The mayor of the northern Israeli town Nof Hagalil welcomes Jewish refugees fleeing Ukraine.
Ronen Plot, the mayor of Nof Hagalil arrived in Israel nearly 50 years ago from Moldova. After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Plot invited Ukrainian Jewish immigrants to his town, urging residents to pitch in.
„Nof Hagalil is built on immigration. We will absorb as many people as we can. If a big immigration wave arrives, we’d be happy to take part in the Israeli effort,” Plot wrote in his Facebook post.
Under Israel’s „law of return”, anyone with at least one Jewish parent or grandparent is entitled to citizenship.
Chaim Gershman, father of four arrived to Nof Hagalil with his family. Gershman said they only had an hour to pack, as Russian bombs fell on his community near Kyiv. He claims he chose Nof Hagalil because of the Mayor Plot’s welcoming posts.
„I saw a man inviting, saying come to our city, we’ll welcome you,” he said.
The mayor allocated 600 empty hotel rooms and 300 vacant apartments to house the arriving “exhausted” Ukrainians. Now Gershman’s family also took two adjoining rooms in the Plaza Hotel. Their children are already enrolled in school, while the parents are searching for a permanent home.
„They endured a lot of misery, they are hungry and tired and it’s awful.”
Authorities say as many as 100,000 „olim” and their families could arrive from both Ukraine and Russia, evoking an earlier wave of about a million people who immigrated from the collapsing former Soviet Union.
Source and full article: france24.com
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