Israel’s Ministry of Interior has decided to reinstate an old regulation that is threatening to cripple, if not shut down, several Christian ministries by limiting the time volunteers can spend serving in Israel to 27 months.
The ruling was as sudden as it was drastic. The effects began to be felt earlier this month when three volunteers from Christian Friends of Israel, assuming their visas would be renewed at the Interior Ministry under the previous five-year agreement, were instead told they had two weeks to pack up and leave the country.
Since then, several more volunteers who have been in the country at least two years have been denied visa renewals and are planning hasty departures. Many others have been left with a heavy sense of uncertainty as their own visas come due in the following months.
Several Christian organizations, which were founded to bless Israel, are bolstered by volunteer staff who until now served for up to five years in various capacities. The sudden change in policy has suddenly cut some staffs by 50 percent or more.
The regulation does not specifically target Christian volunteers, but is having the greatest effect on Christians and Christian organizations, which have a heavy presence in the land.
And while some of the larger Christian organizations are granted long-term staff visas and will perhaps be able to cope better with sudden losses, the smaller organizations - subject to the new turnover even at the managerial and founding levels - could end up shutting down or, at best, severely minimizing their outreach in the land.
The decision has left the community reeling and scrambling to make last-minute arrangements both for those leaving and others filling their voids. Volunteers who did not want to publicly criticize the government’s decision spoke to Israel Today on background. One manager said it is a critical time to lose people after investing in them for two years. Another pointed out that their own date of impending departure didn’t allow enough time to pass on their responsibilities.
Yuval Yerushalmi, attorney for four Christian organizations in Jerusalem, said while the enforcement affects all volunteers, “all this is definitely making our lives more difficult.”
Yerushalmi stressed that the new regulations cannot be painted as "anti-Christian activity," but acknowledged that they will leave Christian organizations hard-pressed to function on the same scale as they once did.
Even if, as many say, the Messianic Jewish body in Israel is forced out of the closet and picks up the humanitarian slack, one reason the Christians were here was to mend centuries-old rifts between Jews and Christians. That mission will undoubtedly be negatively impacted by the new regulations.
Those volunteers asked to leave will be allowed back into Israel on another volunteer visa of 27 months after a year out of the country. However, they must return with a visa approved and issued by the Israeli embassy in their country of origin, a difficult and cumbersome task.
Jul 22, 2008
In the Shadow of Gaza: ‘We Are Losing the Future’
Three years ago this month, Israel uprooted 21 Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip, ostensibly to “ease friction” with the Palestinians. But Israelis in Sderot and other communities surrounding Gaza have gotten anything but the promised peace and quiet.
Since the “disengagement” in August 2005, more than 5,000 rockets and mortars have been fired at Israel from Gaza. In the first six months of this year, 1,075 rockets and 1,204 mortars were fired across the border, exceeding the total in any full year previously.
Businesses have suffered heavy economic losses and 50 percent of the region’s residents have been diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
This reporter travelled to the border region to find some of the stories you don’t hear every day in the news.
The Conundrum of Humanitarian Aid
A few months ago, Oleg Lipson, 37, and Lev Cherniak, 53, were working at the Nahal Oz terminal, which supplies Gaza with most of its fuel, when four Palestinian gunmen stormed across the border fence and opened fire, killing them both.
It was a win-win situation for Hamas. Not only did they kill two Jews, but they also managed to stifle the flow of fuel to Gaza, forcing the terminal to close for days. This created a contrived fuel crisis in Gaza, which brought international sympathy to the Palestinians and international condemnation on Israel.
The terminal is operated by an Israeli fuel company. Trucks arrive on the Israeli side and unload their cargo into an underground pipeline that transfers the fuel into Palestinian territory.
In this vicious cycle, Israel walks a tightrope between humanitarian concern for the Palestinians and the safety of its own citizens.
Colonel Nir Press, who heads the Erez Crossing Coordination Office, outlined the irrational routine of his work. As his office endures frequent rocket and mortar fire, he and his soldiers arrange for humanitarian aid trucks to enter Gaza and review requests by Palestinians to travel to schools and hospitals in Israel and abroad.
“In the last few months they attacked the crossing every week,” he said. “Unfortunately Hamas does not care for the civilian population of Gaza; they are targeting the crossing because they want suffering on the Gaza side.”
Whenever there is an attack, the crossings must close in order to regroup. Press said an average of 75 trucks a day cross into Gaza, but “on an attack day, it’s half that.”
Post Traumatic Stress
While most rockets do not hit Israeli homes, the trauma of each launch is finding its way into the lives of many Israelis in the Gaza border region.
“Fifty percent of the people are suffering from trauma, usually called post traumatic, but it’s not ‘post’ yet,” said Chen Abrahams, a social worker. “It has been like this for eight years.”
Abrahams lives at Kibbutz Kfar Aza where a neighbor was killed earlier this year in plain sight of many residents. As a social worker in Sderot, Abrahams sees many cases of trauma to varying degrees, but says that every child has its own manifestation of anxiety.
And she is not immune either: Her 8-year-old son sleeps in bed with Abrahams and her husband and has been doing so for months now. “You can imagine what that does to the relationship between me and my husband,” she said.
Parents also grapple with issues like whether to let their children play outside, or sometimes, even whether to go to school. Schools have begun to make a game out of running to the shelter since sirens go off frequently.
The Red Alert system gives a 15-second warning to residents when a rocket has been launched. But that doesn’t help everyone.
“Deaf people don’t hear the alert,” noted Chezy Deutsch, director of international relations for the army’s Home Front Command.
Deutsch and his team go door to door mapping out residents with specific needs. They distribute beepers to the deaf and advise caretakers on how to move the elderly and immobile in case of an emergency.
Productivity Suffers
Many businesses in southern Israel are losing productivity not just to property damage, but more to the constant rocket alerts that send workers scurrying for cover.
“There is an alarm five to 10 times a day,” said Ronnie Levine, vice president of marketing for Erez Industries, a textile and plastic manufacturer at Kibbutz Erez near the Gaza border. “The workers leave the machine, run outside for shelter and when they come back, either the machine is not working” or they spend time trying to find out if their family members are okay.
“Eighty-five percent of their mind is not on the machine,” Levine estimated, accounting for a 30 percent loss in business over three years.
Prior to the Gaza evacuation, Erez employed Palestinian workers and still pays the salaries of two who worked there 20 years.
At Nirlat paint factory, employees can see right across the barren field to Gaza. “They are constantly observing us,” said manager Yehuda Kaplan. Nirlat has absorbed a couple of direct hits from rockets and mortars. After each, workers have taken one to two days off before they dared return.
Further north, 10 percent of the land at Kibbutz Nahal Oz can no longer be cultivated because it is in sniper range. “Our main problem right now is to convince workers to go out in the fields,” said agricultural manager Yankela Cohen.
Cohen, 73, is no stranger to these hazards. In the 1950s the kibbutz was founded as a joint military-agricultural venture and the workers dodged Egyptian fire. Now the kibbutz is prohibited from using a plane to spray pesticide within 1.5 miles (2.5 km.) of the Gaza border, for fear that it could be shot down, and pests are feasting on their crops.
“There are direct and indirect losses,” Cohen said. “There is no way to continue like this. We are going to lose the whole Negev. We are losing the future.”
Believers Find Peace in Their Hearts
“Fifteen seconds before you called there was a siren,” Dina Gelfand told Israel Today one evening during the “cease-fire” between Israel and Gaza. “A rocket just landed in an open field.”
Gelfand is the pastor of a small Messianic congregation in the rocket-battered city where 15 to 20 believers meet four times a week in an apartment. Sirens have interrupted their meetings many times, so they pray for God’s protection and frequently quote Psalm 91. They live amidst the terror along with the rest of the community.
“We have peace in our hearts,” Gelfand said. “For people who don’t believe in Yeshua [Jesus], the situation here is too hard to deal with.”
Ironically, one of the congregation’s main prayers is for the Palestinians of Gaza.
“There will be no peace here if there is no peace in Gaza,” Gelfand said. “They are also suffering, and suffering from worse things than we are.”
The congregation’s apartment suffered a direct hit by a rocket while a woman was inside. But miraculously the woman was completely unscathed and the rocket hit the cement shelter of the apartment, leaving it intact.
Just like the rest of Sderot and southern Israeli residents, Gelfand quickly educated herself in this situation: She knows where to run for safety, not stand near a window, preferably not to live on the top floor of an apartment building.
But Gelfand has no plans to leave Sderot. “This is my place. I know this is from God,” she said. “I love Sderot, 100 percent. I feel I’m home.”
Gelfand said the congregation helps the community where it can practically and by praying with families. Most of all, they are an example of peace in the storm.
“They think we’re crazy, they think that fear is logical and that you need to be afraid and that you need to be stressed,” Gelfand said. “But I know that God watches over me. God is alive, God is almighty. If we believe in this, there is peace and faith.”
Since the “disengagement” in August 2005, more than 5,000 rockets and mortars have been fired at Israel from Gaza. In the first six months of this year, 1,075 rockets and 1,204 mortars were fired across the border, exceeding the total in any full year previously.
Businesses have suffered heavy economic losses and 50 percent of the region’s residents have been diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
This reporter travelled to the border region to find some of the stories you don’t hear every day in the news.
The Conundrum of Humanitarian Aid
A few months ago, Oleg Lipson, 37, and Lev Cherniak, 53, were working at the Nahal Oz terminal, which supplies Gaza with most of its fuel, when four Palestinian gunmen stormed across the border fence and opened fire, killing them both.
It was a win-win situation for Hamas. Not only did they kill two Jews, but they also managed to stifle the flow of fuel to Gaza, forcing the terminal to close for days. This created a contrived fuel crisis in Gaza, which brought international sympathy to the Palestinians and international condemnation on Israel.
The terminal is operated by an Israeli fuel company. Trucks arrive on the Israeli side and unload their cargo into an underground pipeline that transfers the fuel into Palestinian territory.
In this vicious cycle, Israel walks a tightrope between humanitarian concern for the Palestinians and the safety of its own citizens.
Colonel Nir Press, who heads the Erez Crossing Coordination Office, outlined the irrational routine of his work. As his office endures frequent rocket and mortar fire, he and his soldiers arrange for humanitarian aid trucks to enter Gaza and review requests by Palestinians to travel to schools and hospitals in Israel and abroad.
“In the last few months they attacked the crossing every week,” he said. “Unfortunately Hamas does not care for the civilian population of Gaza; they are targeting the crossing because they want suffering on the Gaza side.”
Whenever there is an attack, the crossings must close in order to regroup. Press said an average of 75 trucks a day cross into Gaza, but “on an attack day, it’s half that.”
Post Traumatic Stress
While most rockets do not hit Israeli homes, the trauma of each launch is finding its way into the lives of many Israelis in the Gaza border region.
“Fifty percent of the people are suffering from trauma, usually called post traumatic, but it’s not ‘post’ yet,” said Chen Abrahams, a social worker. “It has been like this for eight years.”
Abrahams lives at Kibbutz Kfar Aza where a neighbor was killed earlier this year in plain sight of many residents. As a social worker in Sderot, Abrahams sees many cases of trauma to varying degrees, but says that every child has its own manifestation of anxiety.
And she is not immune either: Her 8-year-old son sleeps in bed with Abrahams and her husband and has been doing so for months now. “You can imagine what that does to the relationship between me and my husband,” she said.
Parents also grapple with issues like whether to let their children play outside, or sometimes, even whether to go to school. Schools have begun to make a game out of running to the shelter since sirens go off frequently.
The Red Alert system gives a 15-second warning to residents when a rocket has been launched. But that doesn’t help everyone.
“Deaf people don’t hear the alert,” noted Chezy Deutsch, director of international relations for the army’s Home Front Command.
Deutsch and his team go door to door mapping out residents with specific needs. They distribute beepers to the deaf and advise caretakers on how to move the elderly and immobile in case of an emergency.
Productivity Suffers
Many businesses in southern Israel are losing productivity not just to property damage, but more to the constant rocket alerts that send workers scurrying for cover.
“There is an alarm five to 10 times a day,” said Ronnie Levine, vice president of marketing for Erez Industries, a textile and plastic manufacturer at Kibbutz Erez near the Gaza border. “The workers leave the machine, run outside for shelter and when they come back, either the machine is not working” or they spend time trying to find out if their family members are okay.
“Eighty-five percent of their mind is not on the machine,” Levine estimated, accounting for a 30 percent loss in business over three years.
Prior to the Gaza evacuation, Erez employed Palestinian workers and still pays the salaries of two who worked there 20 years.
At Nirlat paint factory, employees can see right across the barren field to Gaza. “They are constantly observing us,” said manager Yehuda Kaplan. Nirlat has absorbed a couple of direct hits from rockets and mortars. After each, workers have taken one to two days off before they dared return.
Further north, 10 percent of the land at Kibbutz Nahal Oz can no longer be cultivated because it is in sniper range. “Our main problem right now is to convince workers to go out in the fields,” said agricultural manager Yankela Cohen.
Cohen, 73, is no stranger to these hazards. In the 1950s the kibbutz was founded as a joint military-agricultural venture and the workers dodged Egyptian fire. Now the kibbutz is prohibited from using a plane to spray pesticide within 1.5 miles (2.5 km.) of the Gaza border, for fear that it could be shot down, and pests are feasting on their crops.
“There are direct and indirect losses,” Cohen said. “There is no way to continue like this. We are going to lose the whole Negev. We are losing the future.”
Believers Find Peace in Their Hearts
“Fifteen seconds before you called there was a siren,” Dina Gelfand told Israel Today one evening during the “cease-fire” between Israel and Gaza. “A rocket just landed in an open field.”
Gelfand is the pastor of a small Messianic congregation in the rocket-battered city where 15 to 20 believers meet four times a week in an apartment. Sirens have interrupted their meetings many times, so they pray for God’s protection and frequently quote Psalm 91. They live amidst the terror along with the rest of the community.
“We have peace in our hearts,” Gelfand said. “For people who don’t believe in Yeshua [Jesus], the situation here is too hard to deal with.”
Ironically, one of the congregation’s main prayers is for the Palestinians of Gaza.
“There will be no peace here if there is no peace in Gaza,” Gelfand said. “They are also suffering, and suffering from worse things than we are.”
The congregation’s apartment suffered a direct hit by a rocket while a woman was inside. But miraculously the woman was completely unscathed and the rocket hit the cement shelter of the apartment, leaving it intact.
Just like the rest of Sderot and southern Israeli residents, Gelfand quickly educated herself in this situation: She knows where to run for safety, not stand near a window, preferably not to live on the top floor of an apartment building.
But Gelfand has no plans to leave Sderot. “This is my place. I know this is from God,” she said. “I love Sderot, 100 percent. I feel I’m home.”
Gelfand said the congregation helps the community where it can practically and by praying with families. Most of all, they are an example of peace in the storm.
“They think we’re crazy, they think that fear is logical and that you need to be afraid and that you need to be stressed,” Gelfand said. “But I know that God watches over me. God is alive, God is almighty. If we believe in this, there is peace and faith.”
Jul 2, 2008
Israelis Fear New Era of Terror after Bulldozer Attack
A day after an Arab construction worker drove his bulldozer on a deadly rampage down a busy street in downtown Jerusalem, crushing pedestrians and cars and killing three people, Arab city workers were back on the job, prompting many a dubious glance from Israeli passersby. In the wake of the attack, Israelis are coming to the realization that they have a serious threat in their midst and not just on the other side of the much-maligned security fence.
“This is someone who works for the government [i.e., the Jerusalem Municipality]. It’s not someone out of nowhere, out of the [Palestinian] territories,” Jerusalem resident David Bitton, 24, told Israel Today. “We have hundreds of them working on the street.”
Bitton said it is a mistake to let Arab workers start working the next day like nothing happened. “You show them that it’s okay, and then they will do it again.”
“The Arabs are trying to show, we don’t need suicide bombers, we don’t need shootings, we don’t need RPGs,” he continued. “We’ll kill you with cars. This is a psychological game.”
Cars, incidentally, were considered the “safe” alternative to a public transportation system targeted by Palestinian suicide bombers, but after people were crushed in their own vehicles a new, deadly variety of terror attack was introduced to Israel.
Several civilians and police officers ran toward the bulldozer, firing at the driver until he was shot point blank by an off-duty soldier. The dramatic footage was captured on video and beamed around the world.
The driver of the bulldozer managed to cover about 500 yards (meters) on Jaffa Road, the main street in Jerusalem, before he was stopped. Along the way he crushed a car, killing a woman inside. She threw her infant child out of the window as the bulldozer bore down on the vehicle, saving its life.
The bulldozer came to a stop atop another car, which, when it was extricated hours later, revealed a mound of twisted metal and mangled tires with colorful children’s toys embedded in the wreckage. Several other vehicles, including two public buses, were also severely damaged in the onslaught.
The attack was the fifth this year by Arab residents of East Jerusalem, who have Israeli identity cards and enjoy freedom of movement, unlike Palestinians from the territories. In March, another East Jerusalem Arab shot and killed eight students at a yeshiva (Jewish seminary) in the city. Earlier in the year, two Jewish municipality workers were nearly lynched as they drove through downtown East Jerusalem, and a Jewish security guard was shot and wounded in the Old City after an Arab snatched his gun.
The attacks threaten to upset a delicate coexistence in Jerusalem, where two-thirds of residents are Jewish and one-third Arab. They do not interact much socially and live in separate neighborhoods, but many Arabs work daily in Jewish areas of Jerusalem and the people get along.
Ibrahim Ramzi, an Arab resident who works near the scene of the attack, wept after observing the destruction firsthand. He said an act like this can never be justified by the Koran.
“How can any man ever arrive at a thing like this?” Ramzi said. “I want to put this out of my memory.”
Many Jerusalem Arabs condemn such attacks and insist that acts of terrorism emanating from their communities are isolated incidents and not the signs of a hostile undercurrent. But suspicions among Jewish residents of the city are growing with every attack.
Jul 1, 2008
Investigator: Messianic Jews Provoked Attack
A representative of the Israeli Embassy in Ireland put the onus on Messianic Jews for a bomb attack that critically wounded Amiel Ortiz, a 15-year-old believer from the Jewish settlement of Ariel.
The chief investigator in the case said “that the Messianic Jews need to change their approach towards other communities to prevent extreme actions,” according to Nadav Cohen, counselor in the Dublin embassy, relating information he received from Israel’s Foreign Ministry.
Cohen was responding to a letter from Irish Christian Friends of Israel (ICFI) voicing concern over a lack of expedient prosecution in the Ortiz case which seems to “signal that Messianic Jews are ‘fair game’ in Israel and that acts of persecution and terror against them are somehow tolerable.” The letter also alleged that the lack of police action in crimes against Messianic Jews in the southern towns of Arad and Beersheba “appears to have emboldened some of the ultra-Orthodox Jews who do not respect Israel’s democratic tradition of equal rights under the law.”
“Inaction or compromise in the Ariel case could damage Israel’s well-deserved reputation as the only true democracy in the Middle East,” ICFI said. “This may also undermine the strong support for Israel by an increasing number of Christians around the world.”
A suspect has yet to be named in the attempted murder of the Ortiz family although the criminal investigation has been going on more than four months. Amiel was nearly killed when he opened a box assumed to be a holiday gift for Purim, and the bomb inside exploded. The attack is believed to be the work of ultra-Orthodox extremists.
“This has revealed to Israel how much the democratic system goes out the window when Jesus is mentioned here,” said Amiel’s father, David Ortiz.
In Israel, Messianic Jews are often labeled a “cult” and are all lumped into the category of “missionaries,” a byword here. The connotation means to bribe, convert, brainwash, or take the “Jewish soul” of a person. Ortiz said the term “missionary” must be redefined in Israeli society.
Meanwhile, Amiel Ortiz is still coalescing in an Israeli hospital, but is now well enough to go home a couple days a week. He is in unremitting pain, especially in his left hand.
Shards of shrapnel, from copper wires to nails and bolts, frequently push through the surface of his skin as part of the healing process. And against the odds, the teenager still wants to play basketball for his career.
The targeted explosion that nearly snuffed out the 15-year-old’s life has brought about at least one positive result: It has served, to an extent, to awaken and unify the Messianic body in Israel.
“This has blown the believers out of the closet,” David Ortiz, Amiel’s father, told Israel Today, with a touch of irony.
David invited Messianic pastors from around the country to seek God together, fast and pray about this new season of exposure for believing Jews in Israel. The gathering, in Ariel, brought 70 congregation leaders together—a vast number for a small community.
“They wounded a child who caught the heart of the whole world and, rather than killing us, they multiplied us,” Leah Ortiz, Amiel’s mother, said. “I believe we were literally blasted into a new era. We can never be the same as we were before.”
Leah believes that this attack is forcing believers to stand up for themselves and one another now rather than take a quiet backseat in society. She related how she herself apologized to the pastor of a Messianic congregation in Arad, which is under constant persecution, for failing to spread the word about their situation.
“The authorities did nothing, but believers also did nothing,” she noted.
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