Reflections, Observations, and Lessons from the Return to Zion

Guest Contributor Dr. Joel Spalter

On February 8, 2025, The Housing Development Fund Task Force of Jewish National Fund (JNF) - USA, began the first Task Force trip to Israel since the massacre of October 7, 2023. 

Sixteen months before, on October 5, 2023, we were ready to go back to Israel after too long a delay mostly due to the response to covid. We wanted to get back to Israel, and events in the world, even events in Israel, did not enter our minds as a reason for delay. Then came October 7, 2023. Our luggage was packed. It would remain partially packed for much of the ensuing year. We could not bear to admit that our travel plans were canceled. So we told ourselves that the trip was only delayed. 

At Thanksgiving dinner, 2023, we set out a tiny chair for Abigail Mor Edan, the three-year-old American-Israeli citizen kidnapped by Hamas on October 7th. She spent her 4th birthday a captive. She was released in November, 2023. Her parents were murdered on October 7th. She was resourceful. She ran to a neighbor’s house covered in her father’s blood. That saved her life on October 7th. 

Her father’s blood was real, but we did not see it. The media censors everything. It asserts that is too painful for the public to see blood covered children, unless the media can blame Israel for the blood. Abigail’s two siblings survived. She will have a nuclear family, and an extended family. 

We read about these events from afar. We waited for flights to Israel to be available. 

Thousands of Israelis were called up for military service. Jewish National Fund - USA sent thousands of individual volunteers to Israel to help with work that needed to be done by other than Israelis. These volunteers were involved directly.  We were jealous as we continued to be involved from afar. 

We watched in dismay as anti-Semitism raged on American college campuses. 

We increased our gifts to Jewish National Fund. We watched as the American Bill of Rights was subverted by masked demonstrators who stomped on and burned the American flag and screamed “death to America, death to Israel.” The tragedy of what had the potential to undermine Israel’s existence, and the Constitution of the United States, continued. 

But our brethren were already in the field. Our turn to join them would come soon. El Al the Israel National Airline started again flying to Tel Aviv. No other international airline joined it. The flights are expensive. Can we afford to go? We certainly can’t afford not to go.  

If we can afford the tickets. Why can we? Why do we ask such a “why” question?  

Every year as spring approaches, we celebrate the holiday of Purim. In the scroll of Esther, Mordecai says to Esther that she should not think that her position of privilege as Queen, will allow her to escape the fate of the rest of the Jews. Mordecai continues, “And who knows if it is not exactly for a time like this, that you have become the queen?” 

Mordecai was teaching Esther that there is a hidden hand in history. She was the Queen because she was meant to be the Queen. The concept of directed history was known in the time of Queen Esther some 2500 years ago. It was still remembered 250 years ago by the American patriot Patrick Henry. “There is a just God who rules over the destiny of men and nations.” Hope. Purpose. If history does not play out randomly, but by design, the obligation of each person is, at the least, to identify his or her role, and to adopt it. 

The most common feeling that I sensed in response to the people that I encountered on the trip was that they have a belief, really an insistence, that, despite the difficulty and pain, in the wake of recent history, of continuing to believe that events and history matter, no-one was ready to discard that belief.  

On February 9, we left our hotel in Tel Aviv and traveled south to the Eshkol Region, which is in the Negev between Be’er Sheva and Ashkelon, and borders both Egypt and Gaza.  

We knew Michal Uziahu from many prior JNF missions to the Eshkol area of Israel. For her, as for many of the other Israelis who choose to live in the peripheral area of Israel, life has purpose and meaning that is bound up with this geographic choice. The 47-year-old mother of three, resident of the Eshkol Region, had only weeks before become Mayor of the Eshkol Region. It was with great joy that we met her again. 

Her eyes see clearly and her mind thinks clearly. Eshkol will rebuild itself. Its young people are committed to its rehabilitation. Eshkol has a role, a destiny, for the future of Israel, for the future of the world. It has been and will continue to be a place that welcomes new families, that will continue to thrive as it has under incessant rockets, drones, infiltrations, incendiary balloons, and shootings. It is a beautiful place, meant to be shared with others, meant to continue its focus on the education of its children, on the health of its elders, and on the cultivation of its farmland.   

Michal, and others who live in Israel near Gaza, often say that life where they live, is 95% heaven and 5% hell, and, that the way to adapt to this fact, is to focus on the 95%. If you focus on the 5%, it will become a 100%. 

Despite the horrors of murder, rape, beheading of children, and incineration of houses on October 7th, regarding Eshkol, and most other damaged communities, we repeatedly heard two facts. First: Most of the prior residents want to return to their homes as soon as it is safe and a home is available. Second: There is a waiting list of people who have no prior connection to the community or its residents, who wish to join the community. There are two reasons for the second fact: One: The draw of the opportunity to live in a caring community is worth the risk. Two: Though at too great a price, the lesson has been learned, and, in the future, security will be adequate. 

To me, one of the most amazing and forward-looking statements that Michal makes is in relation to the responsibilities of the people of Gaza. First, the very fact that she speaks of responsibilities of Gazans, humanizes them. Only humans have responsibilities. It is not surprising that she, a representative of communities that sought to enhance the economic interests of the people of Gaza, that employed people from Gaza in their homes and businesses, that drove sick children from Gaza to Israeli hospitals for care that they could not access at home, would have thought of Gazans as human. That an Israeli would continue to think of Gazans as human, after their inhuman behavior of October 7th, is amazing. It is a testament to the insistence of Michal and many other Israelis, that their own humanity will not fall victim to Hamas’s forces of darkness. 

It is what Michal says is the responsibility of the 2.2 million people of Gaza that is forward thinking. It is a blueprint for how to think about and treat a civilian population that is ruled by a despotic military, that enslaves and victimizes them. Correctly, Michal asserts that the people of Gaza have the continuing responsibility to rise up and revolt against Hamas and thereby to eliminate their status as victims. Absence of help on the part of those who assert that they support the people of Gaza is not an excuse for the people of Gaza not to act. Such support would however be helpful. 

Michal repeatedly states her thanks that Israel has those who love her and activate this love. The existence of the worldwide Jewish community and worldwide Christian communities that have Israel’s back is the most important facilitator in the recovery of Israel, and in fact, of the whole Middle East. These communities have a share in the success of this recovery. So too, does the JNF-USA, that within a day of October 7th, was reaching out to communities asking, “What do you need?” 

We met many people in Israel who are meeting the challenge to be resilient and foster recovery. Hopefully their stories will either give an insight into Israel today, or give a prediction of Israel tomorrow, or will be an inspiration for those, who like you, are committed to Israel’s thriving. 

At Kibbutz Re’im (Re’im means friends.), we met Zohar Mizrachi, social worker and head of the kibbutz. Re’im is located across the road from the site of the Nova Festival. On October 7, 2023, at least three hundred sixty-four young people attending the festival were murdered and some 40 people were kidnapped into Gaza. 

We stood at the gate of the kibbutz, overlooking the partially prepared ground, which will be the site of some of the 54 housing lots for which the Housing Development Fund of JNF-USA will provide financing in the form of interest free loans. The housing lots will be needed both for the evacuated residents of Re’im, one third of whom have already returned, and for the 5-10 new families, with no connection to current residents of Re’im who are to be welcomed each year. At the edge of the site stood a tree where two police officers were murdered defending the kibbutz. The defense of communities on October 7th was characterized for the first 24 hours by local people defending their own or nearby communities, and sometimes by volunteers coming from great distances to defend a community. 

Hearts were crushed on October 7th, not so the ethics of medical confidentiality. Zohar does not act as therapist for the people of Re’im, where she lives. There is to be no compromise in the preservation of confidentiality. Therapists, though in short supply, do not work in the community in which they reside. 

One of those murdered at the Nova Festival was Bar Zohar, a 23-year-old beautiful French-Israeli woman from Kfar Warburg, a moshav (cooperative agricultural settlement), located a few miles to the northeast of Re’im. We met her mother, who comes to the Nova site almost every day to tell the story of her daughter. Bar wrote a song on October 14, 2022, about feeling pain and sorrow, but miss-dated the song to October 7th, 2022. She wrote another song about changing cars and doing something over again, an eerie prequel to her actions on October 7th 2023, that saved the lives of three of her friends.  

The Nova Festival site, now home to hundreds of memorial saplings that will grow for years into strong tall trees, and to carpets of red anemone flowers that bloom every winter all over southern Israel, will, as now, forever feel occupied, like the Confederate Cemetery in Fayetteville.  

On the second day, we crossed the State of Israel to the Arava Valley, about a two-hour drive, depending on traffic.

Arava is a word with several meanings. As a Hebrew word it means a type of desert-like area. Geographically, the African Rift Valley extends into Israel and then continues farther north. In Israel, north of the Dead Sea, the Rift Valley is the valley of the Jordan River. South of the Dead Sea, the Arava is geographically a desert valley. Arava is also the name of a particular mo’a’tsa, which is a Hebrew word that literally means council. In English in Israel, council means county. The two counties that form the unfenced eastern border of the State of Israel with Jordan, from the Dead Sea in the north, to the city of Eilat in the south, are Arava, and Eilot Region. Eilot Region being the name of the more southerly mo’a’tsa.  

The Arava consists of 7 moshavim (cooperative agricultural settlements). 

The Arava and the Eilot Region produce 60% of Israel’s vegetable exports and 10% of her cut flowers for export. Average annual rainfall is 1-2 inches. 

The new community Ir Avot, (City of the Fathers), is to be located at the northern end of the Arava. There is not enough water for more agriculture. The people of the new community will work in other professions, an adaptation that is a harbinger of plans for other new communities in both the north and south of Israel.  

Ir Avot is to be started with 25 pre-fabricated houses. When completed, it will increase the Arava population by 50%. These plans are not to be delayed by October 7th. David Ben Gurion, Israel’s first Prime Minister, identified increase of the population of the Negev and Galilee as a critical necessity for the survival of the State.  Pre-fabricated houses are a temporary adaptation for dealing with an insufficiency of skilled construction workers (carpenters, metal workers, plumbers, electricians, etc), a characteristic that Israel shares with the United States. Efforts are underway in Israel to increase the availability of skilled construction workers by adding instruction in these fields to the high school curriculum, and by increasing the social cache of being a skilled craftsman. 

JNF-USA has been for many years an advocate of Israelis moving to the Negev or the Galilee. As a responsible advocate and with the understanding that it might be altering the fundamental circumstances of a family’s existence, JNF-USA has promised to those who relocate, that they will have available all that is present in the more densely populated center of the country. 

JNF-USA supported communities have schools, medical centers, employment opportunities, and cultural centers as integral parts of the community. Neither the attacks of October 7th, nor the incessant rocket fire by Hezbollah from Lebanon has delayed construction of the Kiriat Shmona Medical Center. The Israeli Arab workmen who were busy when we arrived were appropriately proud of their work. They could, however, show us only about half of the building. Over half of it is underground. Only the uppermost floor, with its thick reinforced concrete bomb-proof roof, is above ground. Construction is ahead of schedule and under budget. 

Though many of the residents of the Galilee, and particularly of Kiriat Shmona, were evacuated to other parts of Israel, the city does not appear depopulated, or damaged. Traffic flows. Pedestrians walk. 

Several years ago, in order to jump-start a large increase in the population of the eastern Galilee, JNF-USA began efforts to bring to the area of Kiriat Shmona a hub, that would provide employment, be a major local tourist attraction, and become an international center of excellence in a practical academic discipline. Because the area around Kiriat Shmona looks like Tuscany in Italy, is one of the major food and wine producing areas of Israel, and is the site of Tel Hai College, the idea to establish the Galilee Culinary Institute (GCI) there was born.  

Construction of dormitories, and other facilities, for the students enrolled in the year-long program of the GCI, continues in Kibbutz Gonen, across the Huleh Valley and about 8 miles southeast of Kiriat Shmona.  

It should be remembered that all of the visions of JNF-USA, that are characterized as having continuing construction or planned construction, are in that state, in spite of October 7th, but not to spite October 7th. They are aspects of an ongoing vision for the Land of Israel.  

Thanks for having Israel’s back was repeatedly expressed by the Israelis whom we met. Repeatedly, I felt that the thanks that was being offered was both a sincere “thank you,” and also, a means subtly to convey to us that there was a hidden message, a secret in the thanks, whose content was available on request. Each Israeli’s tone, or body language, or eyes, seemed to say, “ look harder, break the code, realize that there is more.” The hidden message was not to be stated, unless requested. Unrequested, revelation by the Israelis of the hidden message might seem to be a begging for more aid. Unrequested, revelation of the hidden message might seem to be an impugning of our motivations for having Israel’s back. 

The quandary for the Israelis is that they want very much to tell us the secret. It is very much in our interest to know the secret. They are our friends and, as they can, want to have our backs.  

We are left to discover for ourselves, what the Israelis already know, that they and we are in the same war. They have been forced to wake up before we have. As we stood with our bags packed on October 5th, 2023, their wake-up call was 2 days away. For this moment, we still have not heard our wake-up call, but we dare not cease, even for a moment, to listen carefully. 

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Photo courtesy of Jewish National Fund-USA and our families in the Arava.