70% Of Senior Class At Skokie School To Travel To Occupied West Bank

SKOKIE, IL — Following the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel, students from Ida Crown Jewish Academy reportedly asked school administrators what they could to do volunteer to help out the Israeli cause.

School officials and students began planning a volunteer trip to Israel, Pioneer Press reported, and now 40 seniors — about 70 percent of the graduating class at the Skokie private high school — are scheduled to head to a settlement on the occupied West Bank from Dec. 17 to Jan. 11.

The group of Ida Crown seniors, who will continue their studies while abroad, will reportedly be joined by faculty members for part of the trip and have access to online tutorials for Advanced Placement classes.

Due to Israel's universal conscription, hundreds of thousands of reservists have been called into military service and away from their jobs since the start of the latest war between Israel and Hamas, contributing to an agricultural labor shortage.

Plus, due to "Arab workers who are not able to travel the way they were before, the country is very short-staffed in a lot of places," the school's dean told the Skokie Review ahead of the trip, explaining Ida Crown is likely the first U.S. high school to plan such a trip.

Parents and students told the paper they had no qualms about flying into Israel during wartime.

They are due to live in the West Bank settlement of Kfar Etzion and spend three days a week working in agriculture, one working in food service and one day helping out with the children of those deployed or evacuated, according to the report.

Israeli leaders have pledged to eliminate the Hamas regime that has since 2007 ruled the Gaza Strip after its Oct. 7 cross-border attacks that killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, leading to the deadliest conflict between Israelis and Palestinians in decades, according to the Associated Press.

The two-month old Israel-Hamas war has already killed thousands of Palestinians and displaced more than three quarters of Gaza's 2.3 million population, according to the AP. Palestinian health officials say Israeli bombing has killed several hundred civilians since a weeklong truce and series of hostage-for-prisoner exchanges concluded Friday.