This month, The Fellowship approved a grant for the distribution of food boxes to three Christian villages in southern Lebanon. These are communities that have chosen to stay despite threats from the Hezbollah terror group. As the IDF conducts counterterror operations and daily life for many comes to a near halt, these sometimes-isolated Christian communities need help securing food and other essentials. The first of this aid went out this week as our President and Global CEO Yael Eckstein saw the food truck off at the Lebanese border.
She says, “Right over Israel’s border, in Syria, in Lebanon – it’s dangerous to go in there. The reason why Christians are in danger is the same reason why it’s dangerous for me as an Israeli, as a Jew, to go in. They’re persecuting and looking to harm us both. And so, the only way that we are able to get food boxes into countries that Israel doesn’t even have full agreements with, like Lebanon, like Syria, is with cooperation and coordination with the IDF. This is something we are doing together to make sure that Christians have the food and water they need even if it means putting ourselves at risk.”
The IDF truck carried 2,200 food boxes bound for one of the three villages across the border. Troops will make the delivery on The Fellowship’s behalf. This is truly a historic effort, and just an hour before Yael and staff arrived in northern Israel, it still wasn’t clear whether the delivery would happen.
Yael said, “We’re doing this because we are the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews. And since October 7, Christians around the world have stood with Israel and the Jewish people, and The Fellowship has been established for this reason right now –when Christians need our help, we are there for them as well.”
“He says: ‘It is too small a thing for you to be my servant to restore the tribes of Jacob and bring back those of Israel I have kept. I will also make you a light for the Gentiles, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth” (Isaiah 49:6).