One Year Later: What Did We Learn from Cast Lead?

Last year at this time, many of us (including myself) were singularly focused on events happening in Israel.  For a month, southern Israel, including Ashkelon, was bombarded by rockets and missiles from Gaza-based terrorists.  When the Israeli army entered Gaza to stop the rockets, it was only as a last resort.  For those of us in Baltimore, Cast Lead took on added meaning becauses our friends and family in Ashkelon, our sister city, were in the direct line of fire.  We frequently read Sigal Ariely's blog postings about living life in a state of fear.  Looking back a year later, what do we know now that we didn't know or think about then?

There has been a lot written lately on the security and political ramifications of Cast Lead on Israeli society.  Those are important conversations and the ramifications of that time are still felt today in Israel, and arguably around the world.  Still, there is another layer to think about: What did we learn from Cast Lead about Israeli society from an American Jewish perspective and how is that impacting our relationship today?

Heros Come from Everywhere
In the first moments of the war (in Israel, that's how it is commonly viewed), when schools shut down, otherwise ordinary teens performed heroic tasks.  One of the most vivid examples in Ashkelon came through AMEN (the teen volunteer organization).  Rather than going north to escape the missiles, many of the teens in Ashkelon stayed in their homes and during the days volunteered in bomb shelters to keep younger children occupied with fun activities and distracted from the constant sound of red alert sirens.  They didn't run from danger when they could have.  They saw a need in the community and responded.  Nobody had to ask them, they simply did it.  When I went to Ashkelon this summer, I went to one of the bomb shelters at the Teen Center.  There I saw the coloring activities, paintings, and other activities that turned the sterile concrete space into a warm and welcoming place.

Beyond the teens, professionals from JDC, JAFI, and many other organizations went into southern Israel.  They didn't stop their work and took on new responsibilities to work with municipalities, local populations, and recent immigrants to provide necessary support and relieve the psychological trauma being experienced.

And of course there are the soldiers, young adults themselves, who selflessly defended their country then and continue to do so today.

Collaborative Needs Assessments are Critical to Philanthropic Impact
Like many communities around North America, in Baltimore we quickly raised funds from out community's leadership to help meet the emergency needs at the moment.  What changed this time was how we allocated the funds.


Working closely with the municipal leadership of Ashkelon, we engaged in a needs assessment with JDC and JAFI and in a collaborative decision making model allocated funds to where Ashkelon saw them as most critical and JDC and JAFI were best able to meet those needs.  The engagement of Ashkelonian leadership in this process also ensured that we were addressing emergency capacity needs in the community, which will have a long term impact.


Since that time, our work with JDC and JAFI from federation level has continued to successfully include Ashkelon at the table.  We recognize that philanthropic priorities should align with community priorities in Israel, and through discussing those issues we can better utilize and fund the services that JDC and JAFI have to offer to strengthen Ashkelon.

We're Talking About Individuals
Most of the images that we saw in the news from Israel at this time last year were of buildings hit by rockets and soldiers defending their country, but those images didn't tell the entire story.  Day in and day out through our friends in Ashkelon who posted blogs and wrote e-mails to us, we understood better how terror was impacting individual lives.  There were stories of running for cover during a siren, holding scared children and loved ones, and just basic things like going to the grocery store for provisions.


Perhaps the most powerful storytellers were our shinshinim, Tal Bouchnik and Liron Menashe, who were spending the year in Baltimore bringing Ashkelon closer to our community.  When they left home they did not expect to be talking about their families running to bomb shelters or their friends fighting for Israel in Gaza.  They spoke from the heart and we could see in their eyes that even though that they were safe here in Baltimore how deeply traumatizing it was for them to know that their friends and family were in constant danger.


Life Goes On
In October, a leadership delegation from our Baltimore-Ashkelon Partnership went to Israel to meet with our sister city partners.  One of the dreams in Ashkelon is to build a golf course that will attract tourists from Israel and around the world.  When somebody asked, "Why do you want to build a golf course so close to Gaza?" the answer was quite profound, "We just don't think like that."


Simple words, but very telling.  Throughout Israel there is sadly an acceptance that these things happen, but there is an inspiration that these things cannot stop life or progress.  We invest in Israel, we travel to Israel, we connect to the people; we do this not because we worry that Israel won't have a future, but because we know that it will.  Israel is part of the future of the Jewish people and while security is a watchword, it cannot prevent life from moving forward.




A year later, we can say that our relationship has changed with Israel and it is stronger.  We used the crisis of Cast Lead as a teachable moment that connected people to Israel and we are continuing engage them in Jewish and Israel life today, and we continue to apply the lessons we learned to how we construct the future of our relationship with Israel, Ashkelon, and their people.