Good Tuesday morning.
In today’s edition of Your Daily Phil, we report on North American Jewish groups expressing solidarity and raising funds for Israel following Saturday’s deadly terror attack and how organizations are briefing their members about how they can help. We feature opinion pieces from Steven Windmueller and David Bryfman. We’ll start with Jewish leaders visiting Israel’s war-torn south.
A delegation of top officials from the Jewish Federations of North America, UJA-Federation of New York and the Jewish Agency for Israel toured Israel’s war-torn south on Monday, visiting a hospital in the city of Ashkelon that has treated hundreds of casualties since the Hamas attack on Saturday morning, reports eJewishPhilanthropy’s Judah Ari Gross, who accompanied them on the tour.
During their tour of the Barzilai Medical Center, JFNA President and CEO Eric Fingerhut, director general of JFNA’s Israel office Rebecca Caspi, UJA-Federation CEO Eric Goldstein, chair of the Jewish Agency’s Budget and Finance Committee Bruce Sholk and the director of the Jewish Agency’s Fund for Victims of Terror, Ayelet Nahmias-Verbin, met with hospital staff, spoke with victims and families of victims and saw new casualties coming in as a rocket directly struck a car a few blocks away from the hospital during their visit.
Their tour was led by the hospital’s head of emergency services, Dr. Ron Lobel, a resident of the nearby community of Netiv Ha’asara, which was invaded by terrorists on Saturday morning. Lobel and his wife barricaded themselves in their home’s bomb shelter for a full day until they were rescued by the Israeli military. At least 17 people out of the community of 900 were murdered. The next day, Lobel returned to work.
“Can you imagine?” Fingerhut told eJP after the visit. “He is caring for these emergency patients and he himself was basically held captive, defending his life and his wife’s for almost 24 hours.”
Fingerhut said the tour of the hospital “really brought home… the magnitude of the atrocity.” He added: “I just felt so clearly the depth of this.”
Fingerhut said that JFNA is dividing its efforts into two distinct missions: fundraising and advocacy.
“The first is to care for our brothers and sisters in Israel who need our help,” he said, including not only the victims of the attacks but also the services and organizations that are supporting the country. Fingerhut said the second, and in some ways more important, effort will be in using the North American Jewish community’s connections and relationships to shore up support for Israel by the American and Canadian governments, as well as the American and Canadian people.
“When I meet with Israeli leaders, the No. 1 thing that they are asking us for is support and maintaining the support for Israel’s upcoming military actions,” he said.
Read the full report here.
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