Palestine’s Version Of The Ice Bucket Challenge

Over the last couple of weeks the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge has created a storm on social media, with thousands of people posting videos of themselves being soaked in ice water as a campaign to create awareness about the amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) disease. ALS is a type of motor neurone disease that causes motor neuron nerve cells to stop working, thus affecting a person’s ability to move. The Ice Bucket Challenge encourages people to drench themselves with a bucket of ice water, and then nominate other people to do the same, as well as donate to the ALS Association.

But now a new form of the Ice Bucket Challenge is sneaking it’s way through social media, and it’s shifting people’s attention back to the ongoing crisis in Gaza. Imitating the trending ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, this new campaign has been christened the Rubble Bucket Challenge, and uses rubble and dirt instead of cold water in order to promote their message. Through this campaign, the people of Palestine hope to shine a light on what is happening in their country – they don’t want people to donate money to them, they just want the death and destruction in Gaza to go viral as well, in the same way that the Ice Bucket Challenge did.

Maisam Abumorr, founder of the Rubble Bucket Challenge for Gaza

Although major news organisations have been reporting that the Rubble Bucket Challenge was started by journalist Ayman al Aloul, the campaign was actually started by a female graduate from the Islamic University of Gaza, Maisam Abumorr. Speaking to the International Political Forum, she said “The Arab world gives women all the work and men all the credit!” Nonetheless, she hopes that the media’s attention will remain focused on the campaign, and not the person who started it. Maisam said she had enjoyed watching the Ice Bucket Challenge go viral, and had been impressed to see her favourite celebrities uniting for a common cause. However, she felt that there was a need to “return to reality”.

“ALS kills one in 100,000 people while in Gaza at least one child is killed per hour. The new genocidal tactic of wiping entire families off the earth by bombing their home while they are inside should not go unnoticed. ALS is about humanity and Gaza too is about humanity.” – Maisam, founder of the Rubble Bucket Challenge. 

Maisam created the Rubble Bucket Challenge on 23rd August, Saturday. By Monday morning, the campaign’s Facebook page had gained nearly 2,000 likes.

The conflict in Gaza enters it’s 50th day this Tuesday (27th August 2014) and has killed over 2,100 Palestinians and 68 Israelis. 80% of those killed in Palestine have been innocent civilians and more than 17,000 homes have been destroyed.

“The people accepted the challenge were not exclusively from a certain race of religion, they were only people showing solidarity with the children of Gaza who are buried under the rubble of their own homes.”