While tempers are raging, the legislative blitz continues, the protests are gaining momentum and the hill boys are rioting in the homes of their Palestinian neighbors, there are other phenomena: good Israelis volunteering in a variety of ways to help Palestinians try to build a bridge to coexistence, to help, to repair. This time, I will mention two initiatives that warmed my heart and reminded me how Judaism teaches me to act and lend a helping hand.
One initiative, built on volunteers, transports Palestinian patients daily from checkpoints in Gaza, Judea and Samaria to hospitals across the country. Patients in need of transplants, cancer treatments and other diseases that cannot be treated within Gaza or the Palestinian Authority.
The association is called "On the Road to Recovery" and is headed by CEO Yael Noy. The volunteers receive the name of a patient waiting for them at the checkpoint, they drive there and make sure that it is indeed the patient. They then drive him in their car to the hospital, sometimes to Tel Hashomer and sometimes from Erez Crossing to Rambam Hospital in Haifa. If necessary, they wait until the patients finish the treatments and return them to the checkpoint. If not, another volunteer will come and bring them back. On the way, they also buy them food and drink, and make sure they get to the treatments in the most comfortable way. They describe exhausted patients who are sometimes stuck for hours at checkpoints.
One of the volunteers, Shahar Steif, shared on his Facebook page that during the coronavirus he had to work from Israel and decided to volunteer for the organization. He tells of a special bond that was formed between him and Qasim, who underwent a kidney transplant donated to him by his mother and who had to attend anti-rejection treatments, when he drove him to all the treatments. Alongside Qassem, Shahar said, he had another passenger named Mahmoud, a 10-year-old boy suffering from a serious genetic disease that causes him to undergo four dialysis treatments a week.
"A year ago, his mother asked me to help her undergo an embryo sorting procedure so that she could have a healthy child... I couldn't refuse the request."
Shortly thereafter, the couple told him they were pregnant, which was due to end in a cesarean section in July. Dawn motioned in the diary to buy them a gift. While on a work trip abroad, he received a picture of Mahmoud Sr. with a cute baby. "I feel half a grandfather, and the child is healthy and free of genetic diseases," Shahar wrote.
The organization has a website that operates in three languages - Hebrew, Arabic and English.
Another equally heart-expanding NGO is "Women of the Sea" – a group of women volunteers from all over the country, who organize buses of Palestinian women and children from the Palestinian Authority during the summer months, and simply give them a "sea day" on Israel's beaches. For most children, this is their first time seeing the sea or bathing in the sea.
There are not enough words to describe the joy that overwhelms the children who jump into the water and refuse to leave for hours. The volunteers look after them in the water and on the beach and take care of all their needs - water, food, transportation and care. The group's organizer summed up the Sea Day held last week in Sdot Yam and Jaffa: "Most of the attention was attracted by the mischievous Mohammed, who came from home with a fishing net and was constantly looking for fish. He was promised that they would buy him fish in a store in Hebron... Inshallah."
So Inshallah - and I wish it would be possible to act differently as well.
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