(posted on August 27th, 2017, by Aboud Dandachi)

The Times of Israel published a remarkable article by “Lieutenant Colonel A”, the commander of the IDF’s incredible efforts to provide aid and medical assistance to Syrian victims of the conflict in Syria, and the night it all began.

The colonel recounts the very moment the first group of 25 Syrian children crossed into the Golan to be received by soldiers from the IDF’s famed Golani brigade.

“It was surreal to see a mother holding her little daughter’s hands, almost collapsing from weakness. Instinctively, one of the Golani soldiers on the scene noticed the woman stumble and leapt towards her, gathering the child up in his arms”

There is something highly symbolic in an Israeli soldier instinctively displaying such humanity to a Syrian mother and child fleeing atrocities committed by the Syrian army. Indeed, alone among the region and world’s powers, Israel is the only country that has not sent in proxies to kill Syrians, but has directed its efforts towards saving Syrian lives, rather than adding to the killing.

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Illustrative photo of Rambam Hospital staff (TOI)

Just when the vicious wars of the Middle East causes one to dismay of the nature of human beings in general, someone in the region rises to perform an act of compassion that is not just magnificent, but absolutely miraculous. For the sake of an ill five year old Syrian child, Israel performed the modern day equivalent of laying hands on the sick and curing them of their afflictions.

The Times of Israel ran a report on what will go down in history as one of the most amazing acts of compassion in living memory. At Haifa’s Rambam Hospital, the medical staff treated a Syrian child with severe injuries received from being caught in a crossfire between two warring Syrian militias. Rambam hospital has over the past few years been one of the major Israeli hospitals treating Syrians wounded in the war.

What gave this particular child’s story an extraordinary aspect is what happened after her treatment for her wounds. Doctors at the hospital discovered that the child also suffered from cancer. The doctors’ own medical ethics would not allow them to release the child from their care until she had been treated.

To this end, Israel’s security services helped to locate one of the girl’s relatives for a bone marrow transplant. And locate one they did. In another Arab country, officially at war with Israel.

And they bought that relative to Israel to save the child’s life.

Bought. The Relative. To Israel.

If the Arab world in general wasn’t already in an advanced state of moral and ethical decay, this one act of miraculous compassion on the part of Israel’s medical and security teams should have dramatically changed perceptions and attitudes overnight, and not just regarding Arabs’ attitude towards Jews, but towards one another as well.

It is said that darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. For years, the vicious terror group Daesh have enjoyed widespread media attention through deeds of savage barbarity, and the actions of the medical staff at Rambam is the light that has the capacity to drown out the darkness created by Daesh and groups like it.

In the days of scripture, prophets would change the attitudes of entire societies by being shinning examples and paradigms of compassion and kindness. It would take a miracle to drag the Arab world out of its self destructive nature, but Rambam hospital and the Israeli security teams that helped save the unnamed Syrian child have delivered just such a miracle, that in normal times should have been the spark that finally leads to some introspective soul searching among Arabs, not just regarding their relations with Israel, but towards one another.

Evil versus good. As a Syrian, over the past few years I have seen my own country fall apart. As an Arab, I have seen five other Arab countries follow suit. Israelis might not have any oil, but Israeli society has something much more valuable and precious; boundless compassion, even towards those who regard it as an adversary. Day after day, Israelis are proving that their country is the exact moral opposite of the depravity that is Daesh and Daesh-like group, a contrast as stark as light and day.

It cannot be said enough, Syrians owe a debt a gratitude to Israelis. No Arab country has ever gone to the lengths that Israel did to save a Syrian life. Once again, thank you Am Israel.

To read the original Times of Israel article, click here.

An improvised Syrian refugee camp on the Israeli-Lebanese border, closer to Israeli settlements than to any Lebanese communities.

The Jewish Press website posted an article and video by Israel’s Channel One News, of improvised Syrian refugee camps just opposite the Israeli border with Lebanon. The refugee camps were set up opposite the kibbutzim of Dan, Dafna, and Ma’ayan Baruch, far away from any Lebanese towns or population centers, but very close to the Israeli border. As the report noted, “the new camps are closer to Israeli communities than they are to their Lebanese neighbors”.

It should come as little surprise that Syrian refugees would feel safer living near the Israeli border than in some Lebanese communities. In dozens of Lebanese towns and areas, apartheid-like curfews and restrictions are imposed on the movement and presence of Syrians. In the past, members of the Hizbollah terror group have kidnapped defected Syrian soldiers and activists and handed them over to the Syrian regime’s mukhabarat. Syrian refugee camps near the border with Syria itself have often been attacked and burned down by the Lebanese army.

Syrian refugees elsewhere in Lebanon are vulnerable to horrendous exploitation. In early April 2016, a massive forced-sex and prostitution ring in north Beirut was discovered and dismantled, its victims included over 75 Syrian women and girls, a scale of sexual-slavery comparable to the worst outrages committed by the so-called Islamic State.

It is little wonder that many Syrian refugees in Lebanon look upon the Israeli border as a place of sanctuary. Often, it is far safer for a Syrian refugee to be living next door to an Israeli kibbutz than to live in a Lebanese town or city.

To read the original Jewish News article, click here.

With the brutal Syrian conflict entering its sixth year, the plight of civilians trapped by the war inside the country has grown increasingly more desperate, with entire neighborhoods and towns besieged by the Syrian Army and its Hizbollah & Iranian terrorist allies.

International efforts to provide relief and assistance to civilians trapped by the war have amounted to little; UN aid to areas affected by the conflict has been less than a trickle, the vast amount having been appropriated by the regime to distribute among its own supporters, with very little aid actually reaching besieged communities. Time and again, diplomatic squabbling and the UN’s own desire to avoid alienating the Assad regime have worked to strangle any meaningful assistance to civilians who have endured years of siege and starvation tactics, in addition to indiscriminate bombings of hospitals, schools, aid clinics and bakeries, first from the regime’s airforce and more recently at the hands of Russian warplanes.

And the “anti-ISIS” coalition currently running bombing raids all over Syria haven’t been much better. Apparently, the entire combined air-forces of the “coalition” cannot manage to airdrop life saving basic supplies such as bread and water to civilians who have been besieged by the regime for years.

And yet where the UN and the “anti-ISIS” coalition have so abjectly failed, a group of a couple of hundred Israeli civilian aid workers have succeeded, managing the superhuman and heroic feat of transporting life saving food, survival kits and even medical equipment for entire clinics to deep within Syria, assisting communities which have borne the brunt of the joint regime-Hizbollah-Iranian-Russian onslaught.

Israel21C published an article extensively detailing the astounding efforts of IL4Syria, an Israeli NGO of around 200 Israeli volunteers, and who have been providing aid to Syrian civilians affected by the war since the earliest days of the conflict. From providing such basic items as food, baby powder and medical supplies, IL4Syria’s efforts evolved as the conflict grew more brutal.

The list of assistance provided by IL4Syria is remarkable;supplies for 17 field hospitals, the training of Syrian civil defense volunteers,thousands of chemical suits to help doctors treat patients affected by the repeated regime chemical weapons attacks on civilian areas, 3D printers to print out prosthetic limbs. More assistance has been provided to besieged Syrians by the small group of Israeli volunteers than the entire UN has managed, with its hopelessly broken system of appeasement of and collusion with the Assad dictatorship.

The dangers these Israeli volunteers risk cannot be overstated. The Syrian war is by far and away the most brutal conflict in decades, with much of the country overrun by Hizbollah, Iranian mercenaries, ISIS, Al-Qaeda and other terror groups in open hostility to Israel. And yet the hundreds and hundreds of thousands of Syrian civilians who have benefited from IL4Syria‘s assistance would undoubtedly not be alive today were it not for that aid.

History will record that while the UN dithered for years and the “anti-ISIS” coalition remained oblivious to the ordeal of Syrians trapped by the war, it was Israeli volunteers who provided life saving assistance to civilians in need. The scope of the efforts, and the dangers the volunteers risked to deliver them, are truly heroic. And without a doubt, history will regard the efforts and work of the Israeli volunteers of IL4Syria to help Syrians trapped by the war, as one of the greatest feats of humanitarian assistance ever carried out.

To read the entire Israel21c article, click here.