Standing Together in the Face of Darkness
Yael Eckstein | May 15, 2025
On a quiet night near Israel’s northern border, trucks were loaded with food and medicine, 1,500 boxes in total. Within hours, they were moving across into Syria, carrying emergency supplies to Christian communities facing persecution, starvation, and medical collapse under the new radical regime.
The boxes were packed earlier that day by volunteers in Israel, ultra-Orthodox Jews, many of whom had never before imagined their hands preparing aid for Syrian Christians. But they didn’t ask questions. They saw the need, and they packed each box with the same urgency and care they would give their own. Not for headlines. Not for recognition. Simply because lives were at stake.
This was not a typical Fellowship project. We do not normally operate in Syria. Our mission has always focused on strengthening vulnerable Jewish communities in Israel and around the world. But this was a moment of exceptional need, on our very border, in the shadow of our own suffering, and it demanded a response.
When we learned of the atrocities unfolding just beyond our border, villages cut off from hospitals, children going hungry, entire families targeted simply for being Christian, we knew we had to act.
The Christian world has stood with us, with Israel, with extraordinary strength and love. Since October 7, when terror struck our own homes, we have felt the support of millions of Christians around the globe. This was a moment to return that support, not with statements, but with action.
We coordinated with the IDF. The Fellowship provided the aid. The army provided the security. I accompanied the trucks to the border. I watched as they were transferred for delivery across into Syria, carrying hope into a place that had none.
It wasn’t political. It wasn’t strategic. It was moral. It was human. It was sacred.
This is the legacy of my father, Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, who built the Fellowship on the belief that Jews and Christians must stand together, especially in the face of a darkness that confronts us both.
That day, I felt his legacy in motion. I felt it in every hand that packed a box, in every soldier who loaded one onto a truck, in every prayer whispered silently for the safety of those on the other side.
But not everyone received the aid with gratitude. In one village, extremists discovered a box with our Fellowship’s logo at the bottom. They shouted “Death to Israel” and set the box on fire, right where our name was placed, right where the word Fellowship was written. That’s where they struck the match.
I won’t forget that image. Not because it deters us, but because it reminds us. It reminds us how fragile this work is, and how necessary. It reminds us that hatred burns quickly, but the work of God takes patience, courage, and faith. It reminds us that when we reach out to do His will, even in the hardest places, we do so with full hearts, knowing that the risks are real, and so is the call.
We helped because we could. Because it was right. Because this is what God asks of us in a world that so often forgets Him.
With God’s help, in fellowship, together.
With blessings from the Holy Land,
