More than 450 attended the nonprofit Access Israel’s recent online webinar providing safety guidance for people with disabilities, the elderly, and their caregivers during the ongoing conflict with Iran and Hezbollah.

Participants joined from across the country, from central Tel Aviv to the Arab Israeli town of Tamra in the Galilee, which was the site of a tragic missile strike during the June war with Iran. During the session, a Home Front Command spokesperson detailed emergency protocols for what to do when sirens signal incoming missiles or rockets. Dozens of faces filled the screen while the chat swelled with questions.

“But what do we do when we can’t get to a shelter?” asked one participant, Erella, before answering her own question: “We pray that God doesn’t want us yet.”

Yuval Wagner, 61, a retired lieutenant colonel and co-founder of Access Israel, led the webinar alongside CEO Michal Rimon. Wagner, a quadriplegic who is paralyzed from the neck down, told participants he understood the frustration of being unable to reach a shelter.

“But we have to stay optimistic, take deep breaths, and we’ll get through this,” Wagner said.

In a follow-up conversation with The Times of Israel the next day, Wagner spoke with more urgency, expressing a sense of what he called a “deep betrayal” over the government’s failure to provide accessible shelters to people who cannot run to a shelter, or who reach shelters with stairs and no ramps, or whose bed or wheelchair cannot fit through the door.

“People tell me that at each siren, they feel like they’re playing a game of Russian roulette,” Wagner said.

‘Leave no one behind’

“There are 600,000 severely disabled people in Israel, and of those, about 40% — roughly 240,000 — are unable to reach shelters,” Wagner said. “This is unbelievable and unbearable. Our motto is that we ‘leave no one behind.’ We are doing our best to push the decision-makers to act.”

A spokesperson for the Welfare and Social Affairs Ministry told The Times of Israel that the ministry recently issued a call for proposals, inviting municipalities to apply for funding to convert public buildings, schools, and day centers into protected, safe overnight complexes for senior citizens and people with disabilities who do not have a protected space in their homes or find it difficult to reach a shelter in real time.

“Opening the night centers is a practical step designed to........

© The Times of Israel