ZAKA In haiti: 'Like stories of the Holocaust'

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Written by Samuel Sokol

Wednesday, 20 January 2010 19:00

Israeli operations in the earthquake-struck island nation of Haiti have been ongoing for the past several days, with the participation of delegations from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Israeli Defense Forces, and Jewish non-governmental organizations.

According to statistics provided to the media by the Haitian government, somewhere between 150,000 and 200,000 people have died as a result of the earthquake, which registered over 7.0 on the Richter scale.

The Israeli delegation landed in the capital of Port-au-Prince last Friday evening and has situated itself in a soccer field near the airport. The field hospital that IDF forces have set up there is the only fully equipped medical facility in the area, with a medical lab, pharmacy, and X-ray center, and is currently operating at full capacity. The IDF spokesman's office has posted video footage of Israeli operations in Haiti online at the idfnadesk channel on YouTube.com.

As of Tuesday, over 104 surgeries had been performed at the hospital and 300 patients had been admitted. At least 7 babies have been delivered at the facility, two of whom were premature.

One woman, pregnant eight months, arrived at the field hospital accompanied by a friend. After IDF majors Dr. Shir Bar and Efrat Shrir helped her give birth to a healthy baby boy, the woman named her newborn Israel as a sign of gratitude.

Another newborn was brought into the hospital suffering from severe hemorrhaging. An Israeli doctor examined the patient and on finding that they had matching blood types immediately donated his own blood to the three-day-old, saving the child's life.

A second wave of relief personnel, headed by the OC Home Front Command's Major General Yair Golan, left Israel Monday night for Haiti. Golan's team includes the Director General of the Ministry of Health, Dr. Eytan Chai-Am, and the Surgeon General, Brig. Gen. Nachman Ash.

The delegation brought medical supplies and additional equipment and assessed the logistical needs of IDF teams on the ground.

Nine doctors from Los Angeles have arrived in Haiti and are currently working alongside their Israeli counterparts in the field hospital. In addition, an eight-person delegation from Colombia has been integrated into the staff alongside several other international volunteers operating with the Israelis.

IsraAID, the Israel forum for international humanitarian aid, has also sent a medical delegation to contribute to the relief efforts. IsraAID doctors traveled 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.

"The scenes in the hospital were horrible. We saw people everywhere on the floors in the building and outside, people with amputations and bone-deep wounds, hundreds of them-the size of the catastrophe is unbelievable. Until we came, all of the injured were treated by only one local doctor, and we were the first foreign backup team to operate in the hospital," said nurse Sheva Cohen from Kibbutz Ein Yahav in the Negev.

An additional 12- man IsraAID team is expected to arrive in Haiti this weekend. IsraAID personnel are also treating over 2,000 previously unattended victims in a local stadium.

"The situation is horrible; there is no doctor in sight; people are hungry and wounded. There are constant waves of injured people coming to the stadium," said Alan Schneider, a delegation member.

While the Israeli doctors are working to save injured survivors, emergency rescue squads from both the IDF's Home Front Command and the Israeli non-governmental organization ZAKA have been combing the rubble, together with American and European teams, to uncover survivors before time runs out.

Dispatched to Haiti from Mexico, where they took part in recovery operations following the crash of billionaire philanthropist Moshe Saba's helicopter, ZAKA operatives immediately joined in the rescue efforts, pulling eight students out of the ruins of a collapsed university building.

Mati Goldstein, the head of the ZAKA international rescue team in Port-au-Prince, e-mailed ZAKA headquarters in Jerusalem. According to Goldstein, it was "a Shabbat from hell. Everywhere, the acrid smell of bodies hangs in the air. It's just like the stories we are told of the Holocaust-thousands of bodies everywhere. You have to understand that the situation is true madness, and the more time passes, there are more and more bodies, in numbers that cannot be grasped. It is beyond comprehension."

Amid the stench and chaos, the ZAKA delegation took time out to recite Shabbat prayers-a surreal sight of hareidi 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 their tallitot.

Israel has also sent a team of police specialists from the Division of Identification and Forensic Science. The team assisted a delegation from the Netherlands in identifying Dutch victims on Tuesday.

On Tuesday night, two children were found alive by a joint team of New York firefighters and police officers after nearly a week underground; they were transferred to the Israeli facilities, where they were reported as being in stable condition.

Two crews led by the commanders of the Home Front Command search-and-rescue unit are operating in the disaster-stricken area in effective cooperation with the local residents.

According to Brig. General Shalom Ben-Aryeh, the commander of the IDF delegation in Haiti, the search for survivors in the ruins will be stopped. The Home Front Command forces operating in Haiti as part of the IDF delegation will stay prepared, and will only be called to action when they receive a precise report on the discovery of a person buried under the rubble at a specific place.

Israeli President Shimon Peres spoke to members of the IDF humanitarian aid delegation by a video call which was broadcast through the loudspeaker system at the IDF field hospital. Peres thanked IDF personnel stationed in Haiti, stating that they show "the IDF at its best, as an army not only for the defense of Israel but for the defense of humanity. It does not matter where a disaster hits-you are the first organized response to help."