In our recent survey, Mondoweiss readers told us you want to understand better why we need donations. Some suggested they would donate more if they understood better Mondoweiss’s plans for the future, and how we use funds raised. So today’s campaign message outlines our top priorities for growth—identified through strategic planning and with input from our readers. Your donations are the only way we can sustain the current work, and are even more essential if you agree with us that more truth-telling to more people is urgently needed.
Priority # 1 for Increased Impact: More Reporting
Just about every reader of Mondoweiss wants more news. Conditions on the ground challenge the dominant American narratives about Israel and Palestine; the more we document those actual conditions, the more we can shift the terms of discussion.
Using multiple channels and technologies for our reports enables more immediate, compelling delivery of news and analysis. We’ve recently increased our use of video showing the real faces of Palestine, which helps demolish racist stereotypes of Palestinians. This week Mondoweiss’s video of Mary al-Atrash, a Palestinian Olympic swimmer, has reached 225,000 people so far on Facebook. Ms. al-Atrash explained in the video that she can’t practice in a full-sized pool due to travel restrictions on Palestinian residents of occupied Bethlehem. The sheer number of people who saw her testimony in this video prompted a defensive response from the Israeli government. This kind of simple footage transforms the country’s image, disproving their claim that Palestinians have equal rights.
Mondoweiss’s value to the movement for justice will grow immensely with more reporting. We seek to provide fuller coverage of U.S. events: activism, Beltway politics, shifts in the American Jewish establishment, and links between Palestinian solidarity work and domestic social justice movements. And we’d like to bring on specialist editors for regular features on specific topics, such as BDS; links between Palestinian solidarity, Black Lives Matter and other racial justice movements; and debunking Israeli propaganda. We can only make these gains in our work with your help.
The walls of hasbara, racism, and indifference that have fostered false understanding for at least half a century are finally starting to fall. Articles and videos that document clear-cut abuses are doing damage to an edifice of lies that has stood between generations of people and an understanding of the truth.
Mondoweiss currently reaches hundreds of thousands of people but you can help us gather more news, and ensure the stories are seen by millions. How many new people we can reach depends entirely on how much people like you invest.
Priority #2: Tools for the Movement
We at Mondoweiss are inspired and excited by the work of remarkable groups in the movement for justice in Palestine. Facts and figures, reports and infographics have been collected and developed into valuable resources by Visualizing Palestine, B’Tselem, Al-Shabaka Policy Network, Jewish Voice for Peace, Badil, and many more. And activists everywhere are arranging events to educate the public or develop collaborative organizing plans.
As of today, however, the hundreds of events occurring in dozens of cities and towns are not documented in any single online resource so people can identify meetings they’d like to attend locally or grassroots activists elsewhere they’d like to reach out to. Similarly, there is no one place to find a comprehensive catalogue and links for resources on history and the current situation, meaning that people eager to learn are likely to get information in an arbitrary and scattershot way.
In Mondoweiss’s recent reader survey, most respondents expressed interest in the site offering a centralized movement calendar and/or other information resources. If we can raise a substantial amount of funds, we can not only provide a shared community calendar but also work with the movement’s experts to increase the audience and ease of access to their valuable work (e.g. Adalah’s law database).We believe even mainstream journalists will use such a clearinghouse.
Priority #3: Mondoweiss in Print
While technology is essential to share the news mainstream media ignores, there is still a need for the oldest mass information method of all: print on paper. There is a unique power to high-quality photographs printed with persuasive text and professional design—and there is an immediacy to the moment when you put a real book directly into a friend’s hand.
That’s why this spring we introduced a new feature: Mondoweiss In Print. We have already sold hundreds of copies of the first in this series, “The World The Settlers Made.” We are eager to put out more print publications, such as a photo essay from our West Bank correspondent Allison Deger; a children’s book; a roundtable among Palestinian thinkers both on the ground and in the diaspora; and many other ideas. But the cover price we charge for the print publication does not cover the costs of creating and distributing it; we can only continue to print the work best suited to that format if we have the funds.
The Mondoweiss team is committed to increasing the scope of our work—but we will not expand unless we have the resources to ensure we lose nothing of what we are currently providing. Your help is essential to maintain and expand the influence of Mondoweiss on mainstream public discussion.
Which of the new directions we’ve identified speaks to you? How urgent do you consider our obligation to tell the stories of children seeking hope…of dreamers who have no way to plan…of an occupying power that daily violates the basic rights to freedom, safety and justice?
How much truth is needed? You tell us – by donating today.
The response from COGAT (Caloriecounting Organsation in the GoI’s Apartheid territories) is pathetic. It has become absolutely normal for them that a Nonjew has to get a “permit” to move in a territory illegaly annexed by the Occupier. And they write that she “can” get a permit, not that she will. But didn’t she even try?