Anas al-Amarin, a young Palestinian from Gaza, uses social media to raise funds for his survival and medical care after losing his arm in an Israeli airstrike. Despite ongoing war and displacement, Anas dreams of receiving a prosthetic limb and continuing his studies, relying on international crowdfunding and online friendships to navigate the crisis.
In the summer of 2023, Anas al-Amarin graduated from secondary school. Having always excelled as a student, he knew that college was on the horizon. And he knew right away that he wanted to pursue an IT degree.
As Anas finished school and looked to the future, his older brother was completing his own degree.
Abdulrahman al-Amarin had recently completed his studies at the Islamic University of Gaza. He left the school with a 92.5% GPA and a degree in computer engineering.
Inspired by his brother, Anas enrolled in the IT program at the University College of Applied Sciences in Gaza City. The school was close to where Anas grew up, in the old Zaytoun neighborhood. That September, he started taking his first classes.
Then, “just one month into college, the war broke out in my city,” Anas texts.
For the last four months, Anas and I have been texting over WhatsApp. He sends me messages when he can – about his life and experience living through the US-backed Israeli genocide of the Palestinian people.
Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza has shattered the life Anas lived before. For over 21 months and counting, Anas has endured a hell that words will not fully capture.
He has survived an Israeli strike on a school, a hospital raid, and seven displacements. Instead of using the internet for his college coursework, Anas now turns to people on the internet for help, leveraging social media to survive.
For many, crowdfunding has become a tool for survival in what Amnesty International describes as “a live-streamed genocide”. With humanitarian relief efforts repeatedly blockaded by Israel, and the prices of basic materials skyrocketing, many Palestinians in Gaza turn to platforms like Chuffed, GoFundMe, and PayPal to raise enough money to live.
To solicit donations, Palestinians have utilized social media channels where they can share donation links. Crowdfunding through social media has become a critical stop-gap – an accessible way for strangers around the world to distribute funds directly to people in Gaza.
Anas chose to start his Twitter/X account for that reason — to connect with internet users who have money to give or assistance to offer. With the help of a small network of followers and newfound internet friends, he works to amplify his story to reach more users.
Anas raises survival funds for himself and his family through multiple donation channels: a Chuffed fundraiser, PayPal, and Tether, a cryptocurrency that can be sent over messaging app Telegram.
“I live entirely off the donations I receive,” Anas texts. “Without them, my family and I would have nothing to eat.”
A chain of digital and in-person connections led to my own conversations with Anas. A friend saw on Twitter that Anas wanted a writer to tell his story. Word got to me, I got his number, and we started texting, using an Arabic-English translation tool.
Anas shared his story with me, hoping that a writer could reach more people. More exposure means more access to help, donations, and support. Anas also needs help achieving his most essential dream: to live with a new arm.
Surviving Al Falah
Gaza City, in the north of the strip, was one of the first cities to be targeted by Israeli forces on October 7, 2023. The following Tuesday, Anas’s family home in the Zaytoun neighborhood was destroyed by an Israeli missile.
“I vividly remember what happened on October 10,” Anas texts, “Our house was partially bombed while we were inside, and we managed to flee.”
Reuters described Israel’s attacks on Gaza City that day as “the fiercest air strikes in the 75-year history of its conflict with the Palestinians.”
Their home in ruins, Anas, aged 18, fled with his mom, dad, and four brothers. They sought refuge at a neighborhood school.
Al-Falah school had been transformed into a shelter for people fleeing their homes. There, surrounded by around 200 other displaced families, Anas and his family tried to adjust to a new routine.
Anas on Eid al-Fitr with his younge niece, Yafa, and nephew, Omar.
One day, early in their stay at al-Falah, Anas’s oldest brother Muhammad left the shelter to buy diapers for his two young children, Anas’s niece and nephew. He never returned. The family still has no idea where he is. Since that day nearly two years ago, Muhammad’s kids have lived without a father.
Weeks after the loss of Muhammad, al-Falah became the site of another horror. On the morning of November 17, during a total communications blackout, Israel bombed the school-turned-shelter. Al Jazeera journalist Hani Mahmoud reported on the strike.
“What’s so frustrating about this air strike is that it happened and nobody knew about it due to disabled communications,” Mahmoud wrote in a live blog post. “Nobody knew about the air strike on the school until the early hours of the next morning.”
The attack resulted in the immediate deaths of dozens of sheltering people. One of those killed was Abdulrahman, Anas’s older brother. When Israeli forces dropped the missiles on the school, Anas and Abdulrahman were together, away from the rest of their family.
The explosions tore Anas’s left arm from his body. Shrapnel from the attack became lodged in his chest and legs. In the chaos, his family could not locate him or Abdulrahman. Anas was left in the wreckage, just feet away from his brother.
Anas’s parents found him close to death in the destroyed building. At that point, he was in dire need of surgery to amputate what remained of his arm, in addition to around-the-clock hospital care.
The family rushed him to several nearby hospitals, but the closest facilities were too overwhelmed to take him in. Finally, an ambulance crew drove him to the Indonesian Hospital, the only hospital in Gaza City that could perform the amputation Anas needed.
Slipping in and out of consciousness, he waited for the operation. Eventually, the doctors performed Anas’s amputation surgery with limited supplies and no anaesthetics.
Then, Israeli forces laid siege to the hospital. Just a day after having his arm fully amputated, Anas was forced to flee again. His family was displaced from the hospital to a new shelter, where they struggled to care for Anas.
Many people were leaving Gaza City. The Israeli government had ordered Palestinians to evacuate to the south as the military mounted its ground invasion in the north and escalated its attacks. It became clear to the family that a journey to the south was necessary for Anas to receive additional care.
Israeli forces firing flares into the sky, followed by intense explosions in Gaza.
Many families were evacuating on foot, but Anas’s injuries meant he couldn’t walk the route. Having lost his two older brothers, Anas was now the eldest son. His younger brother Ali, aged 14, found a cart and planned to push Anas for the entire walk. The family would be separated. Anas’s father chose to stay behind in the north, and his mother and siblings made plans to meet the brothers a few days later.
Ali pushed Anas in the cart for the entire journey, around 20km, through the Netzarim Corridor. The brothers’ destination was Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis.
When they arrived at the hospital, the doctors who examined Anas were stunned that he was still alive. They gave him a blood transfusion and performed a follow-up operation on his arm. For the next few weeks, Anas recovered at the hospital in the south.
But the pain has never ceased. Over a year and a half later, Anas still lives with chronic pain from his injuries and amputation. Everyday activities, like sleeping, cooking food, and walking to find supplies or an internet signal now come with an additional obstacle of physical pain.
“I feel electric shocks all over my body,” Anas texts. “Everything changed when I lost my arm, to the extent I can’t even do the simplest tasks.”
As time passed, the Israeli military expanded its offensive into the south and launched attacks on Khan Yunis, too. Just two months after Anas received care at Nasser Hospital, the Israeli forces raided it.
During their time in Khan Yunis, Anas and his family were displaced four separate times, often narrowly escaping Israeli shelling.
Repeated displacements led the family to al-Mawasi camp, an area of Khan Yunis that Israel had designated as a humanitarian zone. That designation was later proven false when Israel began attacking al-Mawasi.
Still, Anas remained a survivor.
Anas after being displaced from Rafah to Al-Mawasi in Khan Younis. After setting up the tent, Anas said he was glad, thinking it would protect them from the bitterly cold nights.
Turning to the internet
In October 2024, while in al-Mawasi, Anas started an account on Twitter/X. He wrote his posts with the help of translation websites, asking the passersby of the internet to stop scrolling and donate money to him and his family.
Overcoming the noise of the internet to ask for help has been difficult for Anas, who had never before had to use the web in this context.
“I am doing this thing for the first time in my life,” he texts. “I have no experience in this matter.”
He hadn’t used fundraising platforms or X (formerly known as Twitter) before, but the internet brought new potential for connecting with people who could help. His story was verified by the collective Palestine Asdiqa and Radio Watermelon, two volunteer-run social media accounts created to verify and amplify Palestinian fundraisers on social media. He would eventually gain more than 1,000 followers.
“Initially, convincing people to donate was quite tough,” Anas texts. “I was always working to increase my following and clarify the hardships I was experiencing.”
Anas found support from one internet user in particular, 28-year-old Molly Thomas from Christchurch, New Zealand.
In November 2024, Molly came across Anas’s account on Twitter/X. She immediately donated and began reposting his requests for help and donations. She also started texting with him via DM.
“I remember hearing about [Israel] bombing schools and raiding hospitals, how they were justifying that, and then, talking to this young guy who had been bombed at a school,” Molly says during a video call in March. “It’s all so far from anything I can imagine.”
On hiatus from her university studies, Molly spends most days homebound and managing chronic fatigue, autistic burnout, postural tachycardia syndrome, and Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. Unable to attend in-person actions for Palestine, she began to seek outlets for solidarity with people in Gaza that she could access from home.
Molly, too, turned to the internet, where crowdfunding for people in Gaza became an accessible way for her to help. First, she used her old Tumblr fan art account to reshare fundraising campaigns for Palestinians. Eventually, she started using her Twitter/X account, too.
Through translated messages on Twitter and WhatsApp, Anas and Molly grew to be friends. And recently, Molly has been helping to run Anas’s Twitter account and manage fundraising, troubleshooting the logistics of international crowdfunding from her home in Christchurch.
“Molly collects donations through PayPal or other fundraising platforms,” Anas writes. “I coordinate with a local currency exchange office in Gaza where she transfers the funds, and then I go to pick up the money.”
So far, the pair have raised close to $4,000 for Anas and his family.
Return to Zaytoun
In January 2025, Hamas and Israel agreed to a ceasefire. The announcement was long-awaited for displaced Palestinians like Anas, who now had the opportunity to return to the north of the Gaza Strip without the threat of attack.
People who had been forced dozens of kilometers south would soon be able to return home. In the following days, tens of thousands flooded the streets, making their way north on foot.
But for Anas and his family, the journey home to Gaza City required expensive logistical support. The shrapnel from the al-Falah massacre caused Anas too much pain to make the journey on foot. To reach the north, he and his family had to pay for a ride.
When Anas needed to raise funds for a ride back to the Zaytoun neighborhood, donations only got him part of the way to his goal of $300. Molly fundraised online and within her own family to source the rest of the money.
“The only reason we managed to make it back was thanks to Molly,” Anas texts.
Finally, in February, Anas returned to Gaza City.
“We made our way back through the Salah Al-Din route, passing checkpoints controlled by the Egyptian and Qatari forces,” Anas texts. “My mother, my little brother, and I were crammed in the back of a transport truck for the entire journey.”
Upon his return to Zaytoun, Anas and his family reunited with his father and assessed the destruction in their neighborhood. The devastation was extensive. The entire area had been reduced to rubble by Israeli shelling. The building that had been his home was now uninhabitable.
“This used to be one of Gaza’s finest neighborhoods,” Anas texts. “Now, it’s nothing but ruins in every sense of the word, completely shattered, as if it never existed. Destruction has taken over every corner of the neighborhood.”
Anas’s family home destroyed after Israeli attacks on his neighbourhood in the north of Gaza.
Anas and I started messaging in March, just a couple of weeks after his return to the north. That day, Israel announced a new blockade: a complete halt of all food and supplies into Gaza.
The ceasefire held for over a month, but no progress was made toward future phases of negotiations.
“When the first stage of the ceasefire ended, we heard that Netanyahu opposed moving forward with the second stage of the ceasefire. The roar of warplanes grew louder over our area,” Anas texts. “They said that war would return just as it was before, and that filled people with fear and psychological distress.”
Two weeks later, on March 18, the violence did return. The ruins of Anas’s neighborhood once again became a target of Israeli airstrikes.
A new tent that Anas had only just paid off was destroyed by an airstrike. His family was forced to flee, again, to al-Sabra neighborhood, just east of al-Zaytoun.
Tents in the Al-Sabra neighbourhood, where Anas and his family were forced to flee to.
After that most recent displacement, it grew increasingly difficult for Anas to send messages. Once, when I ask Anas whether he is safe enough to text me, he writes:
“I am afraid that every time I want to write to you, there is a bombing around me.”
As I write this, Gaza City continues to be under attack by relentless Israeli bombardment. Schools, hospitals, aid workers, and journalists are regularly targeted by the Israeli forces.
For over 150 days (since March 2), Israel has continued to deliberately block food, aid, fuel, and critical medical supplies from entering Gaza – the longest blockade in the history of Israeli occupation.
In a recent news release from non-governmental organization Human Rights Watch, their interim executive director Federico Borello concluded: “Israel’s blockade has transcended military tactics to become a tool of extermination.”
The entire population of Gaza is being starved by Israel and food stocks are in a state of crisis.
Earlier this month, Anas spent $390 on a bag of flour, only to find it was dirty and filled with mites. As food stocks dwindle, prices only rise, making donations all the more critical — but there is no guarantee that they will come.
“He often messages me like, ‘Are there any new donations?’” Molly says, “And often the answer is no, and that is crushing.”
The dream of a new arm
Even in the reality of genocide and famine, Anas, who has just turned 20, continues looking to a different future. What he wants is simple.
“I dream of traveling to get a prosthetic limb,” he texts.
The same message is front and center on Anas’s fundraising page. The campaign is called Help Anas get Surgery and a Prosthetic Arm.
He wants something electronic, a replacement that can move with him. To receive the care he needs, he must raise money for travel and medical expenses.
But when I asked Anas if he’d been able to save any of the donation money for a prosthetic, he answered no: “I haven’t been able to save a single dollar for the prosthetic limb; I only save money for food, and it isn’t even enough.”
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Even more frustrating is the knowledge that the technology that could change his life is already being accessed by patients around the globe. We are living through a moment of extraordinary technological progress in the field of prosthetics, yet Anas is unable to access the equipment.
Emerging technologies have led to a rapid evolution in the quality of upper limb prosthetics, with some researchers using AI to revolutionize control of prosthetic limbs.
“It’s infuriating that that’s an option and that he has been living like this,” Molly says. “I mean, it would be bad enough to be without an arm in the best of circumstances.”
As genocide and hunger rage on at the hands of the Israeli government, Anas must focus on survival instead of building for his future. Relief is out there — but until the genocide ends, Anas has no clear path toward regaining his lost limb.
He continues to rely solely on international donations to survive, hoping that one day he can begin saving the funds for a prosthetic.
Throughout each moment, and with the help of Molly and others online, Anas has held on to his vision of the future: a life free from Israeli bombardment and blockade — one where he can live with a new arm and continue pursuing his IT degree.
As we are texting, I ask Anas what the most important message for readers of a story like this could be.
“I want everyone to know that here in Gaza, we love life,” he texts. “We’re just simple people who oppose killing, torturing, humiliation, and pain.”
Anas relies on crowd-funded donations to survive Israel’s ongoing bombardment of Gaza. If you would like to donate to Anas after reading his story, please visit his Chuffed fundraiser to support his survival.
All images supplied by Liz McLane.
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