The Bottom Line - 11 April 2003
The Israel Fire and Rescue Services has been designated a top priority by Keren Hayesod and forms part of the framework of the 2003 Emergency Campaign.
Saturday, March 2nd, 2002, 7: 15 p.m. A homicide terrorist blows himself up outside a synagogue in the Beit Yisrael neighbourhood, right next to a group of women waiting with their baby carriages for their husbands to finish their evening prayers. The first on the scene, as always, is the local Fire and Rescue Service. The commander of Jerusalem’s Fire and Rescue Service, Moshe Suissa, has been on the force since 1975. He has participated in hundreds of rescue operations, and has witnessed every terrorist attack in Jerusalem. But he has never seen one as horrendous as the Beit Yisrael bombing.
“I was the first on the scene,” he recalls. “There were ten dead. Three of the bodies were literally on fire, including a baby, about a year old…. It was too shocking.”
For the past two and a half years, since the outbreak of the current wave of Palestinian violence, the Fire and Rescue Services have been on the front line in the war against terror, providing the initial response to all terror incidents with the role of extinguishing fires, rescuing victims from the wreckages of buses, cafes and restaurants after terrorist bomb attacks.
In addition, the Home Front Command has given the Fire and Rescue Services an additional responsibility with regard to Israel’s preparations for the possibility of an Iraqi attack (or an attack by a terrorist organisation working in co-operation with Iraq).
In response to the dire needs of the Israel Fire and Rescue Services, Keren Hayesod has undertaken to help them upgrade the required facilities, and provide them with essential equipment such as fire-proof suits, special protective suits against hazardous materials, fire engines and fire-fighting gear.
Israel is in crisis. A total of 1.2 million people in Israel – almost a fifth of the population, live in poverty. This includes close to 27% of children and 17% of new immigrant families. The statistics are frightening.
Keren Hayesod, and the local Israel United Appeal thus also serve Israeli society by establishing and maintaining vital social services. Early Childhood Day Care Centres, After-School Tutorial Centres and Youth Villages for youth at risk form part of the essential infrastructure that assists Israelis and new immigrants in particular.
The war in Iraq rages on, with Israel under threat both externally and internally, our work becomes all that more urgent. As we approach Pesach, the Festival of Redemption and Freedom, and see that we have emerged from great trials and horrors in the past, we pray that our final Redemption will come soon and that there will be peace throughout the world as we sing “Next Year in Jerusalem” at our Seder tables.