By Yotam Polize October 13, 2023

Last Saturday morning, like countless other Israelis, I sat glued to the news and watched unimaginable scenes unfolding. The scope of this humanitarian crisis is unlike anything we have seen in Israel for many decades. At the time of writing, over 1,000 Israelis have been killed, over 2,700 have been injured and thousands more have been evacuated from their homes. 

Already by Sunday it was clear that IsraAid, the international humanitarian aid organization that I lead, would for the first time launch a large-scale response in Israel. 

Never did I think we would have to look at pictures and maps of my homeland to assess disaster relief as our team has done countless times before.

For 22 years and in 62 different countries, IsraAid has been bringing support and expertise from Israel to the world’s most vulnerable communities. We arrive after disasters — from earthquakes to hurricanes, to mass displacement and conflicts — to help communities as they recover and build a more resilient future. We go wherever we’re needed, and we stay for as long as it takes.

I have led many humanitarian missions over my career. I have stood on the border of Afghanistan, facilitating the evacuation of vulnerable Afghans right after the fall of the Taliban; and on the beaches of Lesbos, Greece, working with our medical teams to save the lives of Syrian and Iraqi refugees. I have helped rescue survivors of the Gorkha earthquake in Nepal, and supported frontline workers fighting the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone. As an organization, we are currently responding to many conflicts and emergencies around the world: from our work in South Sudan since the country’s founding in 2011; to the ongoing war in Ukraine, where we launched our largest scale emergency operation to date; to our ongoing response to last month’s devastating earthquake in Morocco. 

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Photos courtesy of IsraAID