Israel Matzav

A beautiful piece on the IDF in Japan

You're hearing about them less this time, partly because Japan is a much more advanced society than Haiti, and partly because most of the work they're doing on the ground is not minute-to-minute-life-and-death surgery (unfortunately, many of the victims were swept out to sea). But the IDF is the only one of more than 40 delegations who volunteered to come to Japan to help with the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami who actually showed up. And they're performing surgery in a country that has a law forbidding foreigners from performing surgery! Here's the story from the Toronto Star (usually a strongly anti-Israel newspaper) (Hat Tip: NY Nana).

Arriving a couple weeks after a four-storey wall of water swept away more than half of Minami-Sanriku’s 16,000 people, the 50-member medical team isn’t dealing with emergencies.

Instead they’ve set up a clinic with expertise not easily found in rural Japan — gynecology, urology, pediatrics, ophthalmology. Given the gasoline shortage, an obstetrical team has been visiting pregnant women in the scattered emergency shelters, ultrasound in hand.

One of Merin’s colleagues, Dr. David Raveh, writes movingly in his blog about the director of the town’s old-age home who appeared at the clinic with her Japanese doctor, two weeks after the receding wave sucked at her legs.

“What strength she had, to overcome the wild shearing force of waves, holding onto a pole,” he writes.

She thought nothing of the cuts on her legs, tending instead to the elderly residents. Now her jaw and neck were tense, her doctor told him.

“I cut him short after his second sentence, my eyes widening. Tetanus, I said decisively to her doctor.”

To each of these patients, the Israelis’ presence must offer some solace. But the greater work being done is diplomatic, Merin says.

“There was a law in Japan that stated non-Japanese people were not allowed to treat the Japanese on their ground,” Merin says. “Hopefully, this will open their minds, that countries should assist one another.”

The Israeli mission follows the Jewish concept of tikkun olam — to repair the world. But Merin has his own personal reasons for helping. In 1942, the Nazis entered a Polish village and loaded the Jews onto boxcars bound for the gas chambers at Auschwitz. Sensing their impending doom, one couple slipped their 8-year-old son off the train. A Catholic woman living in one village over hid him in her cupboard for 18 months.

“Once the war ended, he got out and eventually went to Israel. He got married and had three sons. I’m the second,” said Merin, 50, who has four children of his own now.

I wonder if any of the countries pushing for a 'Palestinian state' that has a theology that includes replacing Israel has thought about who will help their country the next time the disaster strikes and 'Palestine' - God forbid - sits in the middle of the Levant.

Labels: earthquake, Japan, tsunami

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 5:28 PM