Maayan Gabai, 24, had just about reached the 5,895 meters (19,341 feet) summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro when he felt like he couldn’t go any farther. He saw another climber, and they smiled at each other.

“I asked him in English where he was from,” Gabai told The Times of Israel. “The climber said, ‘Iran,’ and then he asked where I was from.”

This was 10 days after the January 19 hostage-ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas. The war began on October 7, 2023, when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists assaulted southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people and seizing 251 as hostages.

But Gabai didn’t hesitate to reply, ‘Israel.’

Gabai, who served three years in the IDF’s spokesperson’s unit for Arab affairs, speaks fluent Arabic. He also knows a little Farsi, so he added, ‘I love you.’

The climber ran toward Gabai… and hugged him.

“He told me the people of Iran love Israel, and the Iranian government doesn’t represent the people,” Gabai said.

The unexpected encounter gave Gabai the final boost of energy to reach the summit. He completed the eight-day trek up Africa’s tallest mountain with 29 other people who raised more than NIS 1,000,000 ($281,000) for the nonprofit organization Shalva, the Israel Association for the Care and Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities.

The arduous trek challenged all the climbers. But only Gabai, who has cerebral palsy, walked with crutches through the ice and snow.

“That wasn’t even the most difficult challenge,” Gabai said. “It was walking for 18 hours straight with freezing feet.”

Shalva was founded in 1990 by Malki and Kalman Samuels, who aimed to create a therapeutic environment in which children with disabilities could grow and thrive, according to the organization’s website.

The couple’s approach was based on their own experience raising their son, Yossi, who was left blind, deaf and acutely hyperactive as the result of a faulty vaccination.

When Yossi was eight, Shoshana Weinstock, a deaf special education teacher, penetrated Yossi’s wall of silence via Hebrew fingerspelling. She taught Yossi his first word, “shulchan” – Hebrew for table.

Meanwhile, the couple’s afternoon program in their Jerusalem apartment for eight children, including their son, gradually grew into a national center.

Today, the organization provides various therapies, social and recreational activities — including the Shalva Band, which appeared at the Eurovision contest in 2019 — and employment training for thousands of people with disabilities. The programs are all free of charge.

“We give our services out of love, free of charge,” said Itamar Shevach, Shalva’s Deputy Director and Chief Financial Officer, who began volunteering at the organization when he was in high school. “To do that, we have to raise a lot of money.”

The organization’s fund-raising “adventures” occur throughout the year, Shevach said, including running in marathons in Berlin, London and New York and bicycling in Viet Nam. These adventures are a way to “change lives.”

“Climbing Kilimanjaro is a really challenging journey,” Shevach said. “We do it for the kids and the people and the families who are getting support from Shalva. But for them, it’s not for a week, and they’re done. Their challenge is forever.”

On the climb up Mt. Kilimanjaro with Gabai was Debbie Tannenbaum, 71, a mother of eight, grandmother of 40, and great-grandmother of two. She decided to try the ascent when her granddaughter, Elisheva, suggested it to her.

Tannenbaum told The Times of Israel that as she collected donations for Shalva, she also trained for the trek; she did pilates and worked with a trainer to strengthen her body.

“When we walked up the mountain, I was focused on putting one foot in front of the other,” Tannenbaum said. “I was definitely one of the stragglers.”

Tannenbaum said that she saw Gabai walking in front with the faster hikers.

“He was very determined,” she said. “Everyone was in awe of him. Everyone helped him not because he needed help because of a disability, but in the way they helped anybody else.” She said that is also the primary message of Shalva.

Cerebral palsy refers to a group of neurological disorders that appear in infancy or early childhood and permanently affect body movement and muscle coordination. It is caused by damage to the developing brain that affects a person’s ability to control their muscles. Cerebral palsy is the most common motor disability in childhood.

Gabai’s mother, Dina, told The Times of Israel that Maayan took his first few faltering steps at three years old. At six, he received crutches to enable him to walk.

She said that when he was learning to walk, he fell all the time.

“Each time he fell, I turned my head and cried so he couldn’t see me, and I told him, ‘Get up by yourself,'” Dina said. “If we felt sorry for him then, now he would always be in a wheelchair.”

Back then, however, Gabai didn’t understand why his mother refused to help him.

But now, he told The Times of Israel, he realizes “the secret is to let someone do it himself.”

When Gabai was six, his father Gabi took him to do the “Sea-to-Sea” hike, a three-day trek from the Mediterranean Sea in Achziv to the Sea of Galilee near Tiberias — with Gabai riding on a donkey.

In 2019, Gabai traveled with the Erez Foundation — a non-profit organization that helps disabled IDF veterans, children and athletes with disabilities to experience extreme sports — to climb Annapurna Mountain in Nepal. His brother, Be’eri, now 21, “helped carry me in my special wheelchair up the mountain.”

But he wanted to try to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro on his own two feet. He took a short leave from reserve duty, where he has served in the IDF’s Operations Division, a unit under the Operations Directorate, during the war.

“I wasn’t sure I would make the summit,” he said. “When I did, I was so tired, I could barely walk,” so porters helped carry him partway down the mountain.

“And it’s not a shame,” he said. “Sometimes you help, sometimes you get help.”

Climbing the mountain with other Israelis in the middle of the conflict  made it “that much more meaningful.”

He said that on some nights, they had to set out at midnight, trek through the night, and finish climbing the following afternoon.

There was no rational reason why I should continue, so I had to convince myself not to think

“There’s the snow, and the oxygen level affects you in a way that you feel like you’re losing your mind,” he recounted. “Your battery is literally empty, and you feel that you have no energy left.”

“I had this conflict within me; can I continue or not?” Gabai recounted. “There was no rational reason why I should continue, so I had to convince myself not to think.”

“The climb took me to the limit,” said Gabai, who now likes to share his personal story with others. “It showed me that the limit you think you have is not the actual limit. . . There’s still farther you can go.”