Humanitarian Aid or Shooting Ourself in the Foot?

I promised myself to take a 10 day break from the blog, which has turned out to be a "bit" longer but thankfully now that the grandparental committments have been fulfilled for this summer, life can now return to normal?

The question is, "What is normal?" Well, I am sure of one thing, it is not sitting in an easy chair with my feet up, there is no shortages of things to do!!
.

Volunteers are voting with their feet and visiting Israel in increasing numbers under the Sar El army program where they get involved in a wide range of activities. The madrichim (group leaders) are phoning me to invite me to give lectures on how to get involved in advocacy for Israel and this week has been no exception. I spoke to a group from many different countries, USA, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Holland, Denmark and Korea, see photo.

Many of them signed up to be kept informed of events going on here since, in their words, there is less and less reliable reporting in their local media.

A report appeared in the Jerusalem Post some days ago, of a Syrian who was shot trying to infiltrate the border with Israel. he was taken to the hospital in Poriyah near to Tiberius. It was suggested that he may have been trying to create a drug running route. What was not reported however, however, was the follow up to this incident. My friend who is a surgeon at Rambam hospital was woken by a phone call at 2:30 am calling him to his hospital. It seems the infiltrator had been transferred to Haifa. And so in the middle of the night, he went " to work". This involved a 9 hour operation after which he had to continue with his other patients.

His afternoon surgery was in Tel Aviv and he was unwilling to cancel all his patients there and thus, together with his wife, keeping him awake, they travelled to Tel Aviv after a 15 hour day in his hospital. His call to duty to my mind was exemplary, but how well was he able to deal with his patients in Tel Aviv after such a day, a day in which it was considered necessary to utilise our scarce mediical resources to save the life of a drug runner. Are we shooting ourselves in our own feet or not??