Rachel Smalley became a mother in October 2023 — the same month as the Hamas-led attack on Israel that was followed by a two-year onslaught by Israeli forces.
Smalley said the birth of her son made it “impossible” for her to ignore the videos that filled her social media feed showing buildings obliterated by Israeli bombs or children starving because of an Israeli blockade.
“I couldn't know what was happening there and do nothing,” Smalley said.
She took action after connecting with a Gazan mother named Israa Mousa through Instagram.
Smalley set up a crowdfunding campaign to support the Mousa family and then began to make homemade items — soy candles, tie-dyed tee shirts, pins, and stickers. She doesn’t try to recover her costs, instead donating whatever she gets through sales to the Mousas.
Now, Smalley and a friend she made through advocacy for Palestinian rights created an organization called Mothers4Gaza. They set up a table at a weekly pro-Palestine gathering to raise money near Eastern Market in Detroit.
Despite a language barrier — Mousa speaks only Arabic, which Smalley doesn’t understand — the two have maintained nearly daily contact. They communicate through Whatsapp, which has a translation feature. Through videos, Smalley has seen Mousa's children singing a practiced rendition of happy birthday or huddled in the tent they lived in after being displaced.
An October ceasefire brought relative peace to Gaza, but many in the Detroit-sized strip of land are still fighting for survival. Smalley said it's become harder to fundraise since the ceasefire, even though conditions are still dire.
Crowdfunding creates “patchwork” of financial support
Aid agencies, including the United Nations, say the amount of food Israeli officials are allowing into Gaza is still short of what’s needed to feed the population.
Additionally, winter storms have repeatedly flooded the tents that many Gazans have been living in after their homes were destroyed by Israeli airstrikes.
“It's very devastating because you've lost everything and you lose it [again] every time it rains,” said Hani Almadhoun, who works for the U.S. branch of United Nations’ Agency for Palestinian Refugees, or UNRWA.
Almadhoun grew up in Gaza and most of his family still lives there. In early 2024 he and his brother, Mahmoud, used GoFundMe to launch a communal hot food distribution project called Gaza Soup Kitchen. They hoped to raise $25,000 but received more than $6 million before incorporating as a nonprofit organization and shifting to other platforms for donations.
Almadhoun said the kinds of small-scale crowdfunding campaigns that Smalley runs are part of what he called a “patchwork” of aid that has made a difference for some.
The crowdfunding, he said, “created a new class of people in Gaza called ‘mubadreen,’” in Arabic which basically means people who run initiatives. “So those folks raise money from those communities that they tap into and they bring help to their community.”
“No essentials for life”
From her home about 70 miles south of Lansing in Coldwater, Katherine Love runs crowdfunding campaigns for dozens of families in Gaza. She began her efforts after connecting with a young mother from Gaza named Bayan Matar.
Love’s first video appealing for donations focused on the Matar family. “It kind of just kind of built from there,” she said.
A network of people online helped her understand the logistics of collecting and distributing donations through wire transfers. “I was learning from other people,” Love said, “Mostly other women, other moms who were also doing this and sharing information about how to best make it work.”
Many of them had full-time jobs and multiple children like Love, but stole away moments from their hectic lives to support Gazan families.
So far, Love has raised more than $30,000 for Bayan, her two children, as well as her parents and siblings. Their home was badly damaged by an Israeli airstrike, so they live all crammed together in a small room on a relative’s roof.
Bayan didn’t want to comment for this story, but her father, Hisham Matar, sent numerous Whatsapp voice memos to describe what the family has experienced.
“There’s no school for the kids,” he said over the squeals of his grandchildren. “[There’s] no work, no essentials for life, no electricity, no running water, no electricity, no fuel. And day by day, things get much, much harder than the day before.”
Matar was excited to learn from his daughter that Love lives in Michigan, because it allowed him to reflect on a happier time in his life.
“There in Michigan, I became what I am now,” he said fondly. “And it is maybe the most important five years of my life.”
Hisham went to Wayne State University in the late 80s and earned an undergraduate degree in civil engineering, before obtaining a master's degree in water resources management from the Netherlands.
Before the war, he worked to help manage Gaza’s water system. He hasn’t been able to work since the war began, and now spends much of his time collecting clean water or firewood to cook over.
Love keeps in contact with the Matar family and others in Gaza daily. They exchange reflections on their days, hopes for one another, and photos of their children. Loves said says she’s come to let herself accept concern from Gazan moms when her kids are battling colds or tummy aches.
“There's some dissonance there,” Love said, noting she feels “weird” about sending pictures of her children laughing when she knows children in Gaza are suffering. She makes sure to never share pictures that include food.
Her mind is constantly running with comparisons, often getting stuck on what people in Gaza don’t have.
She couldn’t help but feel guilty last summer, collecting fresh vegetables from her father’s garden, in addition to all the eggs his chickens provide.
“When famine was really at its worst, we had like this beautiful garden with all of this produce, [which] was the most hard to find [in Gaza],” she recalled. “I think, [I’m] just noticing myself having bigger reactions to food being wasted.”
Even sending her children off to school or tucking them in at night and knowing they’ll be safe are simple pleasures that she knows many mothers in Gaza were robbed of for years.
Ultimately, it’s those things that motivate her to keep doing what she can to support families in Gaza.
