A paramedic who works for Israel’s emergency medical response service Magen David Adom described the tragedies and horrors of a nation at war with vicious jihadis.
Both the Jewish inhabitants of Israel and its other ethnic and religious groups -- including Muslims and Christians, Bedouins and Druze -- are in constant danger of death amidst the ongoing war triggered by Hamas’s heinous Oct. 7 attacks. Aryeh Myers, who is a paramedic and international relations lead for Magen David Adom (MDA), talked about the terrorist rocket attack that tragically killed twelve Druze children in northern Israel, and how Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists specifically target civilians and medical response personnel, in an exclusive interview with PJ Media.
Myers began by summing up the details of the horrible July 27 attack, attributed to terrorist Hezbollah, that left 12 Druze children dead and some 50 people injured. “On Saturday, early evening, around 6pm, about a hundred rockets were fired into Israel from Lebanon by the terrorist organization, one of which exploded in the village of Majdal Shams,” Myers said. “It's a Druze village … [the rocket] exploded on a soccer field that was filled with kids on a Saturday afternoon. And unfortunately, 12 of those children were killed, children and teenagers. 12 of them were killed.”
As usual, the first responders were from Magen David Adom, an organization that includes medical, disaster, ambulance, and blood bank personnel, including many volunteers. MDA “responded immediately to that call, sending first responders and EMTs, paramedics who actually live within that community, doctors as well, who recently undertook some training with Magen David Adom, and had MDA equipment with them as part of preparation for foreign escalation across the region,” Myers told me. “We’re preparing for anything that might happen anywhere across the country, ensuring that we have medical responders available on a community basis … We had several people who were already in that community, who were the first to respond to this awful tragedy.”
Heartbreakingly, one first responder found his child among the casualties. As Myers told me, “And one of the first people who was on the scene was actually a Magen David Adom EMT, who works in that region, and unfortunately, he found that his daughter was one of the casualties of this terrible attack.” The Druze are an Arab religious minority living in northern Israel and other Middle Eastern countries.
Myers emphasized that “if we're talking about a war that started on October 7, it is still ongoing to this day. There have been rocket attacks, rocket strikes in Israel, by Hamas in Gaza and by Hezbollah in the north [in] Lebanon, by the Houthis from Yemen, several fronts that Israel has been facing simultaneously as these are ongoing attacks, daily attacks, against the civilian population here in the state of Israel.” Myers believes that non-Israelis do not fully understand how constant, how devastating the Islamic terrorist attacks are in Israel.
He highlighted also how lacking some international media coverage is when it comes to covering the fact that individuals from many faiths and ethnic groups are threatened by the terrorism against Israel. “Despite the fact that Israel is the Jewish state, you have to realize there's a very significant minority in this country. About 20% of the population is not Jewish,” he said. “We're talking about Muslims and Druze and Christians.” Indeed, as Myers noted, Israel is “the only country in the Middle East where the Christian population is still growing, is still able to … practice their religion freely.”
While the Islamic terrorists undoubtedly hate Israel for being Jewish, the jihadis certainly do not refrain from killing Christians or even Muslims in Israel. “The rest of the population that lives here and the attack that happened back in April with the Iranian attack, when they sent 350 missiles into into Israel, the most serious injury was, was a little girl from from the Bedouin community, from the Muslim Bedouin community in the south of Israel,” Myers emphasized. “And when, when Israel is attacked, it is the whole of Israel.”
MDA has to be prepared constantly to deal with the bloody and devastating effects of terrorist attacks. “It's very important to understand that this country and the people within this country may well be resilient, but we are under constant attack, and as the National EMS organization, we have to be permanently prepared for that, our EMTs and our paramedics and our Blood Services staff, the dispatch staff, everybody is ready,” Myers told me. “Everybody is prepared.”
In fact, at the time Myers spoke with me, MDA was conducting “a three day very intensive, very extensive drill to prepare for what may happen in the future, to prepare for any escalation. And our people are very, very dedicated to their jobs. And we have to be there for the people … across the state of Israel, whoever they are.” MDA includes individuals who, like the population of Israel, are from many backgrounds, but all are “proud to wear the Magen David Adom uniform and to be part of the national organization.” According to Myers, “90% of our workforce … are actually volunteers.”
Check back on PJ Media for more from Aryeh Myers on the MDA’s work, Hamas’s war crimes, the precautions that have to be taken when dealing with terrorists (including bullet-proof ambulances), and how Hamas terrorists specifically target medical first responders to prevent them from helping the injured and dying. You can also visit MDA’s website.
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