink and wait. Because MWW has already dealing with the two places (Egypt and Gaza) and the three parties (Egypt, Gaza and the "Israeli" military) in advance, the entire customs clearance and round-trip logistics journey can be smoother than others, and it only takes about a week to complete the entire journey.
2) Food Parcels: The same truck can transport a maximum of 1,320 boxes of food. What rations or prices are put in it can be chosen according to the wishes of the donor. Take the $22/box standard items they suggested (a family of four for one-month, basic grain and oil food required according to the local eating habits) as an example. The items include: 1 bottle of cooking oil (400g), 2 packs of dates (700g), 2 cans of hummus (400g), 1 pack of yeast (450g), 2 cans of beans (400g), 1 bottle of tani sweetener (1kg), 2 bottles of tomato paste (400g), 4 packs of Vita cheese (250g), 2 cans of tuna (140g), 2 packs of salt (500g), 1 pack of rice (1kg), 1 pack of tea (250g), 1 pack of flour (1kg), 1 pack of sugar (1kg), 1 pack of macaroni (1kg), 1 bottle of jam (750g), 2 packs of lentils (1kg), and 1 carton for packaging food.
The cost of a truckload of food parcels is $29,040USD, plus the cost of packing and transportation for MWW will be $32,660USD in total.
3) Ambulance: Due to the deliberate attacks by the IOF, most hospitals and ambulances in the Gaza Strip have been destroyed. In addition to the reconstruction of the Gaza Shifa Hospital building project, they also organize ambulances donation project.
The ambulances are modified according to EU standards from vans sold on the market. In order to reduce costs, most of them choose vans made in China, such as Wuling and Foton. The modification was contracted to a German company in Cairo that specializes in ambulance modification. The price of each ambulance varies according to the equipment inside and the medical needs. Generally, the basic ambulance for transporting patients is about 30,000USD, while the ICU standard ambulance that can perform simple operations is about 40,000-50,000 USD per vehicle. Ambulances donations are generally arranged requested by the Gaza Health Ministry, then distributed to different medical institutions. Some donated ambulances are also sent to local international rescue organizations.
The operation costs of ambulances are also a long-term donation project that needs to be considered, because each vehicle needs to be operated by a doctor and a nurse, and their salaries need to be guaranteed, which is about thousands of U.S. dollars per vehicle per month.
They suggest we can organize community-based “passing the bucket” crowdfunding campaign to raise the funds. Take the dozen ambulances donation project, currently in their warehouse that are ready to go to Gaza next month, as an example. Each one is donated by a different organization, each ambulance is not necessarily donated by the only one donor. An ambulance donated by an Indonesian charity, which collected crowdfunding donations from 11 local organizations, about 3,000-5,000 USD per organization. And each organization also mobilized their members to donate, and the accumulation of a little can enough to buy an ambulance to donate. The donation of an ambulance represents the collective love of thousands of local Indonesian people.
In addition, they also have a project in Gaza to repair damaged but still usable ambulances, and look forward to the financial support from donors.
4) Mobile Medical Bus: In Gaza, where all medical facilities have been destroyed by the IOF, there’re urgent need for mobile medical services directly to the community in urgent need. The mobile medical bus project can be based on demand. It can be a basic type, which is about 80,000 to 90,000 USD according to the medical configurations, for a bus with specialist type (such as: gynecology/obstetrics) is cost about 192,000 USD.
The bus project was also completed through crowdfunding by multiple organizations and lots of individual donors. For example, an Indonesian charity led 11 local institutions to crowdfund a specialist (gynecology/obstetrics) medical bus. Each institution donated an average of about 16,700 USD to complete the project.
While fixed asset donations are one-time giving, a long-term operational cost also required: the costs of bus drivers, doctors, nurses and medical supplies and so, on are need thousands of dollars to be raised each month, if they can run an effective fund-raising campaign in advanced, shared by more than a dozen institutions, monthly donations per each organizations could be as low as low thousand dollars per month.
At present, they have many projects donated by Malaysian and Indonesian charities, representing lots of loves from Asian people. They also look forward to the love from Chinese kind-hearted people in the future.
5) Arrange Medical Personnel to Enter Gaza: Take the Indonesian charity donation project as an example. There’s a hospital donated by Indonesia in northern Gaza call Indonesian Hospital. They arranged the donated medical supplies through MWW into Gaza. In addition to donate to the Indonesian Hospital, Indonesian volunteer doctors can also follow the project to enter Gaza.
Ahmed from the MWW Cairo, explains their project in detail. We hope everyone can learn how humanitarian mission works, and eliminate some misunderstanding about the project and our work. We look forward to everyone's support for our Panda Aid’s Gaza humanitarian medical humanitarian project.
Why We’re Doing?
U$ had declared their ultimate support and continue sending weapons to Isreal for Gaza massacre, making every desperate effort to block any possible efforts from the United Nations from passing any resolution condemning Israel and calling for sanctions, and death-threating the International Criminal Court judges from issuing arrest warrants targeting “Israeli” officials against the demands from every country in the World. U$ and the West hypocritically and viciously making the total false Xinjiang “ethnic cleansing” and “forced labor” claim, and launching numerous unilateral sanctions against China and the officials, as well as funding Xinjiang Uygur separatist forces around the World.
During the massive protests against Israeli Gaza invasion since last year, there’s been some political fringe groups, intentionally try to stack their pro-Xinjiang Uygur “independence” and Chinaphobia messages into the movement. It can go as far as: ”If we supports Free Gaza, we should supports Free Xinjiang”, “U.S. Imperialism=Chinese Imperialism”.
Fortunately, the mainstream antiwar movements had resisted these phony messages that could badly divide the movement.
According to the media, “Israel” had repeatedly calling for a plan to seal-off entire northern Gaza, expel every civilian from the area, then create a so-called “closed military zone” that IOF could blowup every building and kill anyone (https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/netanyahu-examining-siege-plan-hamas-north-gaza-israeli-media-report-2024-09-22/); which mean every humanitarian projects inside the zone could be blowup into ashes. The ambulances we had worked hard fund raise to donate, could be destroyed by IOF within few days, or the rebuild/rehabitation of the Al Shifa Hospital building project, it could missile destroyed and burned down by IOF at the next day.
Then, why we’re doing this? Because we need to believe in hope, justice, and humanities; helping them is also helping us. Only with a community of shared future for mankind can help us have a common and beautiful future.
People Of The World United Will Never Be Defeated!
Our just humanitarian journey continues.
Our journey continues in Part Two…
About Lee Siu Hin 李小轩
Lee Siu Hin, a Chinese-American immigrant activist from Los Angeles, CA, is the founder and national coordinator of the China-U.S. Solidarity Network (CUSN), National Immigrant Solidarity Network (NISN) and the Panda Aid. He is a long-time community, labor, antiwar and immigrant rights activist for grassroots struggle. He's also a long-time Pacifica Radio KPFK Los Angeles unpaid reporter and producer and war correspondent who has worked in the Middle East, Europe, and Africa.
NISN is a grassroots-based national immigrant activist network, and CUSN is a network of academic and community activists in both countries committed to building a China-U.S. grassroots activist dialogue. Panda Aid is a Chinese-activist run international humanitarian organization.
Lee holds a Masters of Public Administration (MPA) and a Masters of Engineering (Aerospace) from California State Polytechnic University at Pomona, located in Pomona, CA.
He is currently working on medical IT technology for the inner-city community, and for the global south. He travels frequently between China and U.S. for the activism work.
His latest book “Capitalism on a Ventilator” was co-published with Sara Flounders in September 2020; the Chinese edition was released in January 2022. He contributed to “Sanctions: a wrecking ball in a global economy” published in December 2022 and produced the documentary “Vaccine and Sanctions” released on February, 2023.
His second documentary “Voice of Xinjiang” still under production, a short version was released on December, 2023.
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