An American woman who watched in horror as Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack unfolded felt compelled to take action — and has been saving lives now for nearly three years.
Adi Vaxman, founder and president of Operation Israel, told CBN News she started her organization in an effort to help protect Israeli servicemen and women.
“Our mission is to save lives of the sons and daughters in Israel that are fighting for Israel’s existence and indirectly for, I feel, our existence as the free world, and the Western world, and for American values and Judeo-Christian values,” she said. “So that’s the mission.”
Vaxman, who is Jewish, said she felt called to action by “divine intervention” and signs from God.
“I would say that, on Oct. 7, I always believed in God and my faith was always important to me,” she said. “But I would say that since Oct. 7, it had become not just a lot more important to me, but also a more central grounding force in in my identity because I’ve just been given sign after sign that this is what I’m supposed to do.”
The terror attack left Vaxman in shock, especially considering her personal history. She was a paramedic in Israel during the 1990s and had responded to many terror attacks. Yet what unfolded that day left her stunned as she grappled with unimaginable evil.
“I think it showed the true face of the enemy that we’re all dealing with as as a Judeo-Christian society — as a free society that values life,” she said. “And I think that’s something that every American, every Jew, every Christian, everybody that believes in that way of living needs to understand that we are all fighting as a society that is kind of a bigger, bigger mission.”
Vaxman recalled sitting at home on October 7 watching the horror unfold from afar in America. She recalled feeling as though she would die if she didn’t take action and respond.
“I had a close friend that was locked in her safe room with her kids stuffed inside closets for 26 hours, and we stayed awake and texting with her the whole time, trying to figure out where she was,” she said. “My brother… was rushed to the front lines. He’s a reservist. He’s still serving. He’s still fighting nearly three years later.”
Vaxman said she immediately knew she needed to take action, so she did just that and started sending protective gear to Israeli soldiers to help them amid the newfound battle.
“They didn’t have ceramic vests,” she said of the soldiers. “They didn’t have helmets. They were literally fighting with thousands of terrorists that have endless weapons and endless ammunition with no protection.”
Wanting to solve that problem, Vaxman called a friend who once worked for the Israeli purchasing delegation of the Ministry of Defense. She immediately received information on suppliers of ceramic vests approved by the Israeli Defense Forces and started reaching out.
“I bought everything they had in stock that night,” she said, noting she used personal and business credit cards. “And I had no idea what I was doing in terms of like, how was I going to pay [this] back? I didn’t know.”
The total sum that night was $162,000, yet Vaxman didn’t flinch. She was undeterred by the number and just dove right in, operating on pure survival instinct. Vaxman said she had no time to second guess herself.
“To me, it was do or die, really,” she said. “All I could think about was, ‘Do, do, do or you will die.’ That was my only the only thing in my head was pure survival instinct of, ‘If I don’t do something now I will just collapse into myself and die.’ I have never in my life — and I’ve I’ve had a rough life and I’ve had a lot of painful things happen to me — but I have never in my life felt so helpless and in the amount of pain that I was in that night.”
This was the roots of Operation Israel, an organization Vaxman founded to help soldiers on a more permanent basis. So far, she has raised over $12 million and has touched the lives of 127,000 soldiers, providing defensive gear, equipment, and technologies.
“We never, never ever touch anything offensive,” she said. “We do not provide weapons or anything related to offensive gear. Everything that we do is defensive with the goal of saving lives.”
Vaxman encouraged people to remember that Israel’s military isn’t paid and is all-volunteer — and people begin service at 18 years old, engaging an enemy that has “zero value [for] human life.”
“Everyone in Israel, every person in Israel serves in the army,” she said. “So the soldiers that are serving in the army are split into what’s called mandatory service. They get drafted when they’re 18, and … women serve for two years and men serve for three years minimum. And that’s the mandatory service.”
Vaxman continued, “These are all children. These children don’t deserve to come home in a coffin. They need to come home alive to their families, to their mothers.”
Find out more about Operation Israel here.
