Inside Israel News

Week of March 31, 2025

In This Week’s Issue

Israel Association of Community Centres for Restores Post-October 7 Neighbourhoods
International Airlines Will Resume Regular Flights to Israel in Spring 2025
Jewish National Fund – USA Rebuilt War-Torn Israeli Frontiers
Carefully Preserved Old Esther Scroll Was a Family Heirloom and is Now on the Auction Block in Israel
Chosen People Ministries – Israel celebrates Purim

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Israel Association of Community Centres for Restores Post-October 7 Neighbourhoods

The IACC empowers communities in Arab, Bedouin, and Druze society. (Credit: IACC)

On October 7, 2023, Hamas operatives struck southern Israel near Gaza, slaying 1,200, kidnapping another 250, and instigating the war now known as Operation Iron Swords. Moreover, the day after the Hamas attack in the south, Hezbollah terrorists bombarded northern Israel from within their enclaves in southern Lebanon.

After nearly eighteen months of the conflict, it stands to reason that the infrastructure of Israel and the lives of her citizens have been disrupted. Numerous organizations in the private and public sectors have faithfully provided first aid, chronic medical care, housing, food, water, warm clothing, evacuation to areas of relative safety, and so on.

However, the conflict has also interfered with the normal routines of the many communities on the front lines and impeded the education, social, cultural, and sports programmes characteristic of vibrant and thriving societies.

As warfare has been a nearly ever-present reality for Israel since she became an independent nation almost eighty years ago, she has learnt from long experience how to facilitate community rebuilding via organizations such as the Israel Association of Community Centers (IACC). The IACC was founded in 1969, has 200 facilities and over 1,000 branches throughout Israel, and furnishes essential services in education, welfare, culture, and leisure. Since October 7, 2023, it raised nearly 30,000,000 USD to empower businesses, government agencies, and non-profit organizations in the development and implementation of grassroots education programmes in Arab, Bedouin, and Druze communities.

The IACC maintains that its commitment to fostering informal education will promote the development of employment opportunities and cultural events even in Israeli societies most severely impaired by the Swords of Iron War.

Pray that the IACC and others unite and restore the various communities touched by the war in Israel and that the residents of these societies become united in a saving knowledge of the Prince of Peace and restored to a right relationship with Him.

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International Airlines Will Resume Regular Flights to Israel in Spring 2025

Passengers at the Duty Free in the Ben Gurion International airport near Tel Aviv on January 26, 2024. (Nati Shohat/Flash90)

On October 7, 2023—a Sabbath and the last day of the Feast of Tabernacles—Hamas operatives swiftly and violently attacked concertgoers at the Nova Music Festival and the residents of kibbutzim and other settlements near Gaza in southern Israel. All told, 1,200 were slain and another 250 were remanded to Gazan tunnels.

Terror groups in Gaza, Iran, Lebanon, and Yemen deployed drones, missiles, and rockets in their subsequent salvoes. Consequently, air travel was deemed unsafe and many carriers suspended flights both into and out of Israel—and Israel’s national carrier El Al has virtually monopolized commercial aviation there and substantially raised airfares.

However, the provisional cease-fires between Israel and Hezbollah late last year and between Israel and Hamas this January have encouraged certain international carriers to resume flights to and from the Holy Land. Most of them—including Air Baltic, British Airways, Delta Air Lines, Neos, Ryanair, and United Airlines, and at least forty others—agreed to renew their services in April.

Passover will begin on the evening of April 12, and up to 2,000,000 visitors are expected to join their families to observe the Seder in Israel. In contrast, only 650,000 people came to celebrate Pesach last year. The Israel Airports Authority predicts that 80,000 people will reach Ben Gurion Airport on April 10 alone. Accordingly, Terminals 1 and 3 will be fully operational well in advance of the arrival of the tourists.

Pray for the safety and protection of the passengers and the wisdom and skill of the flight crew as air travel increases and families are reunited at Pesach in Israel. Pray that many would come to recognize Jesus Christ as the completion and fulfillment of the Passover.

Jewish National Fund – USA Rebuilt War-Torn Israeli Frontiers

VOLUNTEERS HELP rebuild a kibbutz in southern Israel. (photo credit: Jewish National Fund-USA)

All Israel has been adversely affected by nearly eighteen months of war following the terrorist attacks on the south and the north in early October 2023. However, the borderlands adjacent to Gaza and Lebanon were the hardest hit.

To this day, immigrants tend to eschew the Negev and the Galilee in favour of the centre. It is not merely because people consider the frontier areas unsafe; they also think there are more opportunities and advantages in central Israel. In contrast, the Jewish National Fund (JNF) maintains that the borderlands are rich in resources and require resettlement and restoration.

In collaboration with their American counterparts, JNF Israel has invested 40 million USD to erect fifteen emergency response facilities nationwide. They financed the development of over 2,000 lots for residential properties in 47 subdivisions. In the Galilee, they set up employment centres that cooperate with local industry, hospitals, universities, and hi-tech firms and help evacuees return to the workforce.

In conjunction with an American evangelical church, JNF Israel set up a full-service medical and emergency response centre in the Galilee region as well. They also launched a culinary school training its alumni to manage commercial and institutional kitchens, bakeries, and breweries as well as the farms generating the produce supplying these facilities.

Finally, their Israel Resilience Campaign raised 200 million USD via 43,000 donors and used these funds to construct sports complexes and agricultural schools and support over 5,000 volunteers brought in to harvest fruits and vegetables, restore war-damaged kibbutzim, and pack and ship thousands of care packages for evacuees and IDF troops.

Pray for the skill and wisdom of the decision-makers in organizations devoted to restoration, the safety and protection of their labourers, and the restoration of all people in the Holy Land to a right relationship with the Father through a saving knowledge of His Son Jesus Christ.

Carefully Preserved Old Esther Scroll Was a Family Heirloom and is Now on the Auction Block in Israel

Esther Scroll with seal of synagogue that owned it. (Photo credit: Winner's Auction House)

Since Biblical times, Jewish communities have been committed to education, literacy, and preserving sacred texts. One reason we can depend upon the accuracy of Old Testament manuscripts is that they were meticulously transcribed by successive generations of scribes.

This, of course, is also true for the Book of Esther—originally written on parchment scrolls—even though the name of God is not mentioned even once in the Hebrew version. Though Esther scrolls have been penned in different regional calligraphic styles, their text is identical in all cases.

During the Ottoman and British Mandate eras, there were thriving Mizrachi (Oriental) Jewish communities in Egypt, Syria, North Africa, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Yemen, and even Gaza until the late nineteenth century.

Recently, an anonymous donor offered an Esther scroll—a family heirloom—to Winner’s Auction House in Jerusalem where it was appraised at 15,000 USD. The donor’s grandfather, a Yemenite émigré, acquired it from an Arab purveyor of antiquities in Egypt.

Experts determined that based on its calligraphy style, it was originally written by an Iraqi scribe in the early- to mid-1800s. As religious Jews do not sell their sacred texts to Gentiles, this particular scroll might have been stolen.

The scroll bears three ink seals indicating that it was the property of Kehilat Kodesh ‘Aza (Holy Community of Gaza). It is also inscribed with a Star of David and “Temple Azouz” in English. The latter may be the family name of an important benefactor or patron of the congregation. Despite the inscriptions, however, it is unlikely this synagogue was situated anywhere in what are now designated the Gaza Strip and Khan Younis. Most likely, the assembly convened in Alexandria, Egypt, as that then-thriving Jewish community received Jews expelled from their Gazan homes.

Pray that the Lord would speak to those who read and hear this Esther scroll, and that they come to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ, the One Who fulfills all the prophecies of the Messiah written in the Old Testament.