Shortly after Hamas’s attack on October 7, Mickey Gitzin, NIF’s director in Israel, received a phone call. He was told that more than 150 families, evacuees from Israel’s southern towns, were in Eilat with no place to stay. 

Mickey did not hesitate. He immediately took money from NIF’s budget and paid for multiple family-size hotel rooms to accommodate those families who, quite simply, had nowhere to go. 

It became clear in the immediate aftermath of October 7 that the Israeli state was not able to provide even the most basic necessities for the displaced. The New Israel Fund— its staff and grantees—as well as the rest of Israeli civil society stepped in to fill that gap. 

Chaya Gilboa, who accepted the donation of hotel rooms on behalf of the evacuees, wrote on Facebook, “There are angels in this world. This morning, the New Israel Fund donated the largest sum we have received to date, which will help us accommodate hundreds of families…to [a] space of safety and sanity for a few days.”

We are proud to be able to support these basic needs and are extremely dismayed that the responsibility falls to civil society and philanthropy.