Israel Aid From America is ONLY 0.3% of the Total Aid

 

Israeli Town and School for Ukranian Refugees

Video Of The Week -Ukrainian Orphans Rescued, Evacuated to Israel - https://tinyurl.com/2732u37b

For the Full Article by By Cnaan Liphshiz/Jta go to: https://tinyurl.com/4mcjcnwz

More than 600 Ukrainians have come to Nof Hagalil since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, setting off a massive migration of Ukrainians to whatever country can give them safety. About 4,000 Jewish refugees have already arrived in Israel, with potentially tens of thousands more expected.

The Ukrainian children who have landed in Nof Hagalil and at Shuvu Renanim were living safe, stable lives just over a month ago. Now they have wound up in a foreign land, usually without their fathers because of Ukraine’s ban on letting men younger than 60 leave the country, and often after experiencing trauma during the war’s early days and their flights from Ukraine.

“It’s horrifying to see a student shuddering in fear whenever a door is slammed too hard or an ambulance wails by,” said Sara Neder, who has been Shuvu Renanim’s principal for 12 years.

Tetiana Denysenko, 36, stayed in Kyiv for as long as possible together with her 10-year-old son, Sasha, and his father in Kyiv.

 “But it became impossible. The constant thud of bombs gave Sasha a trauma, and we saw our happy boy changing before our eyes, one sleepless night at a time,” she said. So they left without Sasha’s father, who expects to be conscripted into the military shortly.

Now she and Sasha are staying in Nof Hagalil’s posh Plaza Hotel, where the city is temporarily housing new immigrants for up to a month as they look for apartments to rent. Buses bring Sasha and other children back to the hotel from the Shuvu school each day, part of a sweeping effort to make the city welcoming for the new arrivals.

At school, the staff talk and devote extra attention to the new arrivals to “try to make them feel as welcome and safe as possible,” said Neder. The school has not offered dedicated trauma counseling, but the newcomers are “doing better than when they first arrived,” she added.

That’s in part because of Shuvu’s experience educating children who have immigrated to Israel from the former Soviet Union. The school is part of a network of 75 schools serving 6,000 students in more than a dozen Israeli cities that was established in the early 1990s specifically with the aim of inculcating Jewish values in children from the former Soviet Union.

Shuvu’s founder was Avraham Yaakov Pam, a Litvak rabbi from Brooklyn who was born in the former Soviet Union and who had lobbied for providing religious education to as many Jewish children as possible from the wave of mass immigration to Israel from the former Soviet Union in the early 1990s. Having been raised under communism, those children — and their parents — had not had access to Jewish education.

In recent years, as immigration from Russian-speaking countries waned, the schools had shifted to enrolling children from other countries as well as the children of immigrants from the former Soviet Union. Now, the war in Ukraine is renewing the network’s original mission.

Shuvu schools are able to choose whom they admit and what they teach, because the schools occupy a category designed for haredi Orthodox schools that allows such institutions to receive state funding while departing from the standard Israeli curriculum.

Formally, Shuvu schools are classified as haredi by the Israeli education ministry, and they have some things in common with yeshivas attended by Orthodox Jews. Female staff members, if married, wear wigs, as is the convention in haredi Jewish communities. Among the students, the girls wear long skirts, and all the boys are supposed to cover their heads with kippahs. The network also accepts only children whose mothers were Jewish, in keeping with Orthodox Jewish law.

But the schools are different from traditional yeshivas in significant ways. “They are not haredi schools because there are boys and girls in the same classrooms and we have students here whose parents don’t keep Shabbat,” Buterman said.

“Look, we don’t force anything on anyone here,” Neder said. “There’s a dress code, sure, there are extra lessons on Judaism, but at the end of the day we accept and love all our students the way they are.”

Some of the parents of the children attending Shuvu attended synagogues — mainly affiliated with the Hasidic Chabad-Lubavitch movement — prior to their immigration to Israel. Others, however, send their children to Shuvu for reasons unrelated to the school’s focus on Orthodox Judaism.

For a tuition of about $62 a month, parents at Shuvu get a school day two hours longer than state schools’ in classes 30% smaller than at public schools, as well as a warm meal and busing from their homes.

Many secular parents are convinced to send their kids to Shuvu because of these benefits, coupled with how hospitable the schools are to Russian speakers.

“Frankly we don’t care too much about all the religious stuff, we don’t keep Shabbat, my husband doesn’t wear a kippah,” said one mother, a woman who immigrated to Israel from Ukraine in 2010 and asked to be quoted anonymously because of her children’s preferences. “But this school is just excellent, nothing comes close.”

Shuvu Renanim does have some serious credentials in the scholastic excellence department.

Last week the Nof Hagalil school won a national math and computers contest for the fourth straight year — a record that Neder, who does not speak Russian, attributes to “the work and study ethics of the homes of most of our students,” she said. Another Shuvu school from Petah Tikva also made it to the top 10 list.

The Nof Hagalil school’s 16 refugees watched with interest as the other students celebrated this feat at a school event featuring balloons, loud music and medals presented to the winning team by a beaming Neder, who came to the school on her day off for the party.

The Shuvu school is only part of the attraction of Nof Hagalil for Ukrainian refugees.

The Plaza hotel and city center offer a stunning view of Nazareth, the predominantly Arab neighbor city, and the lush forests of the Galilee, which have been shrouded in mist from unseasonably late rains this month. (Ira Kapustenyenko, a 9-year-old from Kyiv, said the view is “the best thing that’s happened” to her since leaving Ukraine, where her twin sister Katja said about the early days of the war, “We were so afraid we thought we’d die from fear.”)

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Israel's rescue of Arabs from Ukraine

 Video Of The Week - Justice, Justice Shalt Thou Pursue https://tinyurl.com/4uwf4ys3 

Israel has done what it can to help its Arab citizens and other Arabs to whom it owes nothing to find safety in the conflict.

For the full Article By David May go to - https://tinyurl.com/mxmc83f8

  Russian invasion of Ukraine has given us an unexpected snapshot of the dueling realities and propaganda surrounding Israel. The truth: Israel has done what it can to help its Arab citizens and other Arabs to whom it owes nothing to find safety in the conflict. And yet for a substantial slice of the Left, Israel is South Africa reborn, a racist state segregating Arabs out for inhuman treatment. What actually happens on the ground – see Ukraine – doesn’t seem to dent this alternate reality.

What’s actually happening:

On February 12, with tensions mounting in Ukraine, Israel warned on its Arabic Twitter account, known as Israel in Arabic, that Israelis should not travel there. Two days later, the Arabic spokesperson for Israel’s Foreign Ministry tried to expedite the evacuation by announcing that five Ukrainian universities will allow Israeli students to study via Zoom amid the turmoil. Israel’s Arabic language social media messaging made sure its Arabic-speaking minority would face no language barriers while escaping Russian aggression.

Israel in Arabic’s pinned tweet from February 24, the start of the invasion, warns Israelis that the situation is dangerous and that they should leave Ukraine. The post linked to a website with specific instructions on how to exit. Israel in Arabic also tweeted the preferred border crossings Israelis should use, which crossings had Israeli officials stationed at them and how to reserve spots on buses to the border. To assist in evacuating Arabic-speaking Israelis, Israel dispatched its deputy consul in Turkey, Yara Shibli, a Bedouin, to the Ukrainian border.

Israeli-Arab parents have enjoyed tearful embraces with their children safely back in Israel. Popular Arab-Israeli media personality Eman Kassem Slimani praised Israel for rescuing hundreds of its Arab citizens from Ukraine, including many Bedouin.

And Jerusalem helped others. Israeli medics assisted a Gazan who approached them after seeing the Israeli flag. Israeli medics aided an Iranian. Israel also facilitated the evacuation of east Jerusalemite students fleeing Ukraine, most of whom are Israeli residents but not citizens. A Syrian sent Israel a thank you note for helping him. In another instance, an Israeli official invited a Lebanese citizen to board an Israeli bus headed for the border. Similarly, Israel helped individuals from Morocco escape.

But then there’s the alternate world of Israeli villainy: On February 1, Amnesty International held a press conference in the posh St. George’s Hotel in east Jerusalem to announce the release of its report condemning Israel for practicing apartheid. Even though Israel allowed this event to take place in its capital, Amnesty’s secretary-general, Agnès Callamard, called Israel a repressive regime. Leaders and officials in Israel, Germany, France, US and other countries have rejected Amnesty’s findings. But two weeks into Russia’s brutal campaign, Amnesty International’s Facebook banner photo still presents a call to end Israel’s apartheid.

In an interview after the launch of Amnesty’s report, Middle East and North Africa research and advocacy director Philip Luther acknowledged that Israel is democratic, but called it a smokescreen. In this view, Jerusalem’s rescue of its Arab citizens in Ukraine is just a ploy to whitewash its record and score points in the West.

What Amnesty doesn’t want to deal with: Israeli Arabs have full voting rights, serve in all professions, including as Supreme Court justices, and are treated equally in Israel’s hospitals. An Arab party is currently part of Israel’s governing coalition. And Israel has none of the separate beaches, bathrooms, water fountains, benches or other facilities that were the hallmarks of the South African regime. Nevertheless, Luther, Callamard, and their comrades argue that Israel need not resemble South Africa to be guilty of the crimes against humanity forever associated with South Africa.

Israel constantly wrestles with its identity as the world’s only Jewish state and its responsibility to represent its entire population, Arabs included. Jerusalem’s efforts to rescue its Arab citizens and fellow Middle Easterners from Ukraine are part of that struggle, even if they inconvenience certain narratives.

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Bennett "The Mediator" in Moscow

 Video Of The Week – Bennett Visits Putin - https://tinyurl.com/32p9t9yt

For the full article by Pesach Benson go to- https://tinyurl.com/565yyatf

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett returned to Israel on Sunday morning after making a surprise visit to Moscow to discuss the Russia-Ukraine crisis with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

From Moscow, Bennett headed to Berlin where he updated German chancellor Olaf Scholz before flying back to Israel in time to lead Sunday’s weekly cabinet meeting.

Israel has historically kept a low diplomatic profile in international power games. So despite days of buzz about possible Israeli mediation — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had been calling for it — Saturday night’s news still stunned Israelis.

An Israeli premier was the first Western leader to meet with Putin since Russia invaded Ukraine. The mission had American and European blessings. Underscoring the gravity of the gravity of the situation, the Sabbath-observant Prime Minister departed for Moscow on Saturday morning.

It’s too soon to know if Bennett’s trip will bear any fruit. Certain aspects of his three-hour meeting at the Kremlin may not be known for years, if ever.

But the talks clearly have significant implications for Israel and the Jewish people. Here are four takeaways.

1. Israeli diplomacy is on the map.

No European country is suited to mediate. Russia is their neighbor. The European Union’s decision to send arms to Ukraine is the first time it has ever sent weapons to a conflict zone. Finnish public opinion suddenly supports joining NATO — which prompted menacing comments from Moscow to Helsinki.

Even ever-neutral Switzerland is freezing the assets of Russian individuals and organizations on the EU blacklist.

Spearheading an effort to end the war in Ukraine carries great rewards and great risks. Israel has opened the door on a new level of international diplomacy, which reflects three particular changes.

• Buoyed by the Abraham Accords, Israel has more secure standing in the Mideast.

• American and European trust in Israeli mediation seems to reflect that Washington, Paris and Berlin don’t believe that so many world problems will disappear if Israel would just make peace with the Palestinians.

• Israel’s insistence on striking Iranian targets in Syria — despite Moscow’s occasional objections — has apparently earned Putin’s grudging respect.

Those are all reasons to be optimistic.

2. Israel will be better poised to evacuate Jews from the Ukraine.

The biggest perk of being mediator is the extra access and leverage it provides.

If Russia is trying to extricate itself from the conflict, what better goodwill gesture than to create humanitarian corridors and safe zones for refugees — including Jews?

And if Russia proves to be insincere, having Putin’s ear will be all the more important if an emergency evacuation of Jews proves necessary. According to Haaretz, Israel had contingency plans in the late 1980s for an emergency airlift of large numbers of Jews from the Soviet Union. Those plans are being dusted off and updated now.

Israel’s last major airlift was Operation Solomon, a covert operation in which 14,000 Ethiopian Jews were evacuated within 36 hours amid a civil war in 1991.

3. Israel will be better poised to influence Iran nuclear deal.

Israel’s concerns about Iran’s nuclear program were never taken seriously by the West. That could change.

That’s because Moscow created a new linkage between the Iranian nuclear deal and its own interests. Specifically, Russia wants written guarantees that its own trade and military cooperation with Iran won’t be impacted by sanctions the West is levying in response to the Russian invasion. Washington and Tehran panned Moscow’s demand as “unrelated” and “not helpful.”

But the U.S. is relying on Russian help to finalize the nuclear agreement. That could give Israel room to exploit improvements in the deal.

Putin also has leverage over Iran’s presence in Syria — when it chooses to exercise it. Once upon a time, in 2018, Russian officials talked of keeping Iran and its proxies at 85 km (53 miles) from the Israeli border.

Iran has also endangered Russians by smuggling weapons through the Syrian port of Latakia. Perhaps Putin will take Tehran’s recklessness more seriously now that Israel has his attention.

4. This is Bennett’s chance to shine.

When news broke from the Kremlin, plenty of Israelis imagined Benjamin Netanyahu eating his heart out. After all, It wasn’t so long ago that Netanyahu’s re-election campaign prominently featured him with Putin and then-President Donald Trump.

The campaign’s message was powerful. Netanyahu was the only heavyweight Israeli capable of standing up for Israel’s interests with the world’s super powers.

Yes, Naftali Bennett and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid have paid historic visits to the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco. But they were building on the Abraham accords which were finalized on Netanyahu’s watch.

Bennett put himself in this position by navigating between U.S. and popular Israeli demands for stronger criticism of Russia with sensitivity to Jerusalem and Moscow’s security coordination in Syria. Whether or not Netanyahu could’ve done it too is beside the point. Bennett pulled it off.

Mediating the Ukraine crisis is Bennett’s accomplishment and his opportunity to put a unique stamp on Israeli and international diplomacy.

What will that look like? Will he succeed?

Only time will tell.

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Ukrainian Jews Arrive in Israel

 Video Of The Week -Ukraine's Jews Face Russian Attacks -  https://tinyurl.com/2p87arc2

An estimated 10,000 Ukrainian Jews will arrive in Israel in the coming weeks, according to Israeli government officials.

By Zvika Klein

Israel's government estimates that around 10,000 Ukrainians will immigrate to Israel in the coming weeks, government officials told The Jerusalem Post on Saturday. 

The Ministry of Immigration and Absorption would not comment on this estimate, but responded saying: "The Ministry of Immigration and Absorption is prepared for the emergency immigration of Ukrainian Jews, and in view of the escalation in Ukraine, the ministry, headed by Minister Tamano Shata, is preparing all sectors to assist and absorb any Jew seeking to immigrate to Israel."

"In light of the drastic increase in applications for immigration from Ukraine and in view of the security situation in the region", the ministry said that Tamano-Shata and Finance Minister Avigdor Lieberman agreed on providing additional budgets to actualize the emergency immigration operation from Ukraine.

The Ministry of Immigration and Absorption convened an emergency discussion last Thursday during which Tamano-Shata assembled an inter-ministerial team to remove bureaucratic hurdles for potential olim and to issue immigration visas digitally, in light of a drastic increase in applications. This is in addition to reinforcements in the Absorption Division at Ben Gurion Airport and the cooperation with the IDF.

The Ministry concluded, "We call on the Jews of Ukraine to immigrate to Israel - your home."

In the entire year of 2021 a total of 13,006 Jews made Aliyah from Eastern Europe to Israel. Therefore, 10,000 immigrants from Ukraine in one month is substantial and dramatic.

 As revealed by the Jerusalem Post, Israel offers fleeing Jews from Ukraine free shelter and meals. The Ukrainian Jews will be offered to stay in hotels for a time of two weeks till one month – with possibilities to extend this time further.

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