Lashing out at the heads of Israeli ministries during a meeting with them yesterday in the western Galilee, Avichai Stern, the mayor of the war-battered northern city of Kiryat Shmona, lambasted the government for failing to protect the residents of his city, which is again being targeted relentlessly by Hezbollah. He accused the ministries of providing insufficient, slow and often elusive assistance for his community, which was struggling even before it entered the Lebanese terror group’s crosshairs in the wake of the Oct. 7 terror attacks.
Kiryat Shmona and the surrounding area were evacuated soon after the Hezbollah attacks began in late 2023 and have not come close to recovering, with the majority of the city’s residents refusing to return after a ceasefire went into effect in November 2024. Those who did return to the North have spent more time in bomb shelters than anyone else in the country over the past month. Unlike Tel Aviv and other areas of central Israel, which are being targeted by long-range ballistic missiles from Iran hundreds of miles away — giving residents several minutes to enter bomb shelters — Kiryat Shmona is being attacked by Hezbollah from just a few kilometers away, meaning residents are forced to spend nearly all of their time in bomb shelters. (That is assuming, of course, that they have access to bomb shelters, which many do not.)
“It doesn’t matter how things end on the Lebanese front or the Iranian front if we’ve lost a city in the State of Israel,” Stern said at the start of his remarks.
Stern’s tirade exemplified the frustration and disappointment of many residents of northern Israel, who yet again find themselves under attack without the governmental attention and support that they need. The monologue was filmed and shared on social media, where it spread quickly, and was subsequently reported on in traditional Israeli outlets. Unnamed government officials responded to Stern’s accusations, claiming that he, not the ministries, was the cause of the delays in funding for Kiryat Shmona, adding an ad hominem allegation that Stern was trying to get the government to pay for the repair of his father’s synagogue — a claim Stern has rejected as a “distortion” of his efforts to secure funding for several synagogues in the city that don’t have bomb shelters.
Philanthropy professionals who focus on northern Israel and work closely with the local governments told eJewishPhilanthropy that the situation in Israel’s North is indeed dire, that residents are facing constant deadly attacks without the life-saving protections that they need and that the government has not made the North’s recovery a top priority.
Michal Cohen, the CEO of the Rashi Foundation, which runs a number of programs in northern Israel, denounced the government for both its “abandonment” of northern Israel, particularly as it relates to bomb shelters and fortifications, and for the unnamed officials’ aggressive response to Stern’s remarks. “During a war, who are you attacking?” Cohen fumed, adding: “We don’t have enough enemies from outside?”
While the American-Israeli war against Iran has drawn the lion’s share of media coverage over the past month, the conflict with Hezbollah and the ramifications for already struggling northern Israel are even more significant and potentially devastating. While Tel Aviv is also under bombardment, few believe that the future of the city or of central Israel are at risk. Not so with Kiryat Shmona. “I went to sleep last night worried about Kiryat Shmona and I woke up this morning worrying about Kiryat Shmona, that has been a motif since the war started,” Sarah Mali, director general of Jewish Federations of Canada-UIA Canada, told eJP this morning. “There is a genuine question about the longevity of Kiryat Shmona as a decent stable city in the north and even more serious questions about its ability to thrive.”
In the video, a visibly exasperated Stern highlighted the immense stress that the current war is putting on the 10,000 residents of Kiryat Shmona. “And you [ministry director-generals] expect them for another month or you don’t even know how long to remain in this miserable situation,” he said, noting that in the previous war against Hezbollah, residents had been evacuated and weren’t dealing with “running to the shelter every 10 minutes and the booms every second…. If you think that 10,000 people will stay like this — 10 people will stay, only those who are unable to leave.”
Pounding on the table, Stern highlighted the grave shortage of bomb shelters in the city — a situation that the Israeli government has been aware of for decades — saying that the city, which before the war had a population of roughly 22,000 — has 4,700 housing units that don’t have bomb shelters that are up to code or have bomb shelters at all. “You haven’t provided them with fortifications until now, so at least provide them protection now. If you can’t, get them out of harm’s way! You don’t send a soldier to battle without a ceramic vest, right? Why are you putting civilians on the frontline without protection?” he said.
Getting increasingly agitated, Stern noted that this is a personal issue for him as well. “I have a 2 ½-year-old daughter and a 5-year-old daughter, whom I have to take to activities in a bomb shelter, and I am praying every time I make that trip [that there isn’t an attack],” he said. “Do any of you know what it’s like getting missiles with zero seconds of warning — with kids at home, with people with disabilities, with elderly people?”
If someone is injured in an attack, Stern added that there is no hospital in Kiryat Shmona to treat them. Instead, they would have to be driven by car or flown in a helicopter to a nearby hospital, which is not possible under fire. “I need to call Hezbollah to ask them to stop firing so I can get them out with a helicopter?” he asked rhetorically.
Stern also noted that the residents who have returned are more likely to come from weaker socioeconomic backgrounds and are therefore even more reliant on municipal services. “That’s the population living in the city,” he said. “Twenty-eight percent of students grades 1 through 8 don’t know how to read and write,” Stern said, quoting from a sheet of figures in front of him.
He accused the government of being quick to issue resolutions promising funds for the North but slow to actually dole those budgets out. He also alleged that other cities were getting preferential treatment, having their streets repaired within hours of a missile attack, while his remained full of impact craters.
In their response, the unnamed government officials said these delays were Stern’s own fault. “Government ministries are seeing that they are transferring hundreds of millions of shekels to Kiryat Shmona — but the local government has a serious problem with management and execution, and therefore things are not being rolled out, and the residents are the ones suffering from it,” the anonymous officials said in statements to Hebrew media.
The Rashi Foundation’s Cohen noted that, in their response, the government officials only blamed Stern and his municipality for the delays, which she said would only make sense if the problems were limited to his city, but they are a widespread issue throughout the North. “If it were just Kiryat Shmona, OK. But it’s not just Kiryat Shmona. So what? Only the government knows how to be a hero?” she said.
She acknowledged that the Kiryat Shmona municipality does have “capacity” issues and is struggling to handle the situation, though she rejected the claim that this was the primary problem. “I’m not saying that everything is fine there, and the problem is just the government,” she said. “What doesn’t work in normal times, also doesn’t work in an emergency.” However, Cohen added, this is both understandable due to the scale of the crisis — which far exceeds what even strong cities could handle — and should come as no surprise given the fact that Kiryat Shmona was not a particularly strong municipality even before the war. The government should be stepping in to provide that capacity, not using it as an excuse, Cohen said.
“Instead of judging them, help them. Instead of blocking them, help them,” Cohen said. “If they don’t have a project manager, give them a project manager.”
She added that the most significant issue facing the city is one that the national government is well-positioned to address. “What do they need now? Bomb shelters and bomb shelters and bomb shelters,” Cohen said. “How’s that connected to capacity?”
Both Cohen and Mali, of the Canadian federation, noted that while philanthropy is able to support recovery efforts in the north, the government needs to lead the process by developing and executing a comprehensive strategic plan: funding infrastructure projects, offering tax incentives and improving critical services like welfare, health care and education.
Cohen, who worked for years in government, including a four-year stint as director-general of the education ministry, attributed much of the tension between the government and Kiryat Shmona to petty politics. Although Kiryat Shmona is a historically Likud-aligned city — and Stern is a member of the Likud Party and said just last month that he plans to continue voting for the party — he does not have a close relationship with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which Cohen said results in Stern being subjected to “political excommunication.”
“The North doesn’t belong to Bibi, and it doesn’t belong to Avichai; it belongs to all of us,” she said, using Netanyahu’s nickname. “It is a strategic asset.”
Cohen noted that despite the North also facing devastation in the wake of the Oct. 7 terror attacks, while the Israeli government has created the Tekuma Authority, which is specifically focused on the reconstruction of southern Israel, the Tenufa Plan, which was supposed to do the same for northern Israel, has not gotten off the ground. “Is that just a coincidence?” she said.
“We need a strategic plan for the north,” she said. “We need investment, not just government resolutions.”
Both Cohen and Mali demanded greater action and focus on the reconstruction of the North. “We need to make this the burning issue of the day,” Mali said.