More than 200 Jewish refugees from war-torn Ukraine are expected to be greeted as immigrants in Israel Sunday by Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, a Jerusalem-based relief official said Thursday.
The flights, known as “aliyah,” or “going up,” in Hebrew, are funded by donations to the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, one of several faith-based organizations aiding Ukrainians in the conflict zone as well as the refugees displaced by the war.
An estimated one million people — almost all women and children — left Ukraine in the first week of the Russian invasion.
On Thursday, the Associated Press reported Ukraine has negotiated an agreement with Russia “to create safe corridors backed by ceasefires to evacuate civilians, [and] deliver aid.”
Those corridors, said Yael Eckstein, IFCJ president, will unleash a flood of departures, but also should allow relief supplies greater entrée.
“Once that humanitarian corridor is open, we’re expecting an onslaught of people,” she told The Washington Times. While those who’ve already left are largely the most able to travel, those in “the next round are going to be the ones who need a lot more help,” she added.
The interfaith group, which raises the bulk of its contributions from evangelical Christians in the United States and Canada, will operate three programs for Ukrainians as a result, she said. One will support those who cannot leave the country, such as hospitalized newborn twins who were provided with formula, while another program will help refugees encamped in neighboring Moldova and Poland.
“The third is bringing them to Israel and working with the Israeli government to make sure that they have the basics that they need in Israel along with a more long-term program for their absorption” into the country, she added.
“The way that our donors have rallied to not only pray for the Jewish people, and all the people in Ukraine, but to take practical steps in order to help them has been, it’s been an outpouring of love that I couldn’t have ever imagined,” she said.
Ms. Eckstein’s group isn’t the only faith-based charity that’s eyeing relief efforts in Ukraine and in neighboring states.
Samaritan’s Purse, an international Christian relief organization, on Friday will airlift an emergency field hospital as well as a team of disaster response specialists — including doctors, nurses, and additional support staff — to Poland for eventual transport to Ukraine. The field hospital should be able to treat 100 patients a day, the group indicated.
Once in place, it will have 30 in-patient beds, an operating room and an intensive care unit and could be used to care for approximately 200 patients daily.
“Ukrainian families are hurting and in desperate need of physical aid and prayer during this difficult time,” Franklin Graham, the president of Samaritan’s Purse, said. “We want to meet the needs of these families in their darkest moments while pointing them to the light and hope of Jesus Christ.”
Also working to aid those in the region is Eastern European Mission in Hurst, Texas. The group, which normally centers on evangelism, has added a humanitarian component.
“With over 60 years of time and experience in Eastern Europe, we have developed a vast network of hundreds of trusted and faithful ministry partners who are on the front lines with the Ukrainian refugees,” the group’s president, Bob Burckle, said in a statement. “So we are uniquely positioned to see that the greatest needs are met most expeditiously.”
The American Jewish Committee said this week it is establishing an emergency “Stand With Ukraine Fund” that will assist refugees and provide humanitarian assistance.
“As the people of Ukraine undertake a heroic stand in their fight for freedom, it’s up to us to do whatever we possibly can to assist,” the group’s chief executive, David Harris, said in a statement. “The stakes could not be higher. As a frequent visitor, and having just traveled to Kyiv on a solidarity mission in January, I believe in the critical importance of a free, independent, and democratic Ukraine.”
And the Orthodox Jewish Chabad Lubavitch organization said its branch in Cluj-Napoca (Klausenburg), Romania, has welcomed 140 Jewish refugee orphans and staff from the group’s Alumim orphanage in Zhitomir, Ukraine. The group has established a Ukraine relief fund of its own, the Chabad.org website indicated.
Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated the name of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews.
• Mark A. Kellner can be reached at mkellner@washingtontimes.com.
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