Thanks to top billing on Sky News, the whole world knows that Israel's Medical and Rescue operatives were among the first to help survivors of the Haiti earthquake. What's more, a woman whose baby was delivered with the team's help has offered the best possible thanks by naming her new-born "ISRAEL"!
Wow, that means a kid born in hell in the Caribbean has the same name as my maternal grandfather - an Anglo-Jewish gentleman of Lithuanian stock. May be one day 'Baby Israel' will have a chance to visit the Holy Land and thank his rescuers in person.
Meanwhile, the Israeli delegation landed in the capital of Port-Au-Prince on Friday evening last and established an operation centre in a soccer field near the airport.
Two teams, comprising search and rescue personnel and canine operators from the IDF canine unit were sent on rescue missions. The first team was sent to the Haiti UN H.Q. to assist in rescuing survivors.
The IDF Medical and Rescue Team also set up a field hospital in Port-Au-Prince and is treating patients there. Personnel are preparing to receive ambulances evacuating injured children from the different disaster struck areas and dozens of truckloads of medical and logistical equipment have already been unloaded.
On Saturday - the Jewish Sabbath - even the most religiously Orthodox among the the Israelis - buckled down to the rescue operation as Jewish tradition insists that saving life supersedes even the most stringent Sabbath laws. Their efforts included the rescue of a senior income tax official from his government office building which had collapsed in the earthquake. The man had been trapped underneath the rubble for four days.
The field hospital team includes 40 doctors, 25 nurses, paramedics, a pharmacy, a children's ward, a radiology department, an intensive care unit, an emergency room, two operating rooms, a surgical department, an internal department and a maternity ward. The hospital can treat about 500 patients daily and will also perform preliminary surgery. The Israelis are scheduled to stay in Haiti for at least two weeks.
Meanwhile, the ZAKA humanitarian voluntary rescue unit in Haiti pulled eight students alive from a collapsed university building The six-man team (four from Israel and two from Mexico) had arrived in Haiti aboard a Mexican air force Hercules immediately after completing their work in recovery and identification in the Mexico City helicopter crash.
On arrival, the ZAKA members were dispatched to the collapsed eight-storey university building where cries could be heard from the trapped students. After 38 hours of work around the clock with the Mexican military delegation and other Jewish volunteers from Mexico, the ZAKA volunteers succeeded in pulling all eight students alive from the rubble.
Amid the stench and chaos, the ZAKA delegation took time out to recite Shabbat prayers - a surreal sight of ultra-orthodox 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.
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 them to unload a planeload of food and medical equipment.
The Israeli medical professionals of IsraAID - F.I.R.S.T. travelled 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.
msniw
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