German-language tour visits projects, shows solidarity in Israel
By Karin Lorenz

Tears and laughter. Purim parties and rocket alarms. In March, a group of nearly 30 travelers from ICEJ branches in Germany, Austria, the Netherlands and Switzerland immersed themselves in everyday life in Israel for nine days. They experienced many encounters that touched and healed hearts. Here is a look into their travel diary.

Tears on the plane
We boarded El Al flight LY358 from Frankfurt to Tel Aviv. Martine, an elderly French Jew, is also on board. When she hears about the ICEJ solidarity group, she can hardly believe it. Christians traveling to Israel to show their support? At this time?

We show the skeptical senior citizen photos of past pro-Israel vigils in Germany. As she looks at pictures from Stuttgart – some 2,000 Christians with Israeli flags praying publicly for the Jewish state – she begins to cry. It is as if a layer of ice which had held her heart captive was broken.

“We feel so alone,” the elderly Jewish woman uttered in apology for her emotions. “I didn’t know that there are Christians who take to the streets for us, for Jews!”

Martine has a German birth name. But she never wanted to have anything to do with Germans.

“My father was murdered in the Holocaust,” explained the Frenchwoman. “Thank you, thank you, thank you for everything you do for us,” she says to her new ICEJ friends.

Escape from France
The senior citizen then revealed her current worries. “France is lost,” the French woman assessed. “Islamic hatred no longer allows Jews to live, and our government is doing nothing about it.”

Her four adult children have already emigrated, three of them to Israel. She herself did not actually want to leave France.

“I’m too old to start again. [But] all the Jews I know are going to leave France!”, she timidly shared, adding that she will now take the plunge and make Aliyah next year.

Haifa Home, beach and Torah
The first day of touring started with a visit to the Haifa Home for Holocaust survivors, then sunbathing on the beach and a visit to an Orthodox synagogue in the evening. Rabbi Ben Zion had invited us to read the Book of Esther. Cake and drinks were on the tables. We would be celebrating the start of the biblical festival of Purim, the remembrance of the victory over Haman, who tried to destroy the Jewish people. The rabbi’s children stormed out of the synagogue in colorful costumes. The rabbi also dressed up, wearing a purple clown wig.

Square of the hostages
Next came a solidarity visit to the “Hostage Square” in Tel Aviv, where friends and relatives gather to plead for the Israelis kidnapped into Gaza. We see a toddler-sized Batman sweater which commemorates the two little boys of the Bibas family murdered by Hamas, Ariel (4) and baby Kfir, and their mother Shiri, who was also murdered. The replica of a terror tunnel shows how the remaining hostages have had to live for almost a year and a half now. It was very emotional for us.

Comfort for Yarden Bibas
We also met Dana, the sister of Shiri Bibas, to give her a book of consolation that was created from messages of condolence sent to us by friends of Israel for Yarden Bibas, Shiri’s surviving husband and father of the murdered children. He was the only one of the family to be released alive from the Gaza Strip after 484 days. Dana accepted the book on Yarden’s behalf and also received a copy herself. The terrorists murdered her sister, her nephews and her parents.

Rescued by a prostitute
“A hooker smuggled my father-in-law across the border into Switzerland,” said Jana Marcus-Natanov as she led us on a tour of the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial. She recounted how a whole group of prostitutes had saved Jews during the Nazi era. Remembering is one of the most important tasks of the Yad Vashem memorial – not only the memory of the six million murdered Jews, but also of the courageous rescuers. They are considered “Righteous among the Nations”. The prostitutes also deserve this honorary title, although none of these women have ever showed up at Yad Vashem to receive the award.

“We don’t know their names. But we remember them in our family,” Jana assured us with great gratitude.

Beer mug with flag
As we visited the Mahane Yehuda open market in Jerusalem, someone with a full beer mug grabbed a German-Israeli flag from our tour group and danced with it through the street. Purim in Jerusalem! The flag passed through many hands. The Israelis were thrilled by the foreign visitors. Cell phones were pulled out, souvenir photos were snapped. The Holy City pulsated with joie de vivre, basses were booming everywhere, people in colourful costumes crowded the streets.

“Whether Haman, Hitler or Hamas – our enemies are disappearing. We’re staying!”, the revellers rejoiced.

God’s presence
It should be a place of despair – from a human perspective. But on our tour of the ALEH daycare center for children with disabilities in Bnei Brak, we encountered genuine joy. Some 300 children are treated here, many with severe physical and mental disabilities. About 20 percent of these children were once completely healthy until one day a swimming accident, illness or other misfortune befell the family and destroyed their perfect world.

We marvelled at the happiness on the faces of many of the children, and in the faces of their caregivers. A deep love emanates from these people for these special-needs children. You do not have to be particularly sensitive to feel God’s presence in this place. The German branch of the ICEJ was recently able to finance an urgently needed ambulance so ALEH can safely transport their children to the hospital and other necessary places.

The wounds of Be’eri
Next, Yarden and Niv guided us through the hard-hit community of Kibbutz Be’eri. They grew up here. In the once idyllic little village, Hamas terrorists from the Gaza Strip raged unhindered on October 7 two years ago – even though the residents of Be’eri were known as peace activists and sought to befriend their Arab neighbours in the Gaza Strip. The terrorists spared no resident who fell into their hands. Even infants were brutally massacred.

We saw the remains of the destroyed houses. Yarden and Niv assured us that Be’eri will become a place of life again, where children’s laughter can be heard again. One of the most important reconstruction projects is a rehabilitation and trauma center. The German branch of the ICEJ is funding this important project.

Harvest time
Some fruit or vegetable is always ripe for picking in Israel. On this day, it was time to harvest peppers. We spent half a day in a greenhouse, picking crates of red peppers together with local volunteers.

Herbs and bunkers
This is what Israel smells like! We found local herbs of all kinds growing on the premises of natural cosmetics manufacturer ARUGOT as we were hosted in the religious moshav of Shuva. Creams and cosmetics without chemical additives are produced here. The small company was founded by the Lachman family. These Torah-believing Jews live in the immediate vicinity of the Gaza Strip. On October 7, the pious little town miraculously escaped the Hamas terror attack.

Two small bomb shelters, financed by ICEJ donors, now enable production to continue despite the war and the constant rocket fire.

Rocket fire
The last night of our tour ended abruptly. At 03:59 AM, there was a rocket alarm. In Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and many other places, people in pyjamas rushed to the bomb shelters. In the hotel shelter, our tour leader Stephan Lehnert opened the Bible. We prayed Psalm 91 for Israel. Our Austrian tour participant, Hildegard Müller, sang a song of praise. We sang together and felt a deep sense of peace. This night, it was the Houthis from Yemen who were once again firing missiles at Israel.

The next missile alert came at midday, while we were waiting at the airport for our return flight. Tel Aviv was being targeted again. But the airport was outside the danger zone, so the sirens were silent and everyday life went on. All the passengers did not notice the attack on Israel that has just taken place. This time, several rockets came from the Gaza Strip. If you paid attention, you could hear detonations in the distance as Israel’s Iron Dome air defense system knocked the rockets out of the sky. The highest alert level for Israel’s air defenses was in place again for days, and the ceasefire in the Gaza Strip had just ended.

“It’s very different here to what you read in the media,” one tour participant said to the agreement of all.

By the time of the final briefing, it had become clear that no one in the tour group regretted the visit to Israel even during wartime. In fact, they knew many hearts had been touched – including their own.