On the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah last year, the people of Israel awoke to a nightmare. At daybreak on that fateful October 7, red alert sirens sounded across much of the nation, sending millions of Israelis rushing to their bomb shelters as waves of rockets rained down from the skies. Soon it was clear this was no ordinary rocket attack.
Over recent decades, official visitors to Israel felt obliged to make a pilgrimage to Sderot, near Gaza, to view the rusting heaps of Hamas rockets on display behind the town’s police station. Even presidential candidate Barack Obama stood there in 2008, insisting he would never tolerate his daughters living under the constant rocket threat faced by Israelis in the western Negev.
First held in 2012, an annual beauty pageant open to elderly Jewish women in Israel who survived the Holocaust, is sponsored by the charity, Yad Ezer L’Haver, in cooperation with the ICEJ. The contest gives these women a moment to recapture the beauty of their youth, particularly since certain rites of passage were robbed from them as youngsters during World War II.
The Lahav Farm is transforming the lives of war trauma victims through farming and animal therapy, and the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem has been there from the start, helping to pioneer this unique place of refuge and recovery from the conflict.
Due to the constant rocket threat, scores of Israeli families have been evacuated, their homes left abandoned. Yet many residents have courageously remained, holding onto their homesteads and businesses, refusing to become refugees in their own country.
Your embassy in Jerusalem for over 40 years.
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