As the Israel-Hamas War carries on, Texans are helping Israelis and Palestinians impacted by the conflict.
Associate executive director of Texas Baptist Men John-Travis Smith explained, “We are in the West Bank, and that’s where we have our secure compound.”
Smith is one of many Texans, who are mostly volunteers, with the disaster relief organization that has boots on the ground in Israel.
The group has served approximately 50,000 meals since to Israelis, Palestinians, and others impacted by war.
“Even though we do have mobile kitchen trailers, or we can go anywhere in the country, we’re taking the food that we’re cooking here, preparing here, and we’ll take that out to the places that need that. So, we’re secure here and taking that to places where security is not guaranteed. Places like the hospital in Ashkelon and other places like that,” explained Smith. “We help everyone. Just like in any other disaster that we serve in. We don’t ask any questions about who you are or what you believe or anything like that. We just want to help people and bring help, hope, and healing for those people. And just to remind people that there are actually Palestinian-Christians and there is just a wide range of people, different beliefs, different backgrounds.”
Volunteers donating their time, plan to be abroad for two-week rotations but the timeline for how long this work will continue is not known.
“We’re going to be straight through to the end. And we know that it’s going to be a while because there’s every indication that we have heard from every government official that has spoken American or Israeli, whatever it may be, or just feel like this is going to be a long deployment. And we’re really bracing for next week [and] the weeks to come when we feel like there’s going to be even more of a humanitarian crisis.”
KPRC 2′s Zach Lashway is the only Houston-area reporter to travel abroad to cover the Russia-Ukraine Conflict.
SEE ALSO: ZACH LASHWAY IN POLAND
He embedded with TBM in Eastern Europe days after the war broke out in 2022 and returned earlier this year in 2023 to document how life continues to change for Ukrainians.
Although these are two separate, unrelated wars, the humanitarian crisis continues to evolve. Similar to the need for that conflict, this conflict also requires aid and has compelled people to get involved.
TBM encourages people to donate money as it can be expensive and difficult to transport goods from the U.S. abroad to these areas impacted by war.
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