Reblog If You’re A Safe Place For:

🌟 A Cry for Help: My Family’s Struggle to Survive in Gaza 🌟

Hello, my name is Areej Kassab. I’m a 27-year-old English teacher and writer from Gaza, and I’m reaching out to you with a heavy heart and a desperate plea for support. My family and I are enduring unimaginable hardships as relentless bombings devastate our home and our dreams.

We are a family of 15—10 adults and 5 children. Every day is a battle for survival. Food is scarce, humanitarian aid is not reaching us, and my little nieces and nephews go to bed hungry. Among them is my sister, who is deaf, and another sister who has a newborn baby. They, too, are suffering in this crisis, and I’m doing everything I can to protect and provide for them.

💔 A Life in Ruins The war has robbed us of everything: safety, peace, and even the hope of a future here. My family’s needs are basic yet critical—food, clean water, diapers for the babies, gas for cooking, and other essentials to make it through each day.

With rising prices and limited access to necessities, we are struggling to provide even the most basic items. My sister’s home has been destroyed, and we are working together to ensure everyone has shelter, food, and warmth.

✨ My Plea for Your Support ✨ I’m a writer, and I’ve been documenting the harsh realities faced by my community under siege. But words can only do so much. We need action, and we need help. Your kindness can save us.

🙏 How You Can Help

Donate: Every contribution, no matter how small, brings us closer to securing the essentials we desperately need.

Share Our Story: If you can’t donate, please share this post to help us reach others who can.

Your support will help provide food for the children, clean water for my family, and basic supplies to help us survive this unimaginable crisis.

gofundme.com

Donate to Emergency Evacuation for Areej's Family in Gaza, organized by Melissa Saul

My name is Melissa and I am supporting Areej to help her family surviv… Melissa Saul needs your support for Emergency Evacuation for Aree

Thank you for reading, for caring, and for standing in solidarity with us. Together, we can create a lifeline for my family—a chance to live, to dream, and to hope again.

With love and gratitude, Areej Kassab ❤️

Someone wrote it down for me apparently

just finished five survive and i will never recover. the way holly jackson writes morally grey characters is just phenomenal. she had me going back and forth on each character. but not oliver. fuck him.

Ah yes ! The Hunger Games, that book where Swamp-potato Farm-with-wild-pigs goes to fight kids from other parts of her country Bread with her love interest baker Type-of-bread Honeybird to protect her sister Flower !

And I’m not forgetting when she makes a stop to Bread’s capital, Capital, and gets mentored by Big-From-The-Enclosure River and Well-spoken Jewelry, and gets dressed by Cinnamon. Oh and in the arena! When Swamp-potato teams up with Street, gets hunted down by Superhero-Company, Sparkle, Wise and Tree !Well, Street gets killed by Company, and Sprout avenges her by saying Swamp-potato buy it was good ! And in the end, when she saves both her’s and Type-of-bread’s life by threatening to kill themselves, and gets home to her friends Wind Tree and Pearl Look-under !

Ah i loved that book.

A few days ago I was reading the wicked king and obsessing over Jude and Cardan and I thought "I can't live without my OTPs". And I just realised. People do that. There are people out there who will never feels the feelings when your ship has sailed, whether it's a book or a show. They will never know the feels, how your heart warm and how ships and OTPs heal your heart.

That's so sad.

My brothers and I ALWAYS did that

Hey. Just came in here to say that I just finished Allegiant an hour ago. I'm crying. Please help. I NEEDED FOURTRIS. SO I NEEDED TRIS TO NOT DIE. BUT WHAT DID SHE DO !? SHE DIED ! VERONICA ROTH I'M COMING FOR YOU

All their secrets being revealed and I'm here ready to gossip. Hook is in love, Snow wants another child, Charming told them about the neverleave water...

What about Emma ?

Wait that's the secret ? It's really boring...

WAIT WHAT WHY?! Oooh

When I hear an imam or islamic lecturer talk about the story of Lot, or about homosexuals, it breaks my heart a little every single time.

A few weeks ago I attended a series of lectures at an islamic school. It was one night, about 5 hours with breaks, but it takes the esteemed position of one of the worst nights in my life. I went in with an open mind, open heart and intended to learn. I’ve always thought that islam in its purest form is one of the most beautiful things on earth, but it is tainted. Tainted by bigots blinded by the dogma which they distort to integrate hate so subtly into our society. Sometimes I wonder if they have any idea what they are doing.

Let us look at a few statistics.

The scientific study “Sexual Behavior in the Human Male” by Indiana University researchers Alfred C. Kinsey, Wardell B. Pomeroy, and Clyde E. Martin reported that 37% of males had homosexual experiences, but this figure includes incidental homosexual experience. The study reported 10% of males being more or less exclusively homosexual. Subsequent studies such as “The Janus Report on Sexual Behavior” by researchers Samuel S. Janus and Cynthia L. Janus & “Homosexuality / Heterosexuality” by researchers David P. McWhirter, Stephanie A. Sanders, and June Machover Reinisch reported the exclusively homosexual male population to be 9% & 13.95% respectively, which supports the Indiana University findings of 10%, or 1 in 10

For the sake of simplicity in maths, let us assume that findings suggest that 1 in 10 males are homosexual. 

At these lectures there must have been about three or four hundred men, boys and children. This could correlate to around 30 or 40 being homosexuals, if we counted all of them. But I’m not going to talk about adults in denial.

I’m going to talk about the kids.

Some of these children will sit through these lectures being told that having feelings toward another man is an “abomination”. They will feel the hate spewing from the sermon that condemns their very nature and they will be terrified. I know this because it scared the crap out of me when I was younger. 

I’ve known that I wasn’t straight since before I can remember. Probably from the age of around 5 or 6. I may not have known the term for my inclination, or what it meant, but I knew something was different. I also sat in the mosque, listening to the imam talking about how homosexuals will be thrown into the fire that feeds on the bones of men like the people of Lot. 

Being a child and having the image of burning for eternity just because of who you may fall in love with is not what Islam teaches.

The story of Lot condemns a lot of things. It condemns inhospitality, rape, robbery, humiliation of stranger and the mistreatment of guests among other things. Why then, do modern muslims choose to focus on the “sin” of homosexuality over all these other things, which are daily occurrences in the world. These things are allowed to pass us by. I know muslims that lie, steal, cheat and backbite regularly, but as soon as you mention the word “gay”, they turn up their noses as if to say that they are once again pious in the face of these “abominations” of men.

I am not a “gay muslim”. I am a muslim who just so happens to be gay. This should not define my fitness to practice my religion, and it should not mean that hypocritical muslims with double standards have the right to condemn me.

I love my religion, I just pity some people that follow it. I’ve always been told that Islam is about tolerance and peace and love, and I’m afraid I fail to see it in the modern world. I consider myself a good person. I don’t consider myself the best muslim, but none of us are.

If we are all equal in the eyes of God, why are we not in the eyes of men? 

Don’t try and tell me that I chose to be gay. I tell you now that i stayed up late at night, crying to God to cure me, to remove this “ailment” and save me from eternal damnation. I was angry with myself, with my God, with my religion. Not because the religion had taught me I was wrong, but because people had told me I was. People told me that I would burn, that I would be punished for something over which I had no control. It broke me. 

Now I realise why i didn’t change, and why I didn’t wake up one morning cured, suddenly into girls.

Maybe there isn’t anything to change.

I am a muslim. I am gay. I am proud of both things, and I don’t plan to change either.

...

At least I know where Hook is now

David giving dating advice to Rumple was NOT on my bingo card for this episode.

Also Don Juan made a deal with him ? What DID HE GIVE HIM ??