Volunteers for Israel’s (VFI) Arizona chapter is seeking volunteers to work in a non-military capacity on Israeli Defense Forces bases, assisting in various support services.
“When you are actually here, it’s the most unique experience. It’s the only organization that has civilians coming to help on a base to assist doing things like packing food kits and medical supplies or cleaning helmets,” said Mindy Franklin, VFI southwest regional manager.
Volunteers cover the cost of their airfare and an application fee, but food and housing are provided at the bases where they serve. Tours of duty run one, two, three weeks, and more.
Volunteers come from all walks of life, Franklin said, from doctors and lawyers to retirees. A 92-year-old volunteer is about to make her 17th trip with VFI in December.
A good share — 30 to 40 percent of U.S.-based volunteers — aren’t Jewish, organizers said. They all have one shared purpose: to assist the 75-year-old nation in its long struggle for survival.
Franklin said that democratic connection is what has drawn so many Americans to VFI’s mission for the past 40-plus years.
“Here in Arizona, I have two doctors who dropped everything as soon as this all started and said, ‘I just want to help in some way,” she said. “One started out by packing supplies for the field hospitals, and all of a sudden they asked if he could help in the field hospital. He is now eating the food that he packed four days before.”
Of course, “this” all started on Oct. 7, when Hamas launched a barbaric terrorist attack, killing some 1,200 Israelis, most of them civilians, and taking about 240 hostages. Israel struck back, its government pledging to wipe out Hamas in and around Gaza.
“We are at war, and we will continue the war,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday, pledging that his terrorized nation will resume its campaign against Hamas following a temporary halt to hostilities in a proposed hostage-prisoner exchange. Officials said the warring sides were close to a deal.
“We will continue until we achieve all our goals,” Netanyahu said.
While VFI crew members work in auxiliary, non-military roles, safety is a relative term. Israel is under constant threat of rocket attacks. Air raid alarms and bomb shelters are commonplace.
VFI President Steve Litwok was on the ground in Israel not long after the terrorist attacks and the war began. He said the Israelis he spoke to were “depressed, anxious, and mentally, emotionally and physically exhausted.”
“I am a child of Holocaust survivors, as are two other members of the leadership team,” Litwok told The Arizona Sun Times. Facing an enemy that preaches genocide in its twisted version of religion, one that has vowed to wipe Israel off of the map, Litwok said Israel and its citizens need all the help they can get.
Volunteers for Israel began in 1982, amid another battle for survival — Israel’s first war with Lebanon. That’s when Israeli farmers in the Golan Heights faced the prospect of losing their crops.
According to VFI’s website:
Most able-bodied men and women were called up for army reserve, and ripening crops were left unattended. Soldiers were needed to protect the country’s northern flank, but without their help in the fields the agricultural loss would be disastrous.
Israeli General Aharon Davidi (z”l), a war hero and the former head of the IDF Paratroopers and Infantry Corps, sent emissaries to the United States to recruit volunteers to come to Israel right away, harvest crops and save the economy. More than 600 volunteers responded immediately, and the crops were saved.
The experience was so personally rewarding and successful that volunteers, maintaining the pioneering spirit, formed groups in regions all across the U.S.
Since then, thousands of Americans have signed up to work on IDF bases.
Franklin said many volunteers use their vacation time to assist the effort. She said the CEO of a large company has volunteered for a week to pack supplies and help where he can.
“It’s so rewarding,” she said. “It makes my heart feel good, even as my heart breaks at all of the horrors going on there.”
For more information on Volunteers for Israel, contact [email protected]. In Arizona, contact [email protected].
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M.D. Kittle is the National Political Editor for The Star News Network.
Photo “Volunteers for Israel Volunteers” by Sar-El – The National Project for Volunteers for Israel.
