While expressing solidarity with Ukraine and its president, Volodymyr Zelensky, sending aid and setting up a field hospital, Israel has sought not to anger Russian President Vladimir Putin by arming Ukraine. At the same time, the Israeli government and numerous NGOs have dispatched humanitarian delegations to Ukraine. One is Lev Echad (One Heart), a Jerusalem-based aid organization that has sent some 30 delegations to Ukraine comprising more than 300 volunteers from Israel and the US in the past year.
“Our Ukrainian colleagues know that as Israeli volunteers and experts from the only Western country that lives under continuous attack, we have brought experience dealing with life’s challenges during war.”
Lev Echad
“Our Ukrainian colleagues know that as Israeli volunteers and experts from the only Western country that lives under continuous attack, we have brought experience dealing with life’s challenges during war,” the NGO says. Co-founder and CEO Tomer Dror adds: “We are probably the Israeli organization with the biggest on-the-ground representation in Ukraine. We have been there since 2014, long before the war.”
In 2014, Ukraine’s former president Petro Poroshenko met with a Lev Echad delegation led by its chairman, Erez Eshel, seeking their help “to build an army.” Eshel pitched the idea of forming a Ukrainian leadership institute based on the Israeli model of Ein Prat: The Academy for Leadership, a pre-military leadership academy for high school graduates in Kfar Adumim. The Ukrainians agreed. In 2005, Dror – then an 18-year-old studying at Ein Prat – established Lev Echad with five friends to help the thousands of Israelis uprooted from their homes by the disengagement from Gaza.
“All our activities in Ukraine have been in conjunction with Ein Prat,” Dror says. “Four days after the Russian invasion on February 24, 2022, our first delegation traveled to Ukraine. We already had the infrastructure set up; while other organizations left because of the war, we were the only ones who stayed.”
Lev Echad's main goals to help Ukrainians
Dror says his organization has three main goals: to establish One Heart Ukraine; to provide humanitarian assistance at Ukraine’s borders to the many refugees; and to save as many Jews as possible. “Because of the connections we had already made, we managed to rescue many people,” he says.
Over the past year, Lev Echad has sent delegations of doctors and medicines, humanitarian aid, supplies, clothes and generators to schools for electricity, as well as professionals to counsel women and children suffering from trauma. Asked where the funding comes from, Dror says, “We rely on donations, mostly from Israelis and other good people around the world.” (To donate, go to bit.ly/Donateukr)
On Holocaust Remembrance Day, Lev Echad organized a joint memorial of Israelis and Ukrainians on Ukraine’s border. “During the ceremony, one of our Ukrainian volunteers, Vlad, told us that just as he grew up on the stories of how his grandfather saved Jews during the Holocaust, he’s looking forward to one day telling his grandchildren how Israelis helped the Ukrainians during the war,” Dror says.
Dror, married and the father of four, lives in Jerusalem and works as a strategic adviser. He has dedicated the past year to helping the Ukrainian people. Andriy Sadovyi, the mayor of Lviv, recently posted a video thanking Lev Echad for all it has done, including having sent more than 100 diesel generators to some 55,000 students at local schools that were damaged by Russian attacks. “On behalf of my citizens, thank you for your support,” Sadovyi says. “You made my city strong. Never give up!”
Dror recalls that when they first met, the mayor asked him what his motives were. “I said my first motivation is my country, my people and my nation,” he replied. “Second, every volunteer of mine who goes to Ukraine understands the circumstances of the war and goes back to Israel more prepared and stronger. And third because I see Israel as part of the Western world. The war now is between freedom and dictatorship, between the Western world and evil. We’re bringing hope, light and warmth. This is our mission.”