After the missiles explode, One Heart’s volunteers help residents pick up the pieces

Dressed in white, a group of teens fanned out Sunday in a Haifa neighborhood to help local residents cope with the initial hours following a third missile attack on the city in eight days.

Eyal Meidan, 18, carefully removed shards of glass from the window of the tiny kitchen in Rivka Aronbayuv’s home, as three of her five boys looked on in wonder and her little girl cried for attention.

The cramped apartment, home to two parents, six children, and an aunt, looks out onto a small square where an Iranian missile landed, causing massive damage to two residential buildings.

Three people were lightly hurt, including one who was relatively close to the impact site.

There are no bomb shelters in most of the old buildings in this rundown part of the city that is home to ultra-Orthodox Jews, immigrants from the former Soviet Union, and foreign workers.

On Sunday, residents did not receive the usual alert to seek protection. On Monday, the IDF announced that this was because the ballistic missile had not been properly detected.

“We don’t have a bomb shelter. We normally go out into the stairwell,” Aronbayuv said. “It was good we didn’t this time, because the shockwaves smashed all the glass in the stairwell window.”

She added, “After the blast, I couldn’t function for an hour.” Watching the volunteers, she said they were “champions.”

Meidan and his friends Ray Margolin and May Esher, both also 18, finished high school in the northern city the previous Friday.

“If we don’t volunteer to do this work, who else will?” said Meidan, who will soon be conscripted to the IDF. Esher, who is planning to do a pre-army service year, added, “It’s very satisfying. It’s always good to be on the giving side.” Margolin, planning to spend a year at a pre-army academy (mechina) close to the Israel-Lebanon border, said his command of Russian was helping, given the number of Russian speakers in the neighborhood.

The three are among over 8,000 Israelis age 16 and up being deployed to  the sites impacted by Iranian missiles by One Heart, a civilian response organization that mobilizes hundreds of thousands of volunteers in times of emergency and crisis.

Since the start of the war against Hamas in Gaza in October 2023, it has fielded 90,000 volunteers countrywide, according to the organization’s director, Tomer Dror.

Working in cooperation with the authorities, they managed situation rooms to assist evacuated families, worked with farmers whose foreign workers had returned home, and supported — and still support — the families of hostages.

They help the spouses and families of IDF personnel and reservists called up for military service, visit hospitals and rehabilitation facilities to see what the wounded need, and have established community youth centers to occupy young evacuees torn from their homes and friends and help them resist the temptations of alcohol and drugs.

On June 15, the organization was scheduled to receive a President’s Award. However, two days before that, the IDF launched its surprise attack on Iran and Tehran responded by raining ballistic missiles down on Israel. All ceremonies were postponed, and schools and most workplaces were closed.

“We have an army that’s responsible for the frontline, the Home Front Command that immediately saves lives, and One Heart for civilian resilience,” said Dror. “To help with the Iranian missile attacks, we need more volunteers and more money.”

The second line after the first responders

One Heart’s volunteers gather near the site of a missile or interceptor fall shortly after the local authority and the emergency services have arrived.

The Home Front color-codes the buildings in the immediate vicinity for safety, and the volunteers start knocking on doors in those they are allowed to enter without accompaniment.

They check on the residents and ask what they require.  They ask those moving out to list the basic items that they need, such as toiletries, and send the lists to One Heart’s Tel Aviv warehouse for speedy dispatch. They assist residents in packing their valuables, help them determine where they are going, and offer transportation, food, and assistance with children.

Volunteers carry out basic repairs in apartments, removing shattered glass from windows, covering the frames with plastic, and cleaning up. They have to wait until the state’s property compensation inspectors have vacated before undertaking further work, such as removing bent metal from balcony blinds.

The volunteers also arrive at central absorption points, where families are allocated hotel rooms. Others greet evacuees at hotels, supplying them with essentials, such as clothing, and caring for the children.

In Haifa on Sunday, where the property damage was considerably less than in central Israel on that day, One Heart volunteers manned a table in the affected neighborhood.

An ultra-Orthodox man wanted to know how to repair the damage that shockwaves had caused to the apartment he rented out to an Eritrean worker.

“The tenant went to work at 6 a.m. and just came back,” the man explained. “He can’t sleep there tonight.”

Yossef Maman, who sells religious books and objects, said the local authority had run out of sheeting and plasterboard and asked if they could help seal his store window, whose glass had blown out.

Swinging into action to attach an old bedspread were Haifa residents Yonatan Amoruv, 17, and Guy Dehary, 18, who had heard about One Heart’s volunteering opportunities that day via a WhatsApp group. Amoruv also volunteers with the Fire and Rescue Services.

Overseeing it all was Dar Raz, in charge of One Heart’s Haifa operations since the start of Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza. The murder of two friends on October 7, 2023, galvanized him into action.

“I couldn’t sleep,” he said.

Among the hundreds of mainly young people murdered by Hamas gunmen at the Nova festival near Kibbutz Re’im in southern Israel that day were Inbar Haiman, 27,  who was kidnapped and then murdered — her body is still in Gaza — and Eden Ben Rubi, slain as she hid in a roadside bomb shelter near the event.

In Haifa on Monday, a steady stream of people came to request help.

One had shrapnel in his roof. Another had returned to his car to find that the back window had been blown out. Rivka Aronbayuv waved from an upstairs window while a trio of 18-year-old volunteers were walking to another building.

Fielding phone calls and instructing the youngsters on what to do was Jerusalemite Shir Alsace, 21, a One Heart field coordinator who, over the past 10 days, had helped set up operational posts in seven cities, including Haifa.

Her “day job” with the charity is to support the rehabilitation of northern Israeli communities after months of attacks by the Lebanon-based terror organization Hezbollah that ended with a ceasefire in November.

“On the day we attacked Iran, I understood that One Heart would be involved on the civilian side, “said Shir, who completed her IDF service last year.

“Every day, I’m in a different area to understand what the needs are.”

“There’s relatively little damage in Haifa,” she went on, as she swept glass from a bedroom floor in the Aronbayuv home. “Usually, I don’t have time to do this. I’m too busy coordinating. There were 20 volunteers in Haifa today. In some places, we have 60 to 100, and reach hundreds of apartments.”

She continued, “The volunteers are local people — religious and secular Jews, and Druze — as well as outsiders who hear about the damage and want to be involved.”

She said many young people came, either independently or within the framework of pre-army academies and yeshiva programs.

“It’s so important for people to see what we are doing so they can help, by volunteering, telling others about us, donating money,” Alsace said. “We’re happy not to be sitting at home. I think everybody wants to feel they’re somehow involved during this historic moment in time.”