Orly Schwarz, her husband and her two children were in their Petah Tikva home on the morning of October 7, 2023, when thousands of Hamas terrorists invaded southern Israel.

Schwarz, 46, works in communications, marketing, and branding, runs a corporate events company, and is active on social media. In addition to her career, since the 2023 terror onslaught upended everyday life in Israel she has been running a complex logistics operation from her home, helping supply IDF soldiers on all fronts with whatever they need.

But despite her background in marketing and social media, Schwarz’s volunteer efforts, which have brought hundreds of others together to help, have remained under the radar.

“I’m a person who can’t just observe or be helpless. It’s in my DNA to act,” Schwarz told The Times of Israel. “In the beginning, I joined lots of online groups to learn what was needed. I saw soldiers who lacked equipment or food, and civilians who had to be evacuated, and I linked them with people who could help. At the start, it was only me.”

Schwarz’s operations center was one of more than 1,000 such civic initiatives mapped for a major report (Hebrew link) put together by the Social Welfare Ministry, the Israeli Volunteering Council, and the Hebrew University’s Institute for the Study of Civil Society and Philanthropy in Israel on volunteering during the war.

That report, released in December, stated that 78% of these initiatives were new, with individuals initiating 70%.

But the phenomenon re-emerged during Israel’s war with Iran on June 13, which saw the Islamic Republic fire enormous barrages of ballistic missiles into Israel’s crowded population centers in retaliation for Israel’s preemptive strikes on Iran’s nuclear and military targets.

Out of some 550 missiles Tehran fired at Israel, 36 fell in populated areas, killing 28 people, sending over 3,000 to the hospital, leaving more than 13,000 displaced and causing widespread damage.

A new survey of 99 organizations that activated volunteers during the Iran war reveals that 42,180 volunteers contributed to helping 213,884........

© The Times of Israel