From Israel, Quiet Efforts Are Underway To Aid Civilians In Syria
Fireizen-Weil was moved by images of the human tragedy happening next door; she still cannot get out of her head the image she saw in the news of a Syrian father holding his twin babies, killed in a chemical attack, unable to let go.
Late last year, she and other like-minded Israelis found each other on Facebook and organized prayer gatherings for Syria on the eve of the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur.
Then they started a grass-roots group and organized a fund drive for children's medical supplies. The group, called Just Beyond Our Border , has raised more than $500,000 from Israeli donors and U.S. Jewish organizations.
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As the war rages in Syria, there have been efforts in Israel, its neighbor to the southwest, to lend a hand to Syrian civilians. The aid projects involve a mix of sympathy, secrecy, strategy — and sensitivity.
Volunteer Zohar Kaplan says his grandmother, who started a new life in Israel after much of her family was wiped out in the Holocaust, was among the donors. "She said, 'You know, my family was refugee, our people were refugees. And it's amazing that we now have a country and can help other people who are suffering,'" Kaplan said.
The medical supplies the volunteers were packing were later handed off to an Israeli nonprofit called Israeli Flying Aid , which says it delivered the supplies inside Syria. It's a rare Israeli organization that delivers aid to Arab countries off-limits to Israelis.
Lusky founded the group in 2005 to provide aid after a tsunami struck Southeast Asia. Since then, the organization has focused on providing aid to civilians in places where Israel lacks diplomatic relations, like Syria, Iraq, Sudan and Indonesia.
The Israeli government runs an official humanitarian relief program, called MASHAV , which since 1958 has offered assistance to more than 140 countries and authorities in Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe — assistance in agriculture, water management, emergency medicine and other areas.
But it cannot officially access Arab and Muslim nations that do not share ties with Israel.
I wish I could say that the humanitarianism of Israelis and Jews generally was enough to counter the vicious false propaganda spread by the Palestinians but it wouldn't even help if God shouted from the heavens to support Israel and end the rampant world wide anti-Semitism, it is so deeply ingrained and perpetrated by devout Muslims pointing out that killing Jews is mandated in the Q'oran.
This continues to grow in scale...
Kudos many times over to these groups.