We Are Not Numbers (WANN)

Background

We Are Not Numbers (WANN) advocates for promoting “the Palestinian experience,” providing “access to Palestinian narratives without restriction and without foreign intermediaries speaking on their behalf” and to sharing “the Palestinian perspective that historically has been suppressed in the mainstream media.” ¹

WANN was founded in 2015 with support from Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor board chair Ramy Abdu, and the group “provided significant logistical support.”

WANN’s logo is a kite with the Palestinian flag with the quote “we are not numbers” as the kite’s tail, which was inspired by a Palestinian-nationalist poem titled “If I must die” by Refaat Alareer. ¹

Activities

We Are Not Numbers (WANN) promotes its writers’ content through a newsletter and social media, arguing that it provides audiences outside the Gaza Strip with “the opportunity to better understand the lived experience of occupation and exile and the Palestinian quest for self-determination.” ¹

In 2025, the group released an anthology of what it called the “[m]ost memorable essays and poems,” from the first 10 years of WANN’s existence, chosen by its co-founders. ¹

Articles and posts written by WANN staff have been published in several left-of-center and anti-Israel outlets including Mondoweiss, Electronic Intifada, and Al-Jazeera. As of December 2025, publications have also been shared through BBC, ABC News, MSNBC and the New York Times, the Washington Post and NPR “Morning Edition.” ²

WANN also encourages the public to host “solidarity events” and provides an online document listing how to do so. One of its tips argues for moving “White cis Jewish allies to the front,” promoting “partnering with those with the most privilege in this space,” and stating that “Anti-Zionist Jews are powerful allies” who can “make events safer, particularly from right-wing Zionists.” ³ The group also suggests soliciting groups like Jewish Voice for Peace, Students for Justice in Palestine or Code Pink for co-sponsorship. It recommends that the event organizers require masks both “for covid [sic] safety and anonymity.” ³

As of December 2025, the group announced it was planning to host a “book reading and conversation” in January 2026 at Third Place Books in Seattle, Washington. ⁴

WANN also created a mural of George Floyd in Gaza following his death in 2020. ⁵

Leadership

Ahmed Alnaouq and Pam Bailey are the co-founders of We Are Not Numbers (WANN). Alnaouq is also listed as director of the group. ¹ Alnaouq is the co-founder of Border Gone, an activist group which tells stories in Hebrew of communities within Gaza. ⁶ As of January 2025, he is also the advocacy and outreach officer for Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor. ⁶

Bailey was listed as a communications consultant and writer and editor for ImpACT International for Human Rights Policies as of March 2024 as well as the founder of More Than Our Crimes. ⁷ A “social-justice activist” and freelance writer, Bailey lived in Washington, D.C. as of March 2024 and lived in Gaza immediately after the 2008-2009 Israel-Hamas conflict. ⁷

Mentor liaison Alice Rothchild has written several anti-Israel books and as of February 2024, remained a corresponding member of the faculty of Harvard Medical School, where she was previously an “assistant professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive biology” until November 2013. ⁸

Financials

We Are Not Numbers received $10,000 from the Benjamin Fund (also known as Arc of Justice as of 2025) in 2020. ⁹ Nonviolence International incurred expenses of $1,228,279 providing fiscal sponsorship to several groups including WANN, also in 2020. ¹⁰