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Among Ukraine’s Jews, a year of war has transformed the ordinary into the sacred
TRUSKAVETS, Ukraine (JTA) — Nearly 600 Jews stand shoulder-to-shoulder, eyes trained on the young man leading the service to close out Shabbat. The crowd sings a soulful havdalah tune that lifts up its final words: “hamavdil ben kodesh l’chol” — ”the One who divides between sacred and ordinary.”
It looks like a Shabbat gathering anywhere else in the world, but I’m in the western Ukrainian city of Truskavets, where — from every part of their conflict-scarred country — these Jewish community volunteers have come together for a four-day retreat, energized by the chance to learn from each other and take a deep breath.
I’m back in Ukraine for the first time since the crisis began to learn from these men and women making miracles happen. I came to document and share stories from this gathering. Remarkably, it’s the largest-ever in the former Soviet Union arranged by my organization, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, or JDC, which has worked to aid needy Jews and build Jewish life in the region for decades.
With its wine and sweet-smelling spices, havdalah eases the transition from the holy purity of Shabbat to the workaday mundanity of the week. Surrounded by hundreds of Ukrainian Jews, I felt uplifted, as I always do when I travel to this region and see its defiant, vibrant Jewish life.
The usual rules don’t apply. Here, the ordinary becomes sacred.
On this, my 14th trip to the former Soviet Union in 10 years, I’ve come to know it as a place where that switch is truly flipped. Rebuking a painful history, from the Holocaust to Soviet oppression, everyday actions become lifesaving and essential. That’s never been more true than this past year, as Jewish communities here worked overtime to meet the enormous humanitarian needs of this crisis.
Simple flashlights become beacons enabling home care workers to reach the bedridden elderly Jews they serve. Bus trips between cities are transformed into escape hatches for those fleeing rocket attacks. A box of nonperishables is manna from heaven for those faced with empty grocery shelves, and each call from a volunteer is a life raft for the loneliest seniors and most vulnerable at-risk families.
Over the last year, more than 3,000 volunteers engaged in projects affecting 36,000 people. This work is part of our expansive response to this crisis — supported by the Jewish Federations of North America, the Claims Conference, International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, individuals, families, corporations and foundations. It includes providing uninterrupted assistance to 43,000 Jews in Ukraine and the delivery of 800 tons of humanitarian aid. Among those we help are the elderly and families, internally displaced people, and the new poor who have lost their livelihoods in the devastation.
A song leader leads participants in havdalah at JDC’s volunteer Shabbaton in Truskavets, Ukraine, February 2023. (Arik Shraga)
Not blind to the challenges they face, Jews and Jewish communities here are resilient and resolute in the knowledge that there’s something more important at play. It’s a clarity of purpose that means, against all odds, they’ve grown even stronger.
“My fears were boiling me alive,” said Tatiana Chumachenko, a 34-year-old Odessa mother of two. She started volunteering this summer and now runs weekly cooking classes and art therapy sessions for elderly Jews. “So I made the decision to widen my world — to take on more responsibility, to take care of more people. And volunteering literally saved me.”
Thousands of Ukraine’s Jews just like Tatiana have chosen determination, not despair. They’ve driven through besieged cities delivering medicine and firewood, power generators and portable heaters. They know their Jewish values demand action and compassion, and so they’ve stepped up.
Daria Yefimenko, the head of our network of 25 volunteer centers across Ukraine, is that resolute determination personified. The air raid siren went off the other day as I was interviewing her — a shocking noise, made more frightening by its maddening vagueness: What’s happening? Where? Am I in danger, or is this just background noise?
I learned later that just a few hours before I arrived in Ukraine, a missile had struck Drohobych, only 10 kilometers from the Shabbaton.
Yefimenko seemed unshaken. She and her team — her “family of superhero volunteers” — live here, of course. They must cope with brutal shelling and unpredictable electricity cuts. They have daily fears for their loved ones, and rising anxiety about what the future holds. They help their neighbors even as they share their pain and struggles.
And they keep on going.
Alex Weisler joins the massive group havdalah at JDC’s volunteer Shabbaton in Truskavets, Ukraine, Feb. 18, 2023. (Arik Shraga)
There are so many stories in this part of the world — World War II stories, Soviet stories, stories of rebuilding and reimagining Jewish life after the Soviet Union fell. I’m curious about the one we’ll tell when this is all over.
Will we remember how Jews supported each other in the darkest days? We should.
Before the massive Shabbaton havdalah, I led a smaller version at the hotel down the road where we have housed hundreds of internally displaced people since the earliest days of the Ukraine crisis.
Six elderly Jews from the Zaporizhzhia region joined me for their first havdalah ever. Among the group was 76-year-old Alla Hodak, who fled from a place with significant devastation.
Alex Weisler leads a group of internally displaced Ukrainian Jewish community members in their first-ever havdalah ceremony, Feb. 18, 2023. (Arik Shraga)
Here, observing Jewish rituals in a third-floor alcove, she had begun to form a makeshift community—not quite home, but not alone either. “You made sure we were never abandoned to fate,” she told me.
In that moment of stark intimacy, our small group blessed the wine, smelled the cinnamon, and felt the warmth of the braided candle. It bound us together and reminded us that drawing a distinction between then and now can be holy, too.
As we take stock of a year of grief and grit, we must guarantee that the next one is a kinder one. We must recognize our own hands as sacred tools and each member of our global Jewish family as holier still.
There’s nothing ordinary about that. Each person and each day has become an opportunity to do good for those who need us most and build their future together. That’s the only way forward.
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Top PLO, Fatah Officials: Hamas Should Join Us, No Need to Disarm
Hamas police officers stand guard, amid a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, in Gaza City, Oct. 11, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Stringer
The Palestinian Authority (PA) appears eager to hijack the Board of Peace’s UN Security Council-approved administration of Gaza and unite with Hamas to control the Strip themselves, according to comments made by a top PLO official in a new interview documented by Palestinian Media Watch.
According to Egyptian reports, PLO Executive Committee Secretary Azzam Al-Ahmad has been in Cairo meeting with Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad:
Two informed Palestinian sources said Azzam Al-Ahmad, the secretary-general of the PLO Executive Committee, held talks in Cairo with faction leaders including Hamas and Islamic Jihad about the two movements joining the PLO.
[Manassa.news (Egypt), Feb. 22, 2026]
Officials from the governing PA and its parent political body the Palestine Liberation Organization have been making repeated overtures to Hamas to join the PLO.
In November 2025, Fatah Central Committee Secretary Jibril Rajoub called on Egyptian help to “bridge the gaps” between Fatah and Hamas so they can unite against Israel.
The previous month, PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’ Advisor Mahmoud Al-Habbash declared “our hands are extended, and our hearts are open to rapprochement with Hamas.”
The implicit hope behind the unity push is that move might satisfy international demands for Hamas to relinquish control of Gaza. Back in October, Al-Habbash said that Hamas needed to disarm, but clearly the PA position has since softened. As a sweetener for Hamas to agree to join the PLO, the PLO says it is now ready to appease the terror group by allowing it to keep its weapons and remain an armed force on the ground.
The PA and PLO are aware that to legitimize absorbing Hamas into the PLO, Hamas – the perpetrators of the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust – must also be laundered of the stigma of being defined as a terror organization.
During al-Ahmad’s visit, he was interviewed by an Egyptian newspaper, tacitly confirming his mission:
They [US President Donald Trump and the Board of Peace] do not want Hamas to play any role in the Gaza Strip, and we reject this completely, because Hamas is part of the Palestinian national activity. It is true that it has not yet joined the PLO, but we are in a constant national dialogue with them to complete what is required for their entry into the PLO. Therefore, all talk about disarming Hamas and it being a terror organization is unacceptable to us, because Hamas is not a terror organization. [emphasis added]
[Shorouk News (Egyptian paper), Feb. 23, 2026]
The immediate follow-up question in the interview was seen as so important by Al-Ahmad that he made it into a post for his Facebook page:
Shorouk News’ Mohammed Khayal: “You mean clearly that you in the PLO do not view Hamas as a terror organization?”
Azzam Al-Ahmad: “We have never viewed it as a terror organization, and we always oppose when a decision is made by any international institution or any government classifying them as a terror organization, because they are part of the Palestinian national fabric.”
[Azzam Al-Ahmed’s Facebook page, Feb. 23, 2026]
Lest anyone thought that Al-Ahmad had misspoken, his strong statement was soon backed by Rajoub:
“Fatah Central Committee [Secretary and] member Jibril Rajoub emphasized that [PLO Executive Committee member] Azzam Al-Ahmad did not err in defending the weapons of the Hamas Movement and stating that it is part of the Palestinian national fabric.”
[Shahed, independent Palestinian news website, Feb. 24, 2026]
Meanwhile, without referencing Al-Ahmad directly, Fatah Movement Central Committee member Abbas Zaki doubled down on the renewed push for unity with the Islamist terror groups.
“Fatah Movement Central Committee member Abbas Zaki emphasized that national dialogue among Palestinian factions, foremost among them Hamas and Islamic Jihad, constitutes a ‘necessary path and an urgent national need… The real enemy of this unity is the Israeli occupation, and those who stand behind it politically and militarily, foremost among them the US, which is working to rearrange the region in a way that will serve Israel’s sovereignty at the expense of the Arab and Islamic rights.’”
[Sanad News, independent Palestinian news agency, Feb. 26, 2026]
Statements like these are nothing new for PA or PLO officials, who have been making overtures to Hamas for years. Yet the timing and stridency of this particular effort is everything, as it seeks to directly undermine the Trump-brokered ceasefire agreement and Gaza reconstruction plan based on the establishment of a technocratic government.
A technocratic government, to be known as the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG), was chosen as the most effective way to begin to restore services to Gazans, and that makes sense. It provides the administrative structure to deliver essential services while at the same time depriving oxygen to any resumption of warfare against Israel from the territory – at least the parts of Gaza that Hamas no longer controls.
While the PA has decided to go along with the plan, a recent letter from PA Vice Chairman Hussein Al-Sheikh welcoming a PA liaison office with the NCAG stressed the PA’s expectation that this was all just a “transitional” prelude to PA control.
“These constitute practical transitional steps that contribute to alleviating the suffering of our people and providing administrative and security services, without creating administrative, legal, or security duality among our people in Gaza and the West Bank, and while reinforcing the principle of one system, one law, and one legitimate authority over arms.”
[WAFA, official PA news agency, English edition, Feb. 21, 2026]
In the PA’s mindset, whatever moves can hasten the end of this transition, the better, as the notion of suspending conflict with Israel in any Palestinian-populated area even temporarily is anathema to the PLO and Hamas alike.
As evidenced by Al-Ahmad’s latest remarks and others, the PA and PLO have no problem whatsoever with Hamas’ zeal for terrorism – but only appear to differ with the Islamist terror group on who gets to decide when and how it is used.
The author is a contributor to Palestinian Media Watch, where a version of this article first appeared.
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Israel Did Not Drag the US Into War
US President Donald Trump speaks with White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and Secretary of State Marco Rubio during military operations in Iran, at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, US. February 28, 2026. The White House/Social Media/Handout via REUTERS
“If anything, I might have forced Israel’s hand,” President Donald Trump exclaimed to a journalist on March 3. He was answering a question posed by ABC News Senior Political Correspondent Rachel Scott, who had just asked the Commander in Chief whether Israel had “pulled the United States into war.”
“Based on the way the negotiation [with Iran] was going, I think they were going to attack first,” Trump replied. “And I didn’t want that to happen.”
The President is completely right.
After a sound bite from Secretary of State Marco Rubio went viral, many on the isolationist right and the pro-Palestinian, “anti-war” left claimed that Israel, a country the size of New Jersey, had dragged the world’s most powerful military into a regional conflict.
“We knew there was going to be an Israeli action, we knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn’t preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties,” Rubio stated on March 2.
“So he’s flat out telling us that we’re in a war with Iran because Israel forced our hand,” responded popular conservative pundit Matt Walsh in a post on X.
But, as often occurs in cyberspace, Rubio’s comments were taken wildly out of context.
During the same press conference, Rubio was asked a similar question again: “Was the US forced to strike because of an impending Israeli action?” Rubio set the record straight unequivocally.
“No … No matter what, ultimately, this operation needed to happen … This had to happen no matter what.”
The Secretary of State is correct. His answer about Israel triggering the operation implied that it was only a matter of when, not if, the mission would be undertaken by the US.
American military power had been amassing in the Middle East for months, and some reports said that planning for the combined strikes began as far back as December. Other reports suggested that the operation was intended to begin a week earlier, but the conditions weren’t right.
Intelligence provided to Israel by the Central Intelligence Agency, combined with actionable intelligence gathered for years by Israel’s Mossad, suggested that February 28, at around 10 am Tehran time, was the optimal starting line for the mission. Why? Because former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was due to meet with nearly 50 of his closest advisors and other senior leaders, above ground. According to The Wall Street Journal, those were the circumstances that nailed down a start date for the ongoing conflict.
That’s why commentators across the aisle got Rubio’s statement so very wrong. In fact, Israel has shown in the past that it would comply willingly should its friends in Washington wish for IDF military action not to go forward.
On June 24, 2025, the Israeli Air Force cancelled planned strikes on Iran after Trump announced that he had told Netanyahu to bring the pilots home and that a ceasefire was in place. The strikes were planned in retaliation for a vicious attack on a Beer Sheva residential building that killed several civilians. Even then, Israel respected the wishes of the United States.
The ongoing conflict in Iran is a combined effort between what US Central Command (CENTCOM) Commander Brad Cooper called, “the two most powerful air forces in the world, the US and Israel,” comments later echoed by Secretary of War Pete Hegseth. It began with full coordination and will end the same way.
As Hegseth said, “only the United States of America military could lead this — only us. But when you add in the Israeli Defense Forces — a devastatingly capable force — the combination is sheer destruction for our radical Islamist Iranian adversaries.”
Aaron Goren is a research analyst and editor at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD).
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Shock and Resolve: Responsibility from Afar in Times of War
Emergency personnel work at the site of an Iranian strike, after Iran launched missile barrages following attacks by the US and Israel on Saturday, in Beit Shemesh, Israel, March 1, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Ammar Awad
When my flight to Tel Aviv was canceled in Warsaw, the war had not yet officially begun. Airlines, however, often sense what governments have not yet declared. Within hours, Israel’s airspace closed. Soon after that, the Iranian missile barrage began.
I was en route to join 22 prominent social media voices from the United States and Europe at the Tel Aviv Institute, where I serve as president. We had convened them for four days of intensive work combating antisemitism — a phenomenon that does not subside during war, but metastasizes. Instead, I found myself watching from afar as our participants sheltered in place.
This is not about my disrupted travel plans. It is about what courage looks like when missiles are falling and what responsibility looks like when you are not physically present to hear the sirens.
Among those social media advocates on the ground was Hen Mazzig. His voice has reached millions with moral clarity and unapologetic conviction. When the missiles began, he did not retreat into silence. He did what he has always done: he spoke.
We were able to evacuate a small group of participants by chartered boat after 26 hours at sea. Among them were Karoline Preisler, a non-Jewish German politician and influencer, and Bernice Cohen, a dermatologist whose platform reaches well beyond the Jewish and Israeli ecosystem. Others remain in Israel, including Boston chef Ruhama Shitrit, who, between sleepless nights and repeated dashes to bomb shelters, continues to imagine new ways to present Jewish and Israeli life as vibrant, humane, and dignified — even under fire.
These are not soldiers. They are civilians — influencers, professionals, parents — demonstrating moral steadiness under extraordinary pressure.
If anything is deeply embedded in Jewish consciousness, it is guilt. Even as I insist this is not about me, I would be dishonest not to admit that guilt arrives in waves. I am the kind of person who shows up. I have spent nights in bomb shelters before; I have volunteered in past crises. When a nation you love is under attack, distance can feel like dereliction.
No rational explanation fully quiets that voice.
My flight was canceled. I would have added strain. My team is capable. Strategically, I may be more useful abroad.
The arguments are sound. The emotions persist.
But war clarifies something uncomfortable: showing up is not synonymous with boarding a plane. In modern conflict, the battlefield is not confined to geography. It is informational, diplomatic, and psychological. While missiles fall on Israeli cities, narratives are created abroad. While Israeli families race to shelters, antisemitic incidents spike in Diaspora communities. While soldiers defend borders, others must defend legitimacy.
That work does not happen automatically. It requires voices willing to withstand backlash. It requires influencers who refuse to equivocate when moral clarity is demanded. It requires institutions that remain operational rather than reactive. It requires people positioned outside the blast radius who understand that proximity to danger is not the only measure of courage.
The harder truth is this: guilt often signals an identity conflict. “I am the one who goes.” But leadership sometimes demands a different posture: remaining where you are most effective, even when every instinct pulls you toward physical solidarity.
The participants of our Institute — Hen and those sheltering in place — embody one form of courage: presence under fire. Those of us abroad are called to embody another: disciplined advocacy, amplification without distortion, and solidarity without self-centeredness.
Shock is inevitable in moments like these. But awe should not be reserved for weaponry or even endurance alone. It should be reserved for the character revealed under pressure—in Israeli civilians who continue building and speaking between sirens; in Iranian civilians whose longing for dignity and safety mirrors our own; and in diaspora communities that refuse to retreat when hostility surges.
Shock may be unavoidable. Passivity is not. If we cannot all stand beneath the same sky, we can at least stand within the same resolve.
That is what responsibility from afar demands.
Dr. Ron Katz is President of the Tel Aviv Institute and leads international efforts to combat antisemitism. He received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley.