thank-you-uja

HarmonySOS · A partnership in protection · 2025–2026

From Harmony Community to our partners at UJA-Federation of New York

شكراً. תודה. Thank you.

For believing in a volunteer network before anyone else did — and for helping it become national emergency infrastructure that Arab and Jewish families now rely on in the same breath.

HarmonySOS is Israel’s most comprehensive map of protected spaces. Your support carried it from an emergency response to a maintained national utility — in three languages, with no login, free to everyone.

A public shelter painted with a bright flower mural — A shelter, made visible

Protective capsule K-28 in the Negev desert — Capsule K-28 · Negev

Bilingual protected-space sign pointing to a shelter entrance — Signed in both languages

15,544protected spaces on the live map — the count on harmonysos.com as of August 2026

1.1Mviews in the first week — used by people running for cover in real time

24 hrsfrom decision to a live national service, built by 85 volunteers

1 mapserving Arab and Jewish families alike — Arabic and Hebrew, identical terms, no account needed

Every number above grew under your stewardship — from 1,100 verified spaces in the first 48 hours to 15,544 today, a fourteen-fold expansion in the year your support sustained the team.

Why this exists · Tamra, 14 June 2025

It began on a night when four women had nowhere to go.

An Iranian ballistic missile struck a residential building in Tamra — a city with no public bomb shelter, where six in ten homes have no safe room. Four women of the Khatib family were killed:

Manar Khatib, 45 · Shada Khatib, 20
Hala Khatib, 13 · Manar Diab Khatib, 41

That night, instead of only grieving, a network of Arab professionals decided to build. Eighty-five volunteers — engineers, designers, translators, residents walking their own streets under fire — went to work.

“Instead of crying and complaining — let’s do something.”Mahdi Kabaha, on the night of the strike

Within twenty-four hours, there was a map.

The four women of the Khatib family killed in Tamra: Manar, Shada, Hala and Manar Diab — Manar, Shada, Hala and Manar Diab Khatib · photos circulated publicly after the strike, via X

0public shelters in Tamra on the night of the strike

13protected spaces listed in Tamra on HarmonySOS today

The platform today

One map. 15,544 doors that open.

This is HarmonySOS as it runs right now — every green cluster is verified protected spaces, from the Galilee to the Negev. Three taps take anyone to the nearest shelter, in Arabic, Hebrew or English, with directions in Waze or Google Maps. No account. No login. Local authorities work from the same database through the Injaz–Sikkuy dashboard integration, and the record keeps growing as field teams verify new spaces.

Live HarmonySOS map of Israel showing thousands of verified protected spaces in green clusters from the Galilee to the Negev

Live capture · August 2026Web · iOS · AndroidMunicipal dashboards via the Injaz–Sikkuy integration

24 hours: from decision to a live public website, in the middle of the war
1,100+: spaces physically verified and published within 48 hours
1.1M+: views in the first week; ~35,000 users by day two
Hundreds: of semi-public spaces — parking levels, basements — verified in person, a record no official register holds
85 → 15 → 5: volunteers who built it, the team that carried it, the core that sustains it
1,500: Arab professionals in the Harmony network, on call as surge capacity
37 / 11,775: public shelters in Arab localities vs. nationwide — 0.3% for a fifth of the population (Home Front Command data, Jan 2025)
8 June 2026: validated under live fire — users reached shelter through the system in real time

What your support made possible

Not an emergency project. Infrastructure.

Most emergency tech dies when the sirens stop. Your support carried the hardest transition in civic technology — from a volunteer surge to a professional team that keeps the map alive, accurate and ready.

Underground parking level verified as a protected space

A first for Israel

The protection no register ever recorded

Underground parking levels, residential basements, the lower floors of commercial centres — the places people actually shelter. No ministry had ever catalogued them. Field teams verified them door by door: is it unlocked, who holds the key, how many people fit. Hundreds of these semi-public spaces are now on the map because you funded the people who walked out and checked.

Interior protected-area signage with directional arrow

Findable in 90 seconds

From existing to reachable

A shelter nobody can find saves nobody. HarmonySOS answers the only question that matters when the siren sounds: where are the nearest three protected spaces, and how do I reach them — in Arabic, Hebrew or English, with no account and no login. A person running for cover has no capacity for onboarding.

Public protective capsule beside a city promenade

Validated · 8 June 2026

Ready before the next siren — not after it

When Iranian barrages resumed and schools closed nationwide, nothing had to be rebuilt. The platform was current, tested and already installed. During the alerts, users messaged the team that they had located and reached shelter through the system in real time. That is the only test that matters — and it passed on your watch.

Beyond the map · The Helping Hand operations centre

Legal aid

Lawyers & accountants

Handling war-damage compensation claims — helping families meet the 14-day filing deadline that most Arab citizens miss.

Mental health

Psychologists on call

Receiving mental-health enquiries during and after the barrages, routing the most fragile cases to specialists.

Alerts

Arabic WhatsApp groups

Delivering Home Front alerts and conduct guidance in plain, spoken Arabic — not the formal Arabic no one uses.

From the field

The map, on the ground.

Every pin on HarmonySOS is a real door somebody checked. A few of the thousands of spaces your support helped verify and keep current. Every one was checked in person — entrance, capacity, who holds the key:

Shelter painted with a flower mural — **Public shelter** · on the map with photo, entrance and directions

Shelter painted with a village landscape mural — **Public shelter** · Galilee — verified and published in three languages

Protected area interior signage — **Interior signage** · the last 20 metres matter as much as the first 200

Protective capsule in the Negev — **Capsule K-28** · Negev — 64 protected spaces serve ~165,000 residents of unrecognised villages

Urban protective capsule — **Street capsule** · verified, photographed, published in three languages

A buried container shelter in the Negev, protected by sandbags, with two children at its entrance — **Buried shelter** · Negev — a dug-in container under sandbags; for an unrecognised village, the only cover there is

In motion · From the field

Six reels. The work, in sixty seconds each.

Swipe through the strip — tap any reel to watch it full-screen with sound. These clips ran across Arabic and Hebrew social channels as part of the awareness campaign your support made possible — because a map nobody knows about saves nobody.

The launch

How the platform went live · 48h

The story

Mahdi on national TV · Arabic

Helping Hand

Legal aid + mental-health desk

Why we built it

The context · English

The impact

Lives reached · Arabic

Save a life

15-second campaign cut

In the press

How the story reached the world.

Haaretz

“We’re filling the gap that the state is supposed to fill.”

Read the article → The Jerusalem Post

Inspired by lack of protection in Arab towns — an app that helps every Israeli find shelter.

Read the article → The Media Line

A grassroots lifeline for Arab communities in crisis.

Read the article →

A word about how you gave

You moved before the committee calendar did.

In March 2026, with missiles falling and the map straining to grow, the Federation told Harmony to begin implementation ahead of formal approval — a judgement that a life-saving initiative should not wait. The emergency committee’s approval followed; the work never had to pause.

Your support sustained the field verification teams, the core technical crew, hosting under wartime load, the bilingual awareness campaigns and the municipal partnerships that keep the map alive and accurate — while the platform served over a million people.

But the deeper truth is this: your support did not buy software. It kept faith with 1,500 professionals and 85 volunteers who had already built the trust that made a national map possible in a single day. Very few philanthropic decisions carry that multiple.

“The trust extended before the formal process concluded was itself a decision that saved time — when time mattered most.”

Shared society

Delivered, not aspired to

A trilingual platform serving Arabs and Jews together — exactly as a missile does not distinguish between them.

Caring for the vulnerable

The localities the system never reached

Direct focus on the north’s Arab towns and the Negev’s unrecognised villages — 64 protected spaces for ~165,000 residents.

Bridging divides

A bridge built from competence

1,500 Arab professionals serving a shared civil society — a bridge made of skills, not slogans.