It’s that time of year again, when public relations agencies are disseminating press releases about fully equipped school bags that large companies and organizations are providing for children from low-income families.
These gifts are overwhelmingly for Jewish children in Israel. Palestinian children are mostly ignored, but not by everyone, including Israelis and Diaspora Jews.
In the weekly Bible portion read in synagogues on the Shabbat of August 22, the Children of Israel were presented with a set of ethical and humanitarian laws to guide their daily lives.
One of those laws reads: “The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers. Every man shall be put to death for his own sins.”
Yet there are certain Israelis who identify as Orthodox Jews who would deny humanitarian aid to children in the West Bank and Gaza. Such people reason that all Palestinian children will grow up to become terrorists.
Happily, some people think differently and work through affiliated organizations to provide properly equipped school bags for Palestinian children.
One such organization is American Friends of the Parents Circle-Families Forum, whose members are bereaved Israelis and Palestinians who lost loved ones to each other’s violent forces, and decided that violence was not the way to continue.
They have learned to empathize with each other, share sorrow, work together for common causes, and form lasting friendships with former enemies.
These families are currently engaged in providing funds for Palestinian and Israeli members in Israel to purchase, assemble, and distribute over 1,500 backpacks filled with school supplies for Palestinian children living in West Bank communities.
Another organization, NATAN Worldwide Disaster Relief, has a groundbreaking CEO in Alice Miller, who more than 30 years ago won a landmark court case against the Israel Air Force, which had rejected her application to enter a combat pilots’ course because she was a woman.
Getting ready to go back to school
Miller, who held a civil pilot’s license and was a Technion-Israel Institute of Technology aeronautical engineering graduate, had appealed to then-president Ezer Weizman, who was the chief commander of the air force. Weizman had told her women were not suited to be combat pilots and that she would be better off going home to knit socks.
Instead, Miller went to court and paved the way for scores of female pilots and navigators who have since graduated from IAF courses.
Miller is also involved with humanitarian causes and joined NATAN Worldwide Disaster Relief after October 7.
The organization was founded to continue the legacy of Abie Nathan, a famous former combat pilot who flew at his own initiative on a peace mission to Egypt in the 1960s.
Nathan was a peace activist and the founder of the legendary Voice of Peace offshore radio station, which broadcast around the clock “from somewhere in the Mediterranean.” He initiated many humanitarian causes in Israel, India, Biafra, Vietnam, and elsewhere.
NATAN Worldwide Disaster Relief is made up of volunteer practicing professionals who work as physicians, nurses, social workers, dentists, psychologists, and more.
On Tuesday, September 1, the organization will open a medical clinic in the Gaza Children Village, a displacement camp in the al-Qarara and al-Masawi region of southern Gaza.
Israelis and Jews are funding equipment for the clinic from abroad. The Gaza Children Village, supported by NATAN Worldwide Disaster Relief, is home to thousands of orphans from the Gaza Strip.
The village was established with the help of distinguished Prof. David Hassan of Ulster University. Hassan, born in Northern Ireland, is in high demand as an adviser worldwide, particularly in conflict zones.
In the village, the children receive hot meals, education free of hatred and incitement, medical attention, and a sense of safety and hope for the future. The children are also provided with schoolbags so they have something they can truly call their own.
NATAN works on the principle that every child is entitled to dignity, education, food, and medical attention regardless of creed, color, or nationality.
Not enough of this work is made public, not because there is a need to hide it, but because no news is good news. Bad news makes headlines.