Dragnet

Independent investigative journalism and dispatches from the front lines.

[Jeremy Loffredo @loffredojeremy]

An exclusive @draagnet report from the ground in the besieged Gaza Strip where Israel’s brutal blockade has made the price of a cigarette lighter go from 25 cents to $50.

Since Israel took Gaza’s electrical grid off-line, lighters are the only way to cook food or heat milk for babies — @draagnet found that as many as ten families in Gaza City are sharing a single lighter.

[Tamer Nahed @Tamer_Alnoaizy]

Imagine Israel banning the entry of lighters into Gaza!

One of the most suffocating everyday crises we face here is the shortage of lighters. More than three families sometimes have to share a single lighter, as if even the most basic necessities of life have become forbidden luxuries.

Apparently, lighting a cigarette or starting a fire to cook has become a security threat that justifies all this blockade! At this point, all we're missing is an international permit to strike a match.

[Dragnet @draagnet]

correction: Tamir's X acount is @Tamer_Alnoaizy

[Dragnet @draagnet]

Exclusive dispatch from Gaza: No cigarette lighters have entered the besieged Gaza Strip in three years, and a single lighter now costs around $50.

Dragnet's Gaza-based contributor @TamerNahed reports that people have begun working as "lighter repairers" to make a living. In some areas, as many as ten families share a single lighter because most people cannot afford to buy one.

With Gaza's public electricity grid taken off-line by Israel, lighters are essential for starting fires to cook food and warm milk for babies.

[Dragnet @draagnet]

For more exclusive independent dispatches from Gaza subscribe here: https://t.co/nIacIYPtAG

[Tamer Nahed @Tamer_Alnoaizy]

I broke down while filming these scenes. I couldn't bear the scale of the suffering unfolding before my eyes. I tried my best to amplify these families' voices, but what I witnessed was beyond words.

Children soaked, tents completely flooded, and families left exposed to the cold and rain. The world is not just witnessing this tragedy; it is complicit through its silence.

Watch the report for yourselves.

[Jeremy Loffredo @loffredojeremy]

The first @draagnet dispatch from the besieged & flooded Gaza Strip: @Tamer_Alnoaizy spent hours walking through Gaza's displacement camps, where Palestinians whose homes were destroyed by Israeli bombs are now sleeping in freezing mud water.

[Scott Horton @scotthortonshow]

Just disgusting. Israel is surely the worst thing about the United States of America.

[Ana Kasparian @AnaKasparian]

The government picked your pockets to bankroll Israel’s slaughter and persecution of innocents in Gaza.

They cut a trillion in healthcare funding. But they made sure to send the genociders enough cash to do this.

[Harrison Berger @BergerPosts]

Watch our first dispatch from Gaza below, from @draagnet contributor @Tamer_Alnoaizy

[Dragnet @draagnet]

Subscribe to Dragnet so our small team can continue producing these critical dispatches: https://t.co/sDJjF13jXb

[Dragnet @draagnet]

Dragnet's first dispatch from the besieged Gaza Strip: Dragnet contributor @Tamer_Alnoaizy spent hours walking through tents in Gaza's flooded displacement camps, where Palestinians whose homes and neighborhoods were destroyed by Israeli bombs are now sleeping in freezing water.