When Eli Beer set out to establish United Hatzalah of Israel in 2006, his goal was getting to every medical emergency within 90 seconds.
“If we had remained
within our communities, we would have never been able to get everywhere in 90
seconds,” Beer, who today serves as the founder and president of the
organization recalled, speaking at The Jerusalem Post Annual Conference, which took place in
New York on Monday. “In order to achieve our goal, we needed to reached out to
our neighbors and to people we didn't have a relationship with, starting with
the Arab community”
Some 17 years later,
United Hatzalah responds to almost 2,000 emergency calls every day, with
hundreds of volunteers from every sector of Israeli society, Jews, Muslims and
Christians, secular, religious and ultra-Orthodox, men and women.
United Hatzalah: Saving lives with limited resources
“For me and my family,
it has been important to support Hatzalah because it saves lives with very
limited resources,” said Erica Gerson, a Board Member of the EMS organization
and a reform rabbi.
“In addition, it means
so much to see the humanity of Israel at its best within our organization,” she
added. “It is more than pluralism, it is really about humanity.”
Echoing the same
sentiments were also two Hatzalah volunteers, Batya Widawsky, a religious
Jewish woman and a resident of the West Bank, and Nazir Aweida, a Muslim man
and a resident of East Jerusalem.
“When we are at an
emergency scene, religion doesn’t matter, we work all together, people of all
faiths, to save people of all faiths,” said Widawsky.
“My family is very proud
of what I’m doing and people in my neighborhood are happy to have an EMS first
respondent,” Aweida highlighted. “As a Muslim, the Koran teaches me to help
everyone in need because saving a live is the highest value.”
“This is a message that
I also want to teach my children, to volunteer and to give more and more under
the umbrella of Hatzalah for the people of our country,” he concluded.
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