Well, we Kossacks could just stand by and gripe, but since we seem to be really good at pulling out the wallet for Katrina victims, the Crawford Peace House, the ACLU, and the only decent candidates for elective office, then some comment about organizations actually feeding/clothing/sheltering the latest wave of victims would seem to be in order.
I got to listen to no shortage of exciting verbal repartee on the radio yesterday while driving down for my annual physical. Jay Marvin, who hosts Denver AAR before Al Franken, was out for the day, and his replacement was having furious discussions with callers about the current Middle Eastern conflicts.
But rather than focus on whether her callers were or were not anti-Semites (as she claimed in one instance), I'm going to focus on one interview she did with a representative from Mercy Corps, a charity on the ground in Lebanon trying to provide for the tens (hundreds?) of thousands of displaced folks there. Jay Marvin's replacement (if only I could remember her name . . .) seemed more than merely quite impressed, and after doing some reading, I'm inclined to echo her opinion.
When founded in 1979, the original mission of Mercy Corps was to serve refugees; this remains one of its core activities, in addition to economic development. It has current operations in more than three dozen countries/areas, including Lebanon, Jordan, and the West Bank/Gaza, but does not focus solely or even primarily on Arab or Muslim areas (it's also active in several Latin American countries, Mongolia . . . and the United States). It seems to be a Christian organization, but apparently does not proselytize; if it did, I doubt it would have received the Kahlil Gibran "Spirit of Humanity" Award of the Arab American Institute Foundation.
Mercy Corps's credentials are sterling--a four-star (highest) rating from Charity Navigator, and similar ratings from Worth Magazine, the American Institute of Philanthropy, and even Reader's Digest, with ca. 90% of its revenues going to the needy.
What Mercy Corps is not doing right now is aiding Israeli victims of the current mess. Well, no one group can do everything, I suppose, and while the suffering is numerically much greater on the Lebanese and Gazan side, there are plenty of Israelis suffering too. To its credit, Mercy Corps reproduces a WSJ article listing other worthy charities in the current situation, including the Israel Crisis Fund of United Jewish Communities. Since the WSJ article does not include a link, I'm including one here.
Comments on any of the charities currently providing assistance to the victims in this conflict are urgently welcome.