By: Naomi Ammon

“Where is the bomb shelter?”

This is the heartbreaking question the children of the Sadot Negev region have been conditioned to ask wherever they go, as their survival and peace of mind depends on it. 

These children have grown up in an environment of constant danger due to Palestinian rocket attacks from nearby Gaza. This threat culminated with the devastating Hamas terror invasion of October 7, 2023, which inflicted countless stories of loss and tragedy.

Yet with the last living hostages now home, a tentative ceasefire has settled in, and for the first time in almost a decade there have been no rocket alerts for the past month. Sadot Negev is finally looking forward with hope and courage to building a better, brighter, future. 

One such rebuilding and recovery project is the new Sadot Negev Resilience Center, intended to serve the community’s physical and psychological needs. This resilience center began as a handful of rooms where 17 therapists treated 200 Israelis. Following the October 7 atrocities, the center needed to enlist 200 therapists to serve 3,000 evacuated Israelis from their region council who had been dispersed to ten new locations.

Today, most of these evacuees have returned home to Sadot Negev where 80 full time therapists now serve some 2000 residents still suffering trauma, offering them creative activities like group therapy, and art and cooking workshops. However, to be permitted to open, the resilience center needed two large bomb shelters to protect patients from the danger of renewed rocket attacks.

Bringing safety and security to Israeli communities by providing bomb shelters has been a special focus of the ICEJ. In recent decades, the Christian Embassy has funded 240 portable bomb shelters and renovated 174 existing shelters throughout Israel. Through this unique initiative, ICEJ supporters have directly impacted many communities–whether Jewish, Arab, Christian, or Druze.

A special dedication for these shelters in the Sadot Negev Regional Council included affixing a mezuzah to the shelters. ICEJ staff and donors were warmly welcomed with a light lunch and pleasant conversation with local officials.

“Our heart belongs to Israel. We love this nation,” said one of the Christian donors. “We see its need and that’s our motivation to help wherever we can…and bomb shelters are most necessary.” 

“On a physical level of course shelters are important, but on an emotional level they’re even more important,” shared Esther Marcos, director of therapeutic programming at the center. Because Sadot Negev is so close to Gaza, local residents have a mere 10 seconds to find safety, requiring more shelters than any other region in Israel. Therefore, before any patients can receive trauma care at the Resilience Center, they must first know it is a safe environment and that every precaution has been taken,

“Through your donations you are actually participating in the therapeutic process,” Esther explained.

Sadot Negev’s head of security, Rafi Babian, shared his own experience receiving therapeutic care, and his son’s journey to health, through the Resilience Center. As Rafi was responding to the crisis on October 7, he saw terrorists blocking the main road and quickly instructed the long convoy of cars behind him to follow him off-road through the surrounding fields. Those who followed him survived. But Rafi’s son, like many others, was traumatised by the things he witnessed that day and it left him unable to do everyday tasks by himself. Even taking a shower without a parent present became impossible. But as his son received therapy at the center every week, he slowly became more independent and confident. 

Esther has a clear and optimistic vision for this center’s future including a therapeutic sensory garden, an outdoor yurt for group therapy, and four additional rooms for other types of therapy.

“We thank you for the shelters while also hoping one day we won’t need them or perhaps we will be able to convert them into something beautiful,” Esther noted.

“The Jewish people are extraordinary,” responded ICEJ President Dr. Jürgen Bühler. “I don’t think there is a people around the world that shows such resilience. And this shelter is just an outward expression of the heart that is in you. You don’t just survive; you thrive in the midst of adversity and are becoming a nation that shines around the world.”

Please consider joining us in providing additional shelters and helping the Gaza border communities to rebuild and recover in other ways from the long war ignited by October 7. Give today to our Israel in Crisis fund.