Volunteering in Israel at War

Nicole Dodek Reports: Helping Where the Need was Greatest

Nov 13, 2024

Today we are proud to offer an account from our new guest author, Nicole Dodek. Nicole spent a full year in Israel since the beginning of the war. This article is taken from the words she has offered while speaking publicly in the weeks since her return to Canada. Please read on to share her moving experience.

Israel Wounded

On October 7th last year, my husband Adam came home somewhat frantically, disrupting the quiet that comes with keeping the sabbath to report that there was a war in Israel. I quickly put on my TV and phone to find many messages from my friend Jacqui Vital, asking why I had not called her, and reporting that her daughter Adi was not answering her phone. Adi lived on Kibbutz Holit, a few hundred meters from the Gaza border.

A few days later, Adi was found brutally murdered. Her booby trapped body was under a bed, in the safe room, in their home.

I want to share some snapshots from what has been a surreal 12 months in Israel where I spent the year volunteering. I returned last week from a country at war and a broken people. How sad that I was more scared to come back to Canada as a result of all the antisemitism, than I was to stay in Israel under rocket and missile attacks.

I was born in South Africa. I grew up in a Zionist family, and at age 18 I immigrated to Israel, where I spent 10 years studying and working. After meeting my dream man, a Canadian, I followed him to Canada where we live.

When Oct 7 happened, it was obvious to anyone who knows me that I had to get to Israel as soon as possible. As things worked out, escorted my friend Jacqui Vital back to Israel from Ottawa to bury her daughter Adi.

By October 11 when I arrived in Israel, I had already managed to find out about requests for volunteers via many WhatsApp groups. I also started hearing and seeing reports about the unthinkable. Babies being decapitated, sexual abuse, bodies dismembered and more. Over time more and more reports, and more importantly, more and more evidence, of these atrocities continued to come to light.

Image: Author Nicole Dodek Volunteered for the past year in Israel ———————Source: Nicole Dodek

Groups of civilians were helping in any and all ways possible. We have all heard incredible stories of individuals from all sections of Israeli society, who immediately went into the line of fire to try to save others. Ya’akov from Moshav Shuva described to me walking through the carnage in the homes of Kfar Aza, where the terrorists had been. Ya’akov had driven back and forth trying to bring both dead and injured to his moshav, in fear that the terrorists would try to kidnap more Israelis, dead or injured. He showed me photos confirming his reports of burned bodies, and described how when he lifted the bodies they would fall apart in his hands. He described the smell of death that never leaves your nose.

Help Needed Everywhere

Throughout the country, civilian efforts to bring relief sprung up. Israelis were in shock, but they didn’t have the luxury of dealing with their own trauma. They acted to support each other.

During the 12 months in Israel, I spent most my time in 3 particular areas: at a Civilian Response Support Centre, in agriculture, and at a Hospital

My first position was coordinating a group of volunteers, providing meals at Sharei Tzedek Hospital in Jerusalem for hospital staff and for soldiers.

Image: Nicole Dodek with nurses at Hadassah Hospital Emergency ———————Source: Nicole Dodek

Many heroes rose to the occasion, like an old lady who arrived at the hospital with 13 chickens cooked and ready to serve. And Smadar and her group of Youth at Risk, who were adamant that they too wanted to help in some way

Image: Youth at Risk group volunteering with Nicole Dodek Source: Nicole Dodek

As needs changed, I moved the group to help the Lev Echad – One Heart -- Chamal, where I would spend the next couple of crazy months volunteering.

A Chamal is the acronym for war room and it refers to a command centre or situation room, in which people mobilize for war or crisis response. Out of the Lev Echad or “One Heart” Chamal, mental and physical support was provided to families of hostages, wives and families of soldiers serving, and most important in the early months was coordinating food and accommodation for the tens of thousands of refugees from the South to Jerusalem. I was thrilled when we managed to secure 150 daily meals from World Central Kitchen; the same organization that provided relief to Gazans was also providing relief to Israeli refugees from the south and the north.

The Heroes were the young members of civil society who single handedly ran these civilian command centres around the country. They picked up the slack where the state systems failed.

After several months, the government took over and attended to the needs of food and accommodation for the evacuees. The changing focus for the War Room (Chamal) became recruiting therapists and volunteers for agriculture.

We were all in a regular state of “fight or flight”, on edge, always waiting and never knowing where or when the next attack would come. Rocket fire from Hamas in Gaza and from Hezbollah in Lebanon had left farmers in both the south and the north without either local or foreign workers.

Most volunteers were recruited to help in the South, in communities that were evacuated following the invasion by Hamas from Gaza. A second front started on October 8th, this time coming against Israel from Hizballah in Lebanon. Tens of thousands of Israeli families were evacuated from the North. A constant barrage of rockets kept organized groups of volunteers away from that part of the country.

I had the honor of joining a small group of about 10 people who all wanted to go where we were needed most urgently, and where not much help was reaching. Every week for months, up until as recently as September, we travelled to communities in the North to help farmers. Burnt earth and ghost towns welcomed us.

The places we went had been evacuated, and there were no bomb shelters. One just lay on the ground when the sirens went off, and we were told to drive fast to the fields because where there were gaps in the trees, you could be seen from Lebanon, and would be a natural target for Hezbollah. The heroes here were most definitely the farmers and a group of locals, who stayed behind to basically guard over their moshav or kibbutz.

My most difficult but amazing volunteer job was milking cows (not manually!) A girlfriend, two Thai workers, and I had to milk 150 cows over an 8 hour shift. It was such hard work and we were completely covered in cow filth. We laughed and reveled in how pathetic the sight was. Seeing and feeding 3 new born calves made it worthwhile.

Image: Nicole Dodek feeding a young cow Source: Nicole Dodek

It was very meaningful to me that while picking fruit in the orchards on Kibbutz Menara I met Chaim. The entire kibbutz had been evacuated, as it is right on the border with Lebanon. Chaim had come back to Menara to help pick berries and save what could be saved in the orchards. Seventy percent of all the homes on Menara were destroyed by Hezbollah rockets and anti-tank fire. We could see the black earth and destruction all around us.

Mourning the Dead, Remembering Captives, Comforting Survivors

While picking fruit up North in July, our group attended the days of mourning for the Druze community at Majdal Shams where Hezbollah rockets killed 12 children who were playing soccer on a Saturday afternoon. Here I took it upon myself to bring condolences on behalf of the Ottawa community.

Likewise when I attended the shiva for Hersh Goldberg Polin in Jerusalem, I brought condolences from our community.

I spent as much time as possible doing shifts at the Hostage tent in Jerusalem, which was erected near the Prime Minister’s House. It was a place where hostage families could count on a hot meal and emotional support 24/7. In the first few months after October 7th, family members sat in the tent and slept there. These family members often spoke, and communal prayers were held, bringing together people from all walks of life. Sadly, when we fast forward a few months, the feeling was that the hostages were being used by politicians on both sides to score political points, and demonstrations were exacerbating the divisions within Israeli society.

The discouragement I felt about the politicization of the hostages was, at least in part, lessened by attending events arranged by a group called the Rivon Hashvi’i. Their goal it is to bring Israelis from left and right, secular and religious together, to discuss their vision for a future state, and, at the same time, to do good together. For example, we went as a group to clean and paint homes, and fix gardens of homes, that had been destroyed by Hamas terrorists on October 7th in Ofakim, less than 30 km from Gaza. In Ofakim, I met people like Mazel and Shuki who miraculously survived by hiding, while just across the street, their neighbours were being held hostage.

One Israel at Hadassah Hospital

In contrast to the divide in society felt over the hostages and a ceasefire, there was no divide in Hospital Rehabilitation wards that I visited. The terrorists had not made distinctions before shooting, and likewise, in the rehab units no one cared to know what anyone’s political or religious affiliations were.

Please imagine entire hospital floors filled with soldiers and civilians missing often multiple limbs.

In my last volunteer position at Hadassah Hospital on Mount Scopus in Jerusalem, I worked in the ER where 50 percent of the staff are Arab and about 80 percent of patients are Arab, some Israeli, but most Jerusalem Palestinians. Everyone, Arab or Jew, receives the same medical treatment. No one inquires into one’s religion or politics. In the ER it was business as usual; or as usual as anything can be under the circumstances. Yet everyday in the media, I was hearing of Israel being an “apartheid state” over and over, from people who have never set foot in this tiny country, let alone in an Israeli hospital.

Nicole Dodek with coworker while at Hadassah Hospital Source: Nicole Dodek

The feeling in Israel is sad and heavy, as it is here for the Jewish community.

Israel is a small country and every Israeli, and most Jewish people around the world, have friends and family who have lost loved ones to the brutality of Hamas terrorists on and since October 7th. We are a close Jewish people and one does not have to be related to one of the victims to feel that they were and are our family. We still have over 100 hostages in Gaza, including women and children. WE MUST BRING THEM HOME!

As I have tried to highlight some of the heroes that I met in Israel, I want to express my appreciation and respect to those in the Jewish community, and others who have shown great support for our community, and are fighting a different war against rising antisemitism. I can say for sure the most upsetting thing I experienced in Israel, and I saw too much, was the international media bias, so quick to broadcast many unchecked facts and stories that proved untrue. As upsetting, was the silence of the world, and our country Canada, in the face of the atrocities committed.

Not least of all I would like to say how much it means when personal non-Jewish friends; and by friends I include members of parliament and government; who have stepped up to support Israel and our Jewish community.

Earlier I mentioned Ya’akov from Moshav Shuva who took it upon himself to drive back and forth trying to save victims from the kibbutzim that were attacked. Last week I joined volunteers pruning his vineyards. Ya’akov says he wants to grow one new vine for each victim. He explains how vines grow like a community, each dependent on the ones around it to grow and prosper. We will plant new vines and we will dance again!

THANK YOU

Canadian Zionist Forum is grateful to Nicole for permitting us to publish these inspiring words. Please share this article widely.

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