9.19 Courageous and Caring Volunteers For Israel
On October 7, Hamas terrorists invaded Israel from Gaza and murdered entire communities of Israelis, 1200 people in total until Israelis were able to stop them. In the previous lesson I told some of the stories of the heroes of that day who went to Gaza to fight the terrorists. Israelis traveling or living in foreign countries flew back to Israel to join the reserves and fight Hamas.
After completing his military service, 22-year-old Ben, had intended to explore Asia for several months but he abandoned those plans when he learned of Hamas’ attack while in a mountain village in Nepal. Ben said he thought there were more than 100 Israelis in Kathmandu alone trying to return.
Melanie Phillips told how one third of the people who came to Israel were too old for the army. She said that there were hundreds of volunteering outfits which leapt up. She said
"I myself found myself filling pita bread in an assembly line of sandwiches that goes out every day. It’s an extraordinary assembly line. There’s somebody who’s cutting the pita. There’s somebody who’s stuffing the pickles, somebody who’s stuffing the hummus, somebody who is putting it all together, someone who’s shouting to everybody else that they’ve cut it the wrong way. There is somebody who’s loading it all into the trucks. There’s someone who’s loading the trucks, the cars and the young people getting the cars and driving it all around the country for the boys and girls to have that day."
Daniel Greenfield wrote:
Both religious and secular groups assembled massive warehouses filled with clothing and supplies for displaced people. Restaurants have set up meals and volunteers have deployed mobile kitchens in parking lots. And tens of thousands volunteer to cook in their own homes. Weddings and bar mitzvahs have gone forward for refugee families welcomed by communities. Teenagers have volunteered to babysit and to perform household chores for military families. At farms, including in the communities targeted by the Islamic terrorist invaders, tens of thousands headed to help. In one kibbutz, a “motley dozen-strong crew ranging from housewives to engineers and stockbrokers” could be found “tending to around 600 dairy cows”. Polly Levine, the daughter of longtime David Horowitz Freedom Center supporter Tammy Steinsapir, recently wrote about her experiences doing everything from preparing food boxes to planting broccoli. “I was surprised to see hundreds of volunteers from all over the world: Australia, Great Britain, South Africa, France, Mexico and beyond,” she wrote.
When Hamas invaded Israel on October 7, they killed 33 and abducted 54 Thai men. As a result a total of 9,855 Thai agricultural workers, 4,331 construction workers, and 2,997 nursing workers left Israel. In addition support for Hamas tripled among Palestinian Arabs living in the West Bank which made it too dangerous for Israel to allow Palestinian workers into the country anymore. This has resulted in a shortfall of approximately 100,000 foreign and Palestinian workers. The result is tremendous losses for the Israeli farms, and vegetables either not being planted or rotting because they are not being harvested. Another result is unemployed Palestinian workers who don't know how they'll support their families.
Many Israelis who have a day off from work, volunteer on the farms. In addition people have come from all over the world to help the farmers. Here is a video about American cowboys who came to help Israel. They went to Israel to help knowing that they could become the target of a terrorist attack.
Judy Heller was a 37 year old single mother living in New York. When she found out 1,400 people were killed in Israel and more than 240 people were taken hostage in Gaza, she knew she had to do something. She couldn't just "sit and watch," the war from home, so she asked family and friends to watch her 13-year-old son, organized her work schedule, and got on a plane to help on a farm doing jobs like picking pomegranates.
Deborah Cohen was a 66 year old divorce lawyer living in Toronto. She and her son Jonathan flew to Israel to pick eggplants and green and red peppers.
Ian Lobell a therapist from LA flew to Israel and picked vegetables and flowers. "I was doing things I would have never thought to do — to help people whose farms and industries were suffering," said Lobell. These volunteers joined hundreds of others from outside Israel — and within — to harvest fruit and vegetables from Israel's farms.
Physicians from around the world, Jewish and non-Jewish also came to Israel to help.
These volunteers know they are putting their own lives at risk. They know that Hamas and Hezbollah fire rockets into Israel. They know that war could break out with Hezbollah and even Iran. Many have jobs and homes outside of Israel, yet they come.
One would expect Jewish immigration to have gone down after the October 7 attacks because it showed Jews all over the world how dangerous it is to be in Israel and how savage and brutal Israel's enemies are. Israel is at war not only with Hamas but with Hezbollah as well that has an enormous number of rockets and also has a large underground tunnel network. Instead of Jews staying away immigration to Israel went up. There are two reasons for this, one is that violent anti-semitic acts by Hamas supporters all over the world increased. It has become more dangerous to live in Europe and the United States. Another reason is solidarity with Israel. Here is a picture of people who left their homes in the United States to move to Israel and join the Israel Defense Forces. These people have a great deal of courage to do what they did.
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What about civilian casualties in Gaza? Shouldn't Israel stop fighting to avoid civilian casualties?
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