3 years after Oct. 7: Israeli-American says battle of ‘good vs. evil’ is centered in Israel 

When Adi Vaxman called a friend Saturday morning, Oct. 7, 2023, she realized he had slept through the bloodiest, most devastating events of her lifetime.

“I’m giving you 10 minutes to catch up. Turn on your phone, find your family. The world burnt while you were asleep,” she said, from New Jersey. “Call me back … this cannot wait.”

Vaxman, a granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, was born and raised in Israel and moved to the United States in 1998. She is the founder and CEO of Sheba Consulting, based in New Jersey. On Oct. 8, 2023, she founded Operation Israel, a volunteer-based organization that supplies the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) with defensive equipment – a mere day after Hamas terrorists infiltrated the Israeli-Gaza border, murdered more than 1,200 people and captured 251 hostages.

“I’ve always been an activist, I would say since I was a child,” Vaxman told Heartlander News in an interview. “I think when I was around 12, my neighbor was murdered by Palestinian terrorists in the Intifada [Palestinian uprising from 1987-1993], and I found myself on the news. And I don’t know, I was just born that way, I guess.”

Even though Vaxman was stateside during the Black Saturday attacks, she watched the murders live on Telegram, where Hamas terrorists streamed their horrific acts of terror, saying “it was the worst evil you could imagine.”

“I was watching a terrorist cut open with a knife a pregnant woman’s belly, take the baby out, behead the baby, then rape the woman and kill her after,” she said. “I was watching them beheading babies, putting them in ovens, killing and abducting children. Raping, maiming, and we were watching all that.”

Vaxman said she wished Israel had released the videos to show the world the magnitude of the evil, but most of them disappeared to respect the victims and their families.

Aaron Evans, vice president of the D.C. Young Professionals chapter for Friends of Israeli Defense Forces, told Heartlander News:

“One of the biggest, I think, mistakes that was probably made is Americans not seeing more of the footage quicker on how bad it really was. I think a lot of that goes to the morality of the culture in Israel where they didn’t want to show a lot of the things that were dehumanizing to their citizens.”

Vaxman and her husband both had family in Israel, including their son, her brother and his daughter. They stayed vigilant through the night in New Jersey, waiting to make contact.

Eventually, they reached her husband’s daughter, who was serving in the IDF and stationed at Zikim – one of the bases that terrorists attacked.

“Abba, all of my friends are dead,” she told them.

She had switched shifts with a friend who planned to celebrate her birthday the following weekend.

Vaxman joins the defense, launches Operation Israel

“Every able body in Israel and some not so abled bodies” left their homes and went to fight and defend Israelis, Vaxman said, adding that she and her husband would have done the same if they were there. She said she felt “helpless” in the States and began making calls to help.

“I lost all faith in humanity, but in parallel to that, I feel like God saved me because while all of this was happening, I was given signs like breadcrumbs, loud and clear that I had to do something to initially save myself and then save whoever else I could save,” she said, calling the events over the next several hours “divine intervention.”

Early Saturday morning in New Jersey, an Israeli friend also in the state, whose son was in Israel, called Vaxman and told her the IDF soldiers were fighting without ceramic vests – essential defensive gear. Vaxman, who previously worked for a purchasing delegation of the Israeli Ministry of Defense in New York City, called a friend on a procurement team for American defense gear at 7 a.m., waking him up and telling him to catch up on the events overnight.

With his help, Vaxman found suppliers and purchased “their entire inventory of ceramic vests and plates” at a cost of $162,000.

“I wasn’t even thinking. I wasn’t anything. I was on autopilot. I was doing. I wasn’t thinking anything,” she said, adding that she doesn’t have that money but does have credit lines. “I’m a good first responder. I’ve always been good in emergency situations, and I just did without thinking.”

Over the next several weeks, Vaxman and a band of volunteers worked to supply IDF soldiers with defensive gear, forming her nonprofit Operation Israel.

“All we do is defense. We don’t touch anything offensive ever.”

The organization has raised more than $11.7 million and aided more than 128,000 soldiers with more than 181,000 items, according to the most recent numbers in September.

“While at some point we really thought this was going to be temporary, we realize now that the Western world is fighting a biblical magnitude good versus evil fight, and we need to fight on the right side of history,” she said. “And I think every single one of us is willing to put their lives on the line to achieve that.”

Other donated supplies include anti-drone netting for vehicles, which has saved lives. A commander of an IDF unit was badly injured after a suicide drone attacked his unit, killing two soldiers, but the netting saved the rest of the unit, he told Vaxman.

Operation Israel also provides Masimo EMMA portable capnographs, which measure carbon dioxide exhaled in each breath to help medics monitor the placement of a breathing tube, Vaxman explained. A critically wounded 19-year-old soldier was saved after the capnograph alarm warned the medic that the tube had dislodged.

Vaxman said her group avoids the “red tape” of a large government organization, allowing quick solutions and responses to terrorist organizations, which adapt quickly because they don’t follow humanitarian guidelines.

“Terrorist organizations don’t work like an army,” she said. “They don’t have procurement and they don’t need approvals, and they don’t do safety testing, and they don’t have three-year cycles, and so they innovate and they change and they shake things up all the time. And we need to be able to react fast enough to keep our soldiers alive.”

Evans, who joined Friends of IDF (FIDF) after Oct. 7, said the goal of terrorism is to beat any survivors into submission through fear and despair.

“Terrorism, as itself, is a tactic to take away the life that people actually have to live out of those who survive, as well out of fear,” he said. “I think the resolve of the families, the resolve of the nation to not allow these acts of evil and terror to take that away from them, regardless of how many terror acts they do, or how many bombs they shoot, or whatever missiles they fire, and I think the resolve of the Israeli people, is beyond amazing and there’s huge admiration for that.”

The ongoing war in Israel

Three years after the initial attacks, Vaxman said the war is “certainly not over,” citing continual terrorism in Judea and Samaria. She called it “Israel’s new security reality for all eternity,” saying she doesn’t see an end.

Aryeh Myers, a paramedic with Magen David Adom (MDA), Israel’s Emergency Medical Services (EMS) organization, told Heartlander News the Iranians have now joined the onslaught, which has prolonged the war and placed Israel in perpetual high alert.

“The fact is that we still remain under threat by the Iranians on daily basis,” he said. “They are sending threatening messages that they would like to destroy the state of Israel.”

Vaxman repeated that the battle is between “good and evil.”

“They worship death and destruction, and they have a plan to take over the world,” she said of Islamic terrorists. “And they’re admitting it freely. It’s not like they’re trying to hide it, and so this situation is not going to be over.”

Israel is defending the same values and freedoms Americans leisurely enjoy, Evans said, explaining that the fight is not merely an overseas issue.

“The attacks on Israel, it’s still an attack on who we are as Americans, the freedoms that we value,” he said. “Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East.”

Operation Israel is developing new defense cameras to test buildings for drone or booby traps, as well as launching programs to help IDF soldiers with the transition to civilian life, as many struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder, Vaxman said.

“The new real major area is PTSD treatment because that’s impacting nearly every family in some form or fashion, and it’s a massive need, and it’s a major priority of FIDF,” Evans said.

MDA is likewise addressing mental health crises, which Myers said “takes its toll,” and is continually updating its equipment for emergency responses.

“And I think what’s important to understand is living with this existential threat while it might cause harm, there’s no question, but it’s also built a huge amount of resilience amongst the Israeli people,” he said.

Ultimately, the defense is “God’s work,” Vaxman said.

“There’s a lot of work to be done. And it’s God’s work, and it’s saving people’s lives. Israel has its hand in the dam, its fingers in the dam of this extremist Islamic terrorism that is threatened to take over the whole world.”

(Image credit: Screenshot/Operation Israel)