World Jewish Relief: It’s our duty to act on Syria
World Jewish Relief Chronicle - By Sandy Rashty, September 12, 2013
A Syrian child and refugee (Photo: MaximilianV)
A UK-based Jewish charity has launched an appeal to help tens of thousands of civilians affected by the civil war in Syria.
The fundraising drive by World Jewish Relief (WJR) makes the charity the latest in a growing number of Jewish organisations around the world seeking to assist the innocent victims of the war.
WJR will help Save the Children UK provide medical supplies, housing and food to around 70,000 Syrian children living in Za’atari refugee camp in Jordan. There are an estimated 130,000 Syrian refugees in Za’atari, 54 per cent of whom are under the age of 18.
...
Ronen Shoval, the chairman of Im Tirtzu, a Zionist movement based in Israel, said: “The civilised Western world has a moral duty to take action. A crying baby is a crying baby. It doesn’t matter if it’s Muslim, Christian or Jewish. People who say otherwise — there’s something missing in their heart.”
...
The WJR appeal follows an announcement last month by the Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), the New York-based Jewish humanitarian assistance organisation, that it was heading up a coalition of groups to finance welfare programmes for Syrian children.
The coalition, the Jewish Coalition for Disaster Relief, is giving WJR £10,000 to help fund its mission via one of its sub-groups, the Jewish Coalition for Syrian Refugees.
Israeli institutions and charities have also been heavily involved in the relief effort.
One Israeli NGO – which prefers not to be named for security reasons – has been quietly smuggling food, medicine and emergency workers across the border into Syria for the past 18 months.
The CEO of the charity, which has taken some 300,000 meals, five ambulances and 700 tons of aid into Syria via a secret route, said that when one injured Syrian man discovered that an Israeli had come to assist him, he exclaimed, through tears: “We knew the whole time those who would come to us would be Jews — what took so long?”
IsrAID, the largest international Israeli humanitarian assistance organisation, is also distributing aid and food to Syrians, at a refugee camp near the town of Mafraq in Jordan.
Meanwhile, Israeli hospitals near the Syrian border have been treating civilians – and even some rebel fighters – wounded in nearby battles.
Doctors in the Ziv Medical Centre in Safed, for example, have devoted extensive resources to accommodate the complicated and delicate injuries sustained by Syrians who managed to get to Israel.
The WJR is currently in talks with Israeli partners to extend support to other refugee camps in Jordan.
...
World Jewish Relief: It?s our duty to act on Syria | The Jewish Chronicle
========================================
Broadly speaking, it looks to me like the Jews of the world - and the Israelis - are kicking-in some considerable help for the Syrian People, based on a variety of online reports.
And this particular article dates back to September; I'm guessing that considerably more has been done since that time.
Nobody is nominating anyone for Sainthood, but this is a Good Work, on a fairly large scale, based on what we know so far.
Good on them!
