At sundown at the end of Shabbat of this week, NCJW put out an emergency call for help for our Israel Granting Partners who are being affected by the Gaza war now being called, The Pillar of Cloud campaign. Since 1947, when the new nation-state of Israel was established, NCJW has been there to protect and support Israel as a homeland for the Jewish people. Throughout Israel’s wars, starting with the War of Independence, NCJW has raised emergency funds for the civilian populations who are put in jeopardy. Now again, we are under siege in the south of Israel and are responding to the desperate calls for help. 

As NCJW’s director in Israel, I have been in touch with all of our grantees, partners, scholarship recipients, and friends. One particular grantee, the EDEN School for Teenage Girls at Risk on Kibbutz Carmia, is at direct risk as they are one mile from the Gaza border. Since Hamas is attacking with sequential missile attacks and with more frequency than ever before (150 or more missiles a day for the last eight days) there are new home front command guidelines regarding a protective stay of 10 minutes after each of the many siren alarms. Consequently, the girls and the staff find themselves for long periods of time during each day and night crowded in small protective shelters, with standing room only. The girls are under a great deal of stress and are very anxious. They are starting to regress emotionally and behaviorally, and they will need more therapeutic time and attention. We at NCJW have been successful in raising thousands of dollars from our members and donors who understood the urgent need and responded — and we thank you all. All the funds will be sent to Israel to help respond to these urgent appeals.

Yesterday, the Israel Homeland security evacuated the area, including the girls and the staff, declaring the area of Kibbutz Carmia a closed military area with no traveling in or out. Many of the girls were sent home, some sent to a safe house in Arad, and most of them were sent with their counselors to Yemin Orde, a co-ed boarding school up North in the Carmel mountain region. While this evacuation has addressed their immediate life-threatening situation, it has created other serious problems. The majority of the girls at EDEN are there under court-order, primarily due to rape and incest within their own nuclear families; therefore, sending them home creates a situation riddled with other security issues. The girls in Arad are relatively safe, as Arad has been spared from the bombings; however, the amazing, loyal staff of women that are with them are all from the South, which means that they have had to leave their own families behind in order to accompany the girls into the safe zone. The girls placed at Yemin Orde are sleeping on floor mattresses, as there are not enough beds for all the children who have been evacuated to the North. Again, with Yemin Orde being a co-ed establishment, other security issues may arise for these victims of sexual violence.

As I write this, we are hoping for a ceasefire, although Israel was the target of hundreds of Hamas missiles and rockets yesterday, and today while I was on the way to Tel Aviv for a meeting, a bus was bombed and I was stopped at a roadblock. The IDF is continuing to try to stop the rockets from being launched by their airstrikes into Gaza. They are doing everything they can do to avoid a ground incursion. War is not pretty, and I know that the civilian population in Gaza is as helpless as the civilian population in Israel. We are grateful to US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton as well as the delegation from Egypt and hope they are able to negotiate the final terms of a ceasefire. To date, Hamas has refused to stop their bombing and the IDF has refused to stop air strikes until they do. With 40,000 Israeli soldiers on the border of Gaza (in and around Kibbutz Carmia) waiting for the orders to go in on the ground, we are all praying that Sec. Clinton will successfully negotiate a ceasefire, and that we can all return to our daily lives. I want to thank all the staff at NCJW, Inc. and all the staff and amazing sections and individuals who have donated so far to the NCJW Emergency Fund and for all their good wishes and prayers.

I close with this reflection: In 1993 Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin signed the second Oslo Accords at the White House. Those accords are now dead; however, the remarks at that signing of President Bill Clinton live on: “The time is approaching when there will be safety in Israel’s house, when the Palestinian people will write their own destiny, when the clash of arms will be banished from God’s Holy Land.”

Amen.