Update Update
No Gatekeepers
We can only do this work because people like yourself are willing to invest in a future of justice. We're reaching out to you to ask if you'd make a financial contribution to the work here in Palestine.
December 15, 2025 · 2 min reading
A photo taken during the first intifada (1987–1993), a period of Palestinian resistance against Israeli occupation, shows an old olive tree in Kaubar, a village in the West Bank. The Palestinian Museum Digital Archive/The Joss Dray Collection
A photo taken during the first intifada (1987–1993), a period of Palestinian resistance against Israeli occupation, shows an old olive tree in Kaubar, a village in the West Bank. The Palestinian Museum Digital Archive/The Joss Dray Collection
By Bana Abu Zuluf
bana@goodshepherdcollective.org
Dear friend,
For decades, Palestinian stories have been told by others—filtered, framed, and often flattened to fit narratives comfortable for Western audiences.
We're changing that.
The Call is Good Shepherd Collective's Substack newsletter, and it operates on a simple principle: Palestinian analysis should come from Palestinians and those who've committed their lives to anti-colonial liberation. Not from newsrooms thousands of miles away. Not through editorial processes designed to protect institutional interests.
We've worked in human rights documentation, community response, and advocacy for years. We track data that rarely makes headlines such as weekly patterns of settler violence, healthcare infrastructure attacks, journalist murders, and economic strangulation through commodity pricing.
This work requires resources, but we've made a deliberate choice as the GSC. We don't chase large institutional grants that come with strings attached. We don't court donors whose politics might one day conflict with the truth we're obligated to tell.
Instead, we rely on people like you.
Individual donors keep Good Shepherd Collective truly independent. When our funding comes from hundreds of small donors rather than a handful of large ones, no single entity can threaten our editorial freedom. No foundation can quietly suggest we soften our language. No board can pull the plug.
This is what grassroots media looks like. It's slower to build. It requires trust. But it creates something that can't be easily dismantled.
A paid subscription to our Substack, The Call, directly funds our data collection, analysis, and publication work. It keeps our infrastructure running and our team focused on the work rather than grant applications.
Join us at thecall.ps and invest in media that answers only to the truth and its readers.
In solidarity,
Bana Abu Zuluf