'We come and roll up our sleeves and do the work'
Jewish National Fund-USA National President Deb Lust Zaluda at JPost Miami Summit.
In an interview with The Jerusalem Post Diaspora correspondent Michael Starr, Jewish National Fund-USA national president Deb Lust Zaluda said at The Jerusalem Post Miami Summit last week that the organization has brought some 4,000 volunteers to Israel since the beginning of the war.
“We come and we roll up our sleeves and we do the work,” she said. “It’s not about talking to important people and meeting this one or that one. It’s going in and rebuilding and picking fruits and vegetables, pulling weeds, painting, and planting flowers, and making it so that the residents will have a beautiful place to go back to when it’s time to return,” she said.
Lust Zaluda added that the organization has missions planned throughout the coming year, which will bring hundreds of volunteers each month.
JNF-USA has invested in a number of projects since the war, and she pointed out that the organization has been active in the Gaza border communities for decades, long before October 7. After the war broke out, JNF-USA helped relocate 30,000 people from their homes in the Gaza border communities and is now working to rebuild those communities.
Among the projects it is developing in the area are a 30,000-square-foot community center in the town of Shlomit; a sports center in Sha’ar Hanegev, which will be named in memory of Ofir Libstein, head of the Sha’ar Hanegev Regional Council who was murdered on October 7; and a high school in the Arava.
In the North, JNF-USA is completing the construction of a medical center in Kiryat Shmona and will be building additional medical centers and emergency response centers in the area. This is in addition to the organization’s almost complete Galilee Culinary Institute that will cement the North as the culinary capital of the Middle East and beyond.
The Post editor-in-chief Zvika Klein presented a special award to JNF-USA at the conference, honoring the organization’s work under the leadership of CEO Russell F. Robinson to rebuild and develop the State of Israel.
Deborah Lust Zaluda accepted the award on behalf of the organization and Robinson.