How to help Gaza’s children? NC Jews, Palestinians will host fundraising dinner.
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- Med Deli will donate 100% of dine-in and takeout sales Apr. 28, 11 a.m.–9 p.m.
- Gaza Children’s Village serves 18,800 children at Academies of Hope across Gaza.
- Gaza Children’s Village launched in 2025 to provide relief, education and reconciliation.
Jews, Palestinians, Americans and Israelis will gather Tuesday in Chapel Hill to share a meal and support thousands of children in Gaza.
Mediterranean Deli owner Jamil Kadoura is partnering with Durham’s Beth El Synagogue to host the daylong fundraiser, with 100% of the proceeds from his Franklin Street restaurant’s sales benefitting Gaza Children’s Village.
The Durham-based nonprofit began feeding, educating, and healing children’s bodies and minds amid war in Gaza last year, with support from the SmartAID and IsraAID non-governmental organizations, along with many Israelis, founder David Hassan said.
Kadoura, who grew up a Palestinian refugee following Israel’s Six-Day War, is passionate about the cause, and Beth El Synagogue “has been amazing, putting their hearts out there,” said Hassan, a Palestinian-American and Duke University neurosurgeon.
The U.N. agency working with Palestine refugees in the region reports that over 72,000 Palestinians and nearly 2,000 Israelis have been killed since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. About 2 million Palestinians are refugees — roughly half of them children.
They live in tents, with each day bringing a risk of injury and death from air strikes, gunfire, famine and disease.
Tuesday’s event will support humanitarian relief for the children and help build bridges of healing and reconciliation, Hasan said.
“Everybody on both sides is experiencing pain,” he said. “Hopefully, this opportunity will allow people to come, and all we ask them is, just show up. Don’t talk about politics. Come have a meal. Say hi if you see someone; give them a hug if you feel like it.”
Medical mission to Gaza brings perspective
Gaza Children’s Village grew out of two weeklong medical trips to Gaza. Hasan first led an 18-member medical convoy from the United States, England and Canada in December 2023, crossing into Rafah, on Egypt’s border, in ambulances for the group’s safety.
Their first look at the devastation was through the ambulance windows, he said. At the hospital, they found “a sea of people” seeking refuge, Hasan told the State of the World podcast.
“People were living in the hospital, in the elevators, and to some extent, in the bathrooms, and the trash had built up, the sewage control … It was different,” he said.
Hasan went straight to the operating room, finding no water to wash his hands, broken equipment and limited anesthetics. The vibration from bombs made his footing unstable, he said.
He shared a diary of what he saw with his wife back in Durham, who shared them on social media, he later learned.
In April 2023, he spent another week in Gaza, arriving with about $20 million in baby formula, food and medicine. He couldn’t save every child, but the work was getting attention, and by June, he was sitting down for an interview with the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
Israelis began to send help, and a group invited him to tour the Nova festival site and the kibbutzes that were attacked on Oct. 7, he said. Some of the families joined them, sharing their stories and helping him to better understand the Israelis’ pain, he said.
Forgiveness is hard, he said, but “when you put yourself one foot here and one foot here, you realize immediately why it is important to say never again for both sides.”
“You have to make yourself vulnerable, and you may be disappointed, someone may take advantage of it, but we have to be stronger than the … evil forces that want to divide us,” he added.
Providing school, food for Gaza’s children
In 2025, Hasan launched Gaza Children’s Village with three goals: immediate relief for children; providing an education, including about global citizenship and peace; and bridging the divide between Palestinians and Israelis.
It started with 500 orphans, many with life-altering injuries and facing starvation. A team of Israelis and Palestinians now serves 18,800 children at Academies of Hope across Gaza, providing two hot meals each day from World Central Kitchen, physical and mental health care, an inter-faith program, and support for mothers.
The work is possible through a negotiated UN2720 registration with the Israeli Defense Forces, although access sometimes comes with logistics and red tape, Hasan said. A lack of infrastructure and hospitals forces them to be creative, from working with locals to building a tent school and furniture using wood pallets.
Critics have painted him a “traitor” and “collaborator” who is brainwashing children because he works with Israelis, he said. His family has been threatened. But both sides are working toward a common goal and trying to find forgiveness, he said.
“It’s not easy, but what’s the alternative? Keep fighting, keep killing each other, walking in the neighborhood and not saying ‘hi’ to your neighbor, because he’s a Jew or he’s a Muslim? You know, being angry all the time is really difficult. It’s not natural,” Hasan said.
Jewish community wants to help
Beth El’s members have a variety of opinions about the war, Senior Rabbi Daniel Greyber said, but “we have as a community tried to be a force for goodness, for compassion, to keep our hearts open for the suffering of Israelis and Palestinians.”
That has included raising money to feed children and provide life-saving care, and hosting visitors, including Hasan and former Israeli hostages Keith and Aviva Siegel, to share their perspectives. There is also broad support for Gaza Children’s Village, he said.
“Some people in the community had what in my mind are legitimate questions, wanting to be sure that any aid that was being provided was not going to support Hamas,” Greyber said. But “we’re able to support this effort, because it’s aimed at rebuilding and it’s aimed at reconciliation, and it’s trying to build a better future for Israelis and Palestinians.”
When asked if peace is possible, Greyber pointed to Israel’s national anthem, “Hatikvah.”
It means “hope,” like the recent and rare, in-person peace negotiations with Lebanon, he said, calling it an example of “wonderful things [that] can be born precisely when we expect it least.”
“I think that it behooves all of us as Americans and as good people to not let what’s happening on the other side of the world destroy our communities and not become an excuse for mistreating the people who are in our midst,” Greyber said.
Have dinner, donate to the cause
Med Deli, located at 410 W. Franklin St. in Chapel Hill, will donate 100% of dine-in and takeout sales between 11 a.m. and 9 p.m. Tuesday, April 28, to Gaza Children’s Village. Beth El Synagogue’s Associate Rabbi Rachel Blumstein Posner will attend the event from noon to 2 p.m., and Rabbi Greyber will join from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m.
Donations can also be made online at thegazachildrenvillage.org/#home-donate.
