Christian-Jewish charity has reached ‘almost all’ displaced Israelis with cash aid, official says

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An American-Israeli charity largely supported by evangelical Christians has aided “almost all” of the 60,000 Israelis displaced from cities and towns near the Gaza Strip, the group’s president said Monday.

The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews built its reputation on providing meals to elderly and impoverished Jews in Israel, many of whom are survivors of the Holocaust.

Now, it has had to pivot toward those who escaped devastated homes and communal villages in the wake of the Oct. 7 attacks by the Hamas militant group, said Yael Eckstein, president of the Fellowship, as the 40-year-old organization is known.

“We are at all of the evacuation centers” where residents have fled, Ms. Eckstein said in a video call from Jerusalem.

Each resident was given “a special credit card that they could use for any of their basic needs, in the amount of around $600,” Ms. Eckstein told The Washington Times. “Every single one of those people and families from every single one of these those kibbutzim has gotten [a card, so] at least now that they could buy shoes without any bureaucracy.”

Many of the evacuees from southern Israel left with only the clothes on their backs and often barefoot, she said.

Ms. Eckstein said the people receiving assistance from the Fellowship and its partner organizations are not those who previously had faced deprivation. The organization’s 70-member staff in Israel has been “creating systems and partnerships” with other groups in Israel to get aid to those in need, she said.

“They weren’t necessarily poor before,” she said. “They had homes and cars, but their homes have been burned. Their cars have been burned. All of their belongings have been burned when the terrorists came in and burned down all those cities. And so they don’t have credit cards. They came without shoes, they don’t have their makeup or their clothes or their anything. They don’t have socks.”

None of her staff were hurt or killed during the Hamas attacks, but Ms. Eckstein said two of the Fellowship’s elderly Jewish clients were killed and “we have elderly from our program who were kidnapped” by the terrorists.

Dozens of Israelis are believed to be captives of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, according to news reports. On Monday, a Hamas official told Britain’s Sky News he didn’t know how many of the hostages were still alive.

Ms. Eckstein said the crisis has created previously unseen dilemmas in the 75-year-old Jewish state.

For one thing, the nation’s first responders — medical personnel and firefighters among them — became targets as they rushed into areas under attack from Hamas. The Fellowship has donated 1,000 bulletproof safety vests for use by those personnel, she said.

Asked what her charity’s American supporters can do right now, Ms. Eckstein said her first request is for prayer on behalf of Israel and its people. “Pray in your language in your faith and your belief system,” she said.

Her second request is for donations. “Our first responders have turned into the victims, and Israel needs every every humanitarian support. Any amount of humanitarian support that we can get right now is saving lives,” she said.

“Just yesterday, a bomb shelter that the Fellowship recently placed in Sderot had a direct hit. You could see the pictures with the missile that landed two feet from it and all the shrapnel that very, very badly damaged the shelter,” Ms. Eckstein said.

Her third request is for people to “speak out” about the attacks, insisting there is no “moral equivalence” between Hamas’ terrorist raids and Israel’s retaliation.

“Israel is the only tiny sliver of land that the Jewish people have. We have nowhere else to go,” Ms. Eckstein said. “We gave the Palestinians the Gaza Strip and set it up with the most beautiful greenhouses and everything that they would need to have a thriving economy.”

But Hamas killed “all the people that wanted peace” and destroyed the greenhouses, she added.

“I would encourage anyone who stands with Israel now not to be fooled,” Ms. Eckstein said. “This isn’t going to be won overnight. Hamas said [they] are acquiring weapons, and always have been, to wipe the Jewish people off the map. Right now. Israel is in a fight for our survival, and it’s not a fight that’s going to end after a day or two.”