“I got into my car, put a gun on my lap, and drove down to the border.” On October 8 Eitan Kashtan knew he had to do something, to go and help. He wasn’t sure how yet, but he went down to find out. “I wasn’t frightened,” he says. Eitan was driven by a great love for his country and a desire to do whatever he could in this time of unparalleled crisis.
He was not ready though for what he saw. He didn’t realize the army were still engaged in combat with the terrorists in the south, and he saw many cars with dead bodies still inside.
The whole country lurched into action after the surprise attack on what should have been the happiest day in the Jewish calendar, the eighth day of the Feast of Tabernacles, Simchat Torah. The greatest call up of reserves in Israel’s history meant the greatest sudden need of a huge amount of army supplies that simply weren’t there. Eitan could now see how he could help. On the first day he was simply responding to requests as and when they came, in his own car. Some sandwiches here for these people, shoes here for those… then army equipment, water, food. “It was very dangerous at first,” Eitan recalls, until the IDF got control of the area.
Talking with Dr. Erez Soref, president of ONE FOR ISRAEL, they quickly came up with a plan. They needed proper headquarters through which they could receive the requests and evaluate them in terms of priority, then make orderly arrangements to find the best prices and the best way to get the supplies from A to B. Eitan soon started driving bigger vehicles as the need and volume of the supplies increased. Soon ONE FOR ISRAEL’s war relief effort became a well-oiled machine, a fully functioning center complete with storage facilities. And it was all desperately needed. It was all hands on deck.
Whether it was soldiers, evacuees, or the injured, people had all kinds of pressing needs, including simply the need to talk.
“That’s what we did for the first five months, all day long,” says Eitan. He would wake up at four or five in the morning, drive about 400 km every day distributing provisions where needed every day. Others started to help too.
When winter came we took tents for army units because they were sleeping outside, then storage containers as they were just living outside with nowhere to put the equipment. Eitan and the team just responded to requests as they came in. Drones to check tunnels for boobytraps and all kinds of reconnaissance work, clean underwear and wipes in lieu of showers. You name it.
“I would go in and out of army bases, and because I could bring hope, officers would ask me if I could spare 15-20 minutes to sit with soldiers who were struggling. The things they had seen had been too much, too heavy for some of them to bear, and I was often the only non military person people would see. So I also had that opportunity, that privilege to talk with different soldiers. I shared hope, the promises of God, and His comfort. When we’re serving people we have a living faith in us that’s active, we don’t leave it to one side.”
Eitan and his wife Orit would tell of the promises God has given Israel: “God loves this nation, He promised never to desert us and with be with us in tough times. He’ll be there for us. Our hope is in the promises of God which will always prevail. God will not let anyone destroy Israel and he will give us the victory. Of this I have no doubt.”
During those long hours driving, Eitan found songs were coming to him. He has written several songs about this war over the last year, and huge numbers of Israelis have found them a great source of comfort and hope.
Many of our new subscribers to our Hebrew YouTube channel have signed up directly as a result of Eitan’s songs.
Many soldiers found Eitan and Orit so comforting and helpful that they would stop by their house to spend time with them on their way up or down the country. Some even make the trip especially, even once they’d been released.
“We want to give the aid, but all about relationships,” explained Eitan, “With no conditions—help when it’s needed. We want to be here to be there for them and we’ll have ongoing contact even after the war.”
Today most of Orit’s time is still taken up with this operation, but Eitan estimates he spends roughly a quarter of him time distributing now, enabling him to get back to work again. Now he just goes when needed. These days it’s mostly up in the northern areas of Israel.
Suddenly, even in the middle of asking Eitan about his thoughts on the war over the last year, we get interrupted by air raid sirens. We all have to go to the bomb shelter in the Bible College campus of ONE FOR ISRAEL. A barrage of rockets came (from Hezbollah?) and the booms crashed overhead as they were intercepted by the Iron Dome. After a good number of explosions the whole team, Jews and Arabs together, waited the proscribed ten minutes and reemerged.
“We shouldn’t blame anyone for this war except Hamas and Hezbollah,” says Eitan, “They’re the bad guys, not us. In many conflicts there are two side, but in this case it’s just a matter of self defense. But we as a nation, we as believers cannot complain because we’re not faithful to the Lord. We have no right to complain that God didn’t protect us in the way we’d like him to. It’s not something new.”
Eitan once again emphasized the hope he has in God’s promises and His faithfulness, even in the face of our unfaithfulness.
“The best times in the history of Israel from a spiritual point of view came after big disasters,” he says. “For example, the people of Israel under Joshua were walking with the Lord until he died following that terrible time in Egypt. In the time of Nehemiah there was a great revival in Israel after the Babylonian exile, and also we see Israel regathered after the Holocaust. I can see a pattern. When you have this sort of disaster coming—I can’t say I know it, but I do have hope, it seems that God always puts our nation back on its feet. It’s not that I put my trust in the IDF or the government or myself, but I trust that God loves this nation and promised never to desert us, to be with us in tough times. He’ll be there for us.”
“We see His presence in this situation, even running to the bomb shelter just now with twenty people smiling—it’s not something that happens anywhere else.”
Here’s one of Eitan’s songs, written as a tribute to the mother of Urijah Bayer, a Messianic Jewish soldier who sacrificed his life fighting for Israel. His story touched the whole nation, and his family were a strong witness to God about the love of Jesus in the darkest of days.
