A Battle Ground resident who recently returned from a trip to war-torn Israel to provide humanitarian support said the experience was eye opening.
Mary Mahoney, a chaplain for the Legacy Salmon Creek Medical Center, made the trip in January with a group of others to aid the people affected by the war.
While she is a Quaker and not Jewish, Mahoney said she has become very close to the Jewish community after becoming involved with the Florence Melton School of Adult Jewish Learning 20 years ago. The most recent trip to Israel marked her fifth visit and one that involved many hard sights to comprehend.
“The tragedy has touched everyone in all aspects of community. We think often times of Israel as just being Jewish. No, it’s many cultures and many religious beliefs, and it’s Christian, Muslim, all different nationalities, and everybody was affected by this,” Mahoney said.
Her first impression of the impacts the war has had on Israel occurred in the Tel Aviv airport. Mahoney said the airport was eerily vacant, and, once she got outside, many of the stores were closed due to workers and owners being called to serve in the military.
“In the hotel where most of us were staying, there were evacuees from the north … and people from the south,” Mahoney said, adding she witnessed a lot of solidarity from people with different faiths.
Mahoney’s trip was coordinated by the Florence Melton School of Adult Jewish Learning. She was one of 19 individuals from multiple countries to visit. The humanitarian trip toured the Gaza envelope in Israel where multiple communities were decimated by Hamas in the early terrorism campaign on Oct. 7.
“Our goal for this special travel program was to offer an intimate group of Melton learners from across the country and world the opportunity to better contextualize what happened on Oct. 7, [and] the impact it and the ensuing war and hostage crisis continue to have upon Israeli society,” Melton International Director Rabbi Morey Schwartz said. “After more than 100 days into this war, we wanted to inspire them by creating opportunities for them to witness first-hand the resilience of Israeli society and to empower local activism upon their return home on behalf of the Jewish people.”
During her trip, when the group was closest to the Gaza Strip, Mahoney said they heard differing stories of what happened, received war updates from journalists, and spoke with Arab people and Israeli soldiers.
“We heard a gamut from all perspectives,” she said.
Mahoney confirmed residents of all faiths were cooperating with each other, adding that since the start of the war, people are coming together in the country.
The group visited multiple kibbutz communities along the Gaza envelope, where people voluntarily live and work together. While visiting those communities, Mahoney saw sites of tragedy. One kibbutz that was heavily devastated had a printing press, which the people restored, Mahoney added.
“My takeaway is that, to be there to see what was really happening and to support the victims, the families, as I said, everyone was touched,” Mahoney said.
