Samantha 🍉

Arty, lefty tree-hugger and fat cat lady. Yes to disability solidarity, no to discrimination in healthcare. She/her.
Banner: @SurvivingCFS

[Samantha 🍉 @spoonsnroses]

On the butterfly app with the same handle if you're there, but can't find some of my faves there so sticking around here too for now

[Maha Hussaini @MahaGaza]

A storytelling training session for young Palestinians in Gaza was supposed to take place in the very area suddenly targeted by Israeli strikes.

We had to postpone the session rather than risk bringing our WANNers into the area as the attacks intensified.

We’re relieved, however, that the @WeAreNotNumbers team in Gaza and beneficiaries are safe.

[Maha Hussaini @MahaGaza]

Two weeks ago, Nazeeh, my first nephew, flew a kite for the first time in his life.

He is 12, however, and he should have learned how to fly kites years ago. But when he was old enough to learn, the genocide began. For the next three years, the things he learned were how to cut firewood with his father for cooking, collect water, and move from one shelter to another.

Earlier this month, we went to the beach together as a family.

In every break he took from swimming, I noticed him watching boys flying kites.

“Nazeeh,” I called. “Look around. If you see anyone selling kites, let’s get you one.”

His eyes lit up. He jumped up and started asking around.

We couldn’t find anyone selling one. And just as he came back disappointed, I called over a boy flying a black-and-white kite.

“Where did you buy it?” I asked.
“Do you want one?” he asked back.

He told us he made the kites himself from nylon and sticks and sold them to earn a little pocket money. He offered us the kite for very little. So we got it.
For the next few hours, I had to reach back into my own childhood to teach Nazeeh how to fly it.

Every time I let out more string and the kite climbed higher, he would jump and shout: “Higher! Higher!”
I hadn’t seen my little genius this excited in a long time.

Nazeeh isn’t easily impressed by ordinary children’s toys. He is the kind of kid who would rather take things apart and fix them, especially electronics, or sit watching “how-to” videos.

At one point, laughing, he said: “Wow, how beautiful it is to drive something in the sky.” He knew “drive” wasn’t quite the right word. But I knew exactly what he meant.

As I expected, the kite didn’t stay the way he had bought it. The next day, he asked his mother to show him YouTube videos on how to make kites. Then he rebuilt his own.

He used different nylon. He glued a Palestinian flag onto it. And he wrote “Gaza” on every side, preparing it for our next trip to the beach.

But yesterday, his parents told him he couldn’t fly it outside the house. “Why?” he asked.

I’m not sure what they told him, but I’m sure they couldn’t put into words how Israel’s Prime Minister and Defense Minister have themselves threatened intensified bombing and forced evacuations of areas in Gaza where children are spotted flying kites.

Because, after all, how do you explain to a 12-year-old that one of the world’s most powerful militaries is designating paper kites as “weapons of war” in a completely devastated area?

[Zack Polanski @ZackPolanski]

A fire now the size of 140 football pitches

Drought in half of England, and all of Wales

Heat alerts across the country.

Already 3000 dead from the heat.

The crisis is here. We can see it, we can smell the smoke.

And we cannot sit by while government sit on their hands.

[Euro-Med Monitor @EuroMedHR]

The battle for cancer patients in #Gaza is no longer only against cancer.. It is also against shortages of essential medicines and barriers preventing them from accessing lifesaving treatment

[Al Jazeera English @AJEnglish]

Welsh artist Diana Williams stitched the names of 300 babies killed by Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza into a vintage christening gown she transformed into a memorial.

More than 20,000 children in Gaza have been killed by Israel since October 2023.

[Marie Curie @mariecurieuk]

People living with an illness that won’t get better deserve financial security until the very end.

Repost if you agree. 💛

[Artists for Palestine UK @Art4PalestineUK]

“Those who remain silent now are complicit and colluding with Israel, and I urge anyone who is in a position of influence to put pressure on these criminals by speaking out for my father and all of the Palestinian prisoners.”

[Paul Weller @paulwellerHQ]

He is the best of us, and yet he and many others are being taken, tortured and murdered by Israel, without charge! If this great man dies on our watch, due to lack of action by our leaders against Israel’s impunity, it will be yet another stain on our collective humanity.

(2/4)

[GlumBird @GlumBird]

This is an absolutely vicious policy which will send masses in a poverty they cannot escape from into a hell beyond fathoming. At present, asylum seekers cannot work. They receive prepaid cards with £49.18 per week for food at preagreed shops - no transport fund.

[Good Shepherd Collective @Shepherds4Good]

Al Shifa Medical Complex announced today that an important medical substance required in kidney dialysis, "bicarbonate", has completely run out due to an Israeli-imposed ban on its entry into the Gaza Strip. This threatens the lives of 650 patients with kidney failure in Gaza.

[Maha Hussaini @MahaGaza]

Since I started my work in the field of human rights in 2014, I have submitted my resignation multiple times after each Israeli offensive on Gaza. After having done my duties as a human rights advocate and -before anything else- as a human being, I fell into depression resulting from desperation over international inaction towards war crimes, and for weeks, sometimes even months, I felt we were screaming into the void. I was known for submitting resignations after each attack until it turned into a joke at the organisation and among my colleagues.

As we move to close the physical space of our Euro-Med Monitor (@EuroMedHR) Gaza office, fearing for the safety of our staff following an escalating Israeli campaign in retaliation for our documentation of Israeli abuses, and most recently the release of our report on sexual violence in Israel’s places of detention, I came across this message sent by my manager on the morning of 7 October 2023. Jokingly, he said: “I’m telling you from now, your resignation will be rejected,” and then followed it with another message: “If you stay alive, of course"

I sent him the screenshot this morning, reminding him that I “happened to” stay alive, but that, bizarrely, I haven’t submitted my resignation, not during the genocide, not following the ceasefire agreement, and not even now, as an Israeli incitement campaign is escalating.

While the world was looking away as a genocide was being livestreamed on their screens, I questioned the point of our work countless times. As I quietly recited the Shahada (the statement of faith before death) each time I entered a school to document testimonies, I questioned whether the world actually deserved more evidence to finally acknowledge that the target was everything called Palestinian, not just a certain political or armed group.

I had so many existential questions, but, to my astonishment (and that of my colleagues), not even once did I submit my resignation. With each human rights defender, activist, or journalist targeted, I came to realise more and more that something about them was annoying the perpetrators. And for the first time in my life, I found a purpose in what I want to be; that if I couldn’t stop war criminals, I want to live the rest of my life annoying them.

As we close the door to our beloved Gaza office, we have finally, more than ever, found a purpose in continuing what we do by all means, under all circumstances.

[Maha Hussaini @MahaGaza]

"On the road from Gaza to Khan Younis, a girl sat next to me. Her name was Sama.

She was in her mother’s lap, pointing with her small hand towards the window. I understood she wanted to see the sea, so I opened the window and placed her in my lap. A smile appeared on her face, like someone remembering that life can look different.

I said to her jokingly: “I didn’t notice you’ve been pointing at me for a while. Why didn’t you call me, uncle?”

Her mother replied: “She used to talk a lot, but after what happened to her two years ago, she stopped speaking. Now she only uses gestures.”

I fell silent for a moment, and inside me there was an old desire I hate and cannot suppress — the urge to ask questions. So I asked, realising I was about to commit the sin of curiosity once again.

On 7 December 2023, they were besieged in Muscat School on Yafa Street. Three hundred civilians were waiting for “evacuation”. Soldiers ordered the men to leave first. They deceived them and executed four of them in front of their wives and children. Sama’s father was one of them.

Half an hour later, her elder sister went out trying to pull his body away. They shot her. She bled on the ground for nine full hours, and by God’s mercy she survived.

The occupation army ordered the women to evacuate towards the west of the city after detaining the remaining men, the first of whom was her older brother. On the way, the mother discovered that her daughter was not with them. That moment alone is enough to age a soul for an eternity.

For three days she kept returning to the school, which had turned into a military barracks, begging the soldiers to allow her to search. On the third day, she was allowed in.

She entered the area searching among the rubble of houses and charred walls, among torn small bags, among extinguished voices, until she found her sitting under a wall, in soiled clothes, staring into nothingness for three days without food or water.

That was Sama. Since that day, not a single word has come out of her mouth. She does not cry, she does not scream, she does not speak. She only points to ask for things, and taps her plate when she wants to eat, and her cup when she wants to drink.

I looked at Sama as she laughed at the sea. I wanted to say something, anything, but there was no use. Just hearing her story made me lose my speech too, Sama.

How do you comfort a child who has gone through all this — who lost her voice, her father, saw her sister injured, and lost her childhood?

I cursed my curiosity, and I cursed this vile world that smiles in the faces of killers,

the world that decorates its screens with talk of “peace”.

This genocide will not end, and it will not leave us, even if the whole earth blossoms into an apology for Sama."

- Malek Shinbary, 9 November 2025

[Tom Gann @Tom_Gann]

This level of medical neglect & with these effects clearly constitutes torture.

[Zarah Sultana MP @zarahsultana]

Pro-Palestine prisoner Umer Khalid, a 22-year-old with muscular dystrophy, has been dragging himself across his prison cell floor because he has been denied a wheelchair.

He hasn't had access to a shower for over 20 weeks.

He has been waiting for a neurology appointment for over 12 weeks while experiencing chest pain and breathlessness.

This is happening in a British prison right now.

I've written to David Lammy to demand answers:

[will @teaistriumph2]

any housing minister worth their salt would do away with the whole notion of “intentionally homeless”. councils and local authorities abuse it so much, (illegally) designating people intentionally homeless when they decline unsuitable accommodation as below. it gives councils…

[caymi ཐིᗢཋྀ @cowboylikecaymi]

my kitten started choking again today (y’all who follow me know this mf STAY CHOKING😭) & thank god i know the cat heimlich because it’s one of the scariest things when your pet starts to choke.

so here’s my bi-monthly “you should learn the cat heimlich if you have cats” tweet

[Clare Hinchcliffe @Subversivite]

We've known this for over a year, but were not allowed to say it until today.

Our loved ones convicted of criminal damage in Elbit's weapons factory in Filton could be SENTENCED AS TERRORISTS.

The jury who convicted them had no idea.

https://t.co/OaCXbqLl6A

[Huda Ammori @HudaAmmori]

BREAKING: For the first time, a Judge will seek to sentence direct action activists, four of the Filton 24, as terrorists.

They were convicted of criminal damage, with the jury unaware of a potential terrorism sentence.

Reporting restrictions on this have just been lifted.

[Dan 🦠➡️🧠🔥 @Dan_Wyke]

⚠️ Content Warning: contains distressing medical details.

Sam Pearce has provided an update on Savannah's status at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in London. I'm afraid it makes for depressing reading.

#severeME #MEAwarenessWeek #MECFS

https://t.co/9DcqjWhOb3

[Maha Hussaini @MahaGaza]

Keep speaking about Dr Hussam Abu Safiya!