JERUSALEM (VINnews) — DISCLAIMER: VINnews does not concur with the opinions presented in the following article, which describes how a peace activist is continuing her work in the aftermath of the Hamas attack. Nevertheless it is important to realize that such activists exist and to see how they currently view the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
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For Yael Noy, October 7th marked not just the Hamas massacre in Israel but also the start of her own personal battle of whether to continue her work, which involves bringing people from Gaza, Judea and Samaria to receive medical treatment in Israel.
“I’m fighting to be good,” Noy said in a BBC interview. “I’m fighting to stay moral when both sides are in such terrible pain. I’m fighting to be the same person I was before.”
Yael heads a charity called Road to Recovery, a group of Israeli volunteers who drive sick Palestinians – mostly children – from checkpoints in Judea, Samaria and Gaza to hospital appointments in Israel, at least until October 7th.
With the advent of Hamas’s brutal assault on Israel, four of the volunteers were murdered, including Vivian Silver, a renowned peace activist; Adi Dagan, who Yael describes as “funny” and always ready to step in and ferry patients at short notice in his big car; Tammy Suchman, a much-loved grandmother; and Eli Or-Gad, who loved talking about poetry.
Four other volunteers lost close family members on 7 October.
Yael lives in northern Israel, but her parents are from kibbutz Alumim, one of the southern communities which was attacked by Hamas – and they cowered as the assault unfolded, hour after terrifying hour. Two of her nephews have been fighting in Gaza, in Israel’s military response.
Initially Yael says she was so shaken by the attacks that she could barely breathe.
“Something was broken in my heart and I said that I would never talk to people in Gaza again,” she tells me. But after a few days, she decided that she couldn’t allow the atrocities to change her.
She and most of the Road to Recovery volunteers have continued to drive Palestinians from the West Bank to hospitals in Israel for cancer treatment, organ transplants and kidney dialysis. As soon as she can, she says she’ll go and collect patients from Gaza again.
Yael refuses to dehumanise them, or equate them with Hamas, which is classed as a terrorist organisation in the UK and other countries.
“Like us they are victims of Hamas, so I think we should keep on helping them, because it’s not their fault,” she says. “We can’t refuse to help a child with cancer. Our neighbours need help, so we need to help them.”
Noy is concerned for the families she knows in Gaza, with winter approaching and so many bombed houses now uninhabitable.
The parent of a 6-year-old child, who’d had an organ transplant, texted one of the Road to Recovery volunteers saying simply: “We are okay. We are going to die here.”
Yael is also desperately concerned for two Road to Recovery volunteers, Oded Lifschitz and Chaim Peri, who are still being held hostage by Hamas.
Emotionally, she feels like she’s being torn apart. She has uncles and cousins who are adamantly opposed to what she’s doing and accuse her of helping Hamas. And it’s not just family members who disapprove.
“When I’m driving with Palestinians through checkpoints in the West Bank, soldiers have asked me how I can do what I’m doing,” she tells me. “Other people ask the same question.”
“It’s dangerous now to even talk about the suffering of the kids in Gaza – people look at me like I’m the enemy,” she says, through sobs. “But I’m not doing it for the Palestinians, I’m doing it because I want to be proud to be Israeli. I believe that whether you’re an Israeli or a Palestinian, a Jew or an Arab, people are people.”
Some Palestinian families have reached out to find out how she is. But it’s harder than ever now for those few people swimming against the tide by trying to bridge the divide between Israelis and Palestinians.
“Even people on the left say that we should flatten Gaza. Both sides have become more and more radicalised,” Yael says.
“I really don’t know what will happen in the future. But I know that both of us will still live here, so we must find a solution.”
Since 7 October, some Road to Recovery volunteers have dropped out of driving altogether or decided to focus on taking medicines to displaced Israelis instead, while the war lasts.
But other volunteers have stepped in, to make sure that sick Palestinians from the West Bank still get to appointments that are saving their lives.
Yael says the charity will need support from the outside world to keep going because donations from within Israel have virtually stopped.
But she is sure that, when it becomes possible, Road to Recovery will be collecting child patients from Gaza again – hoping that they will all have survived.
“It may be hard. But we can’t stop,” she says. “It’s my mission and I have to do it.”
Interesting. Totally not surprising. Whether it’s some sort of Stockholm Syndrome or some other mishagas is beyond me. But I think that it highlights that chessed without gevura is a tragedy. It’s always Jews who run to help the least deserving because kindness is a sign of being a Jew. Yet without gevura or limitation or direction you end up helping those who should not be helped. Sick children are a tragedy no matter who they are or who their parents are. But there are sick children everywhere and these Arab children had the terrible mazal to be born to people who are either monsters or who are controlled by monsters. If their parents or their leaders cared so much for their children they should have made better choices and not attacked another country. Hopefully next time (although I hope there won’t be a next time because I hope that the Gazans are relocated elsewhere and we’re done with the absolute worst neighbors in the world) they’ll make better choices. Tachlis, it’s a tragedy but helping these children out comes at the expense of not helping far more deserving children and also it allows the fostering of an extremely dangerous delusion: that we and Arabs can coexist. We cannot.
yes, this is how some israelis are, and how they choose to live their lives. but it also raises so many questions: how many of those patients were used by hamas to gather the detailed intelligence they used on oct 7? and after seeing the hospitals in gaza used as terrorist installations, has anyone asked whether it would have been better to treat gazans in gaza? clearly, these acts of humanity have failed terribly to bring peace, so is it not insane to keep expecting different results?
Sick misplaced mercy she will only end up burnt to crisp like those unfortunate Israelis who believed you can foster peace with those who butchered your neighbors
Someone please tell her that chesed starts at home first. If she can’t understand check her yichus.
The misplaced kindness of these leftists helped the Arabs to murder and rape hundreds of innocent Jewish civilians including children. The people they helped gave information to Hamas. They beat the hostages and spit on them. Even kindness has to be done with seichel. Kindness to our enemies children leads to murder of our children.There are so many sick Jewish children living in poverty in Israel. Why don’t these leftists help them? It isn’t a romantic cause? It’s too boring? It’s more interesting to help out murderers?
Too much idealism.But it shows the horrible ungratefulness of the palestinians,who went on to attack the exact ones who were helping them.more קטרוג on them.
Those who who show mercy to barbarians will be barbaric to the merciful.
Bleeding heart liberals,
Nebach misplaced sympathy
Kindness to the cruel will eventually turn the kind to cruel. Paraphrasing Chazal
Some people find these stories uplifting and inspiring. I think they’re sickening. The Palestinians have received billions and billions and billions of dollars in aid from all over the world. Let them build their own hospitals and train their own doctors so their terrorist relatives can’t come visit and report back where the security guards are, etc.
Please don’t post such things!!!
Ferrying her enemies to receive medical treatment in Israeli hospitals is not only a waste of time and pretty stupid, it’s a SHAME. Shame on her.
“DISCLAIMER: VINnews does not concur with the opinions…..
Which means all other articles without this disclaimer is the opinion of VIN, that’s important to know.
I don’t disapprove of her helping sick Gazans. My problem is that we would never see coverage of her work in “mainstream” media if it weren’t being presented with the negative (from their point of view) slant presenting Israelis as uncaring of these Palestinians. She’s been doing this for years. Has any MSM covered it before now, when they can add this “shtoch?”
Healing the sick is a good deed. Further, since Israelis and Palestinians will be neighbors for centuries to come, it is important to build relationships and friendships.
Victory can only come with peace.