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There’s a moment in every rehabilitation story that doesn’t make it into the inspirational quotes. It’s not the first day sober, or the first job interview, or even the first night of safe sleep. It’s the moment a person realizes the past hasn’t just hurt them, it’s still billing them.

For one woman, a survivor of the sex trade, that bill came in the form of 77 fines totaling about 100,000 shekels. Not a “mistake,” not a single misstep—an accumulated record of survival under conditions most of us are lucky never to face. A teenager subjected to severe sexual assault. A descent into prostitution, drug dependence, and life on the street. And then, against the odds, a decision to climb out.
She did what we demand people do when we speak about “responsibility.” She sought help. With the support of a mobile clinic operated through the Haifa Health Bureau, she got clean. She started looking for work. She began the slow, grinding work of rebuilding a life.

Guy Akuka, nearly blind since birth, does not see the world like most people. With a visual range of only three meters, he has spent his life sharpening a different kind of vision: a profound sense of social justice. Today, as a senior attorney for the Jerusalem Institute of Justice (JIJ), Akuka has become a lifeline for IDF veterans, providing expert legal representation to those navigating the grueling bureaucracy of the Ministry of Defense.

Gasps echoed through the aisles as the plane touched down in Tel Aviv, and passengers opened their phones for the first time in 12 hours. A man in front of me prayed. The first of the last twenty hostages had been freed! As we stood to exit the plane, all words were of the good news. You didn’t need to know Hebrew, French, or English to hear the exuberant joy and disbelieving relief in the voices.