Remember the tremendous international effort to help earlier this year after an earthquake devastated the capital, Port au Prince?
Remember who was first to set up a field hospital? The Israel Defence Force medical team.
The IDF has gone but IsraAid, the Israel Forum for International Humanitarian Aid has been there since January and have recently sent another team to assess the cholera risk following a hurricane which the embattled people of Haiti recently suffered.
The team is preparing to meet the cholera outbreak which threatens to reach Port au Prince and its outskirts causing the death of over 200 people. IsraAID medical staff on the ground have been attending UN meetings to discuss the affect of the cholera on its Israeli aid programs in the region.
The team will gauge the impact of ongoing projects undertaken by two IsraAID member organizations – Tevel B’Tzedek and the Negev Institute for Strategies of Peace and Development (NISPED).
IsraAID has had Israeli staff on the ground in Haiti since January 16 – four days after the earthquake. Over this ten-month period, IsraAID teams have provided various essential services to thousands affected by the earthquake, including emergency medical treatment, primary family medical care, medical rehabilitation, informal education, food production, women empowerment and children safe-spaces programs.
From Haiti the team will travel to New Orleans to participate in November’s upcoming General Assembly in New Orleans. IsraAID will bring to the Assembly one of the IDF medical tents that was used in Haiti. The tent was then donated to IsraAID, which turned it into the first official school operating in the camps of Port au Prince, Haiti.
The Israeli medical personnel of IsraAID have been operating in Port-au-Prince for the last 4 days, both within the government hospital in the city as well as outside the facility.
The 15 members of the team have been asked by Operation Blessing, its partner on the ground, to operate in a local football stadium where over 2,000 injured people have been gathering who are in need of emergency medical aid. Upon arrival, the team was greeted by thousands of wounded people, and more started to arrive as word spread that a medical team was in place and treating people.
“The situation is horrible, there is no doctor in sight, people are hungry and wounded. There are constant waves of injured people coming to the stadium” said Alan Schneider, a delegation member.
Due to the growing need for assistance, IsraAID/FIRST will be sending an additional team of 12 medical and logistical staff during the coming weekend into the field to increase the ability to respond to the emergency. Medical and other urgent supplies will be purchased in the Dominican Republic and some of the items arriving from the US will be used as well.
So the magnificent Israeli response to this tragedy continues and will increase.
Some heart-rending but also heart-warming stories have emerged over he past few days about the really terrible situation in Haiti. So many countries responding in very difficult circumstances.
Israel has taken so much bad press in recent months that it gives me, as a Jew, and a Zionist, an enormous sense of pride to see that whatever the issues are in Israel politically, whatever the attempts to demonize and delegitimize the State, whatever lies and half-truths, double-standards, blind hatred, genocidal rhetoric are used against it, there is still a deep, deep, thread of humanitarianism which lies at the core of the Jewish-ness both secular and religious.
Nowhere is this seen to better affect when disaster strikes anywhere in the world and Jewish and Israeli charities and organisations are mobilized not for propaganda but because it is an essential and abiding element of Jewish belief and consciousness to help our fellow man.
Here are some stories which are a moving tribute to the State of Israel and its people:
A story in the Jerusalem Post Jan 17th 2010 ‘Rescuers describe ‘Shabbat from hell‘. The IDF, that’s the Israeli Army has set up a field hospital in Port au Prince and within a few hours was treating dozens of patients.
Children with severe fractures set only with cardboard arrived at the hospital for treatment. Some young patients had been freed from rubble but had to have limbs amputated due to severe gangrene, he said. Within a few hours, operations were performed….
The Israeli facility, set up in very hot and humid weather, has enough equipment to function for about two weeks. The 121-member team has 40 doctors, including a psychiatrist, 20 nurses, 20 paramedics and medics, 20 lab and X-ray technicians and administrators.
The report tells us that many of the medical team are Orthodox Jews who travelled on the Jewish Sabbath, something which is normally completely against Jewish belief but when evem a single life can be saved then the Sabbath laws can be broken.
The official IDF bulletin tells us:
The field hospital is prepared to receive dozens of ambulances evacuating injured children from the different disaster struck areas. Between Friday night and Saturday, dozens of truckloads of medical and logistical equipment were unloaded and the field hospital set up.
The Israeli delegation landed in the capital of Port-Au-Prince yesterday evening and has located itself in a soccer field near the air port. Upon arrival, C4I teams deployed communications infrastructure in preparations for the hospital’s establishment.
Two teams, comprised of search and rescue personnel and canine operators from the IDF canine unit were sent out on rescue missions. The first team was sent to the Haiti UN headquarters in order to assist in rescuing survivors.
The ZAKA organisation (which was formed to deal with the aftermath of suicide bombings in Israel and other terrorist acts in Israel, but then extended its reach to make itself available throughout the world to help deal with the dead and injured of natural disasters via its Search and Rescue arm) is also an Orthodox Jewish organisation. On this occasion they were prepared to deal with the dead but ended up:
pull(ing) eight students alive from the collapsed university building, after a 38 (hour) operation
Perhaps only a Jew can fully appreciate the extreme emotion that the story of what followed evinces, but I’m sure no-one can fail to be moved by this:
Amid the stench and chaos, the ZAKA delegation took time out to recite Shabbat prayers – a surreal sight of haredi men wrapped in prayer shawls standing on the collapsed buildings. Many locals sat quietly in the rubble, staring at the men as they prayed facing Jerusalem.
At the end of the prayers, they crowded around the delegation and kissed the prayer shawls.
Overnight Saturday, in what staff described as one of the most fulfilling moments of their work, the Israeli doctors delivered a baby boy, whose mother, Gubilande Jean Michel, promptly declared would be named “Israel.”
How appropriate that the work, compassion and dedication of Israelis will be remembered and recalled throughout this boy’s lifetime in his very name.
IsraAID has headed for the hospital:
Just minutes after landing in the airport in Port-au-prince the IsraAID team was met by David Darg, Operation Blessing Director in the field and his staff and joined with them to unload a planeload of food and medical equipment.
The Israeli medical professionals of IsraAID – F.I.R.S.T. traveled to the main Port-au-prince Hospital to start treating patients, joining local physicians at the site of the collapsed central hospital where thousands of wounded have gathered desperate for help.
“The scenes in the hospital were horrible we saw people everywhere on the floors in the building and outside, people with amputations and bone-deep wounds, hundreds of them, the size of the catastrophe is unbelievable. All of the injured were treated until we came by only one local doctor and we were the first foreign backup team to operate in the hospital.” Said Nurse Sheva Cohen from Kibbutz Ein Yahav in the Negev
When the team arrived at the hospital they found most of the injured outside the building laying in beds in the building’s garden, probably out of fear of aftershocks and further collapse. The IsraAID team set up treatment rooms in four empty rooms, treating 60 patients with IV and administered medicine. While in the hospital, an infant with 60% burns died and bodies that had not yet been removed for burial were piled up in back.
In the meantime, the logistical personnel remain in the airport area to set up camp and assist local NGO partners with logistical support for relief items that were continuing to land.
Currently the teams are working around the clock to provide assistance to the injured. In light of the scale of the disaster, IsraAID is currently focused on expanding the scale of its operation, preparing an additional team that would be sent next week.
At the beginning of his cabinet meeting this week Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said:
I think that this is in the best tradition of the Jewish People; this is the true covenant of the State of Israel and the Jewish People. This follows operations we have carried out in Kenya and Turkey; despite being a small country, we have responded with a big heart. The fact is, I know, that this was an expression of our Jewish heritage and the Jewish ethic of helping one’s fellow. I hope that the team saves lives and that Haiti succeeds in recovering from this awful tragedy.
There is a long, long way to go for the Haitian people but they can count on the Jewish People and Israel to help them in their time of dire need.
Today the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs made this announcement:
Israel wishes to express its solidarity with the Government and people of Haiti during this great disaster. We send our condolences to the families of the casualties, and wish the injured a speedy recovery.
Israel is doing all in its power to help the people of Haiti cope with the disaster in their country. A 220-person delegation, headed by Ministry of Foreign Affairs officials, will leave this evening (Thursday, 14 January 2009) for Port-Au-Prince on two Boeing 747 jets leased from El Al by the IDF. The relief package includes a Home Front Command field hospital and rescue unit, as well as teams from Magen David Adom and Israel Police.
Israel’s ambassador to the Dominican Republic, Amos Radian, is currently in Port-Au-Prince, where he is coordinating Israel’s contribution with local authorities and international aid agencies.
This is, perhaps, another example of Israel making a disproportionate response? After all, for a small county of some 7 million this is a massive response and fully in keeping with the country’s moral traditions which it has exercised many times in the past.
I have not yet discovered what the response of Israel’s near neighbours or even not so near neighbours has been? I’m happy to be enlightened.
Israel’s Government Press Office issued the following statement today:
Jan 12, 2010 – A major earthquake struck the capital of impoverished Haiti on Tuesday, toppling many buildings and burying thousands of people under the rubble. The magnitude 7.0 quake, whose epicenter was inland only 10 miles (16 km) from Port-au-Prince, sent panic-stricken people into the streets as clouds of dust and smoke from falling buildings rose into the sky.
Tens of thousands of people were left homeless and injured.
IsraAID members have been in direct contact with local partners on the ground who together will be treating the injured and offering expertise to the local government. A 12-man search-and-rescue team, which includes emergency medical staff are in the process of leaving to the field. IsraAID has turned to the Israeli public in request for donations to support the Israeli civilian aid.
Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere and has a history of destructive natural disasters. Some 9,000 U.N. police and troops are stationed there to maintain order.
The Israeli Defense Force Issued the following statement:
An Israeli delegation including Ministry of Foreign Affairs, IDF Home Front Command and IDF Medical Corp Personnel has departed at 11:30 Israel time to the Republic of Haiti in order to examine the possibilities of offering aid following the recent earthquake.
The delegation includes engineering, medical, logistics and rescue experts from the IDF Home Front Command.
Binyamin Netanyahu issued the following statement:
PM Netanyahu Orders Aid Delegation to Haiti
(Communicated by the Prime Minister’s Media Adviser)
Israeli Ambassador to the Dominican Republic Amos Radian has been instructed to proceed to Haiti in order to report on the situation there. The Israeli Embassy in the US has been instructed to be in contact with American aid officials in order to coordinate humanitarian assistance and rescue activities and adapt them to the needs of the affected area.
