Most people
who work for charity or an aid project have no reservations about being open
about it, but a group of young Israelis are putting their lives in danger to
deliver aid and medical assistance to Syrians.
Israeli
doctors and aid workers are doing their work in secret because of the animosity
between Syria and Israel - when they visit refugee camps on the border of Syria
they have to change their clothes in order to blend in and have to be smuggled
in and out.
Syria does
not recognize Israel and its citizens are banned from going there, which has
meant that Israel has been anxious to stay out of the Syrian civil war,
officially not doing anything for the over two million refugees who have fled.
A small number of injured Syrians are being treated in Israel's hospitals, but
that, on the surface, is the extent of Israeli help for the victims of the
civil war.
However,
one Israeli non-profit organisation has been working under the radar since 2005
around the world and in the last two years its attention has focused on Syria,
providing up to 670 tonnes of food, 300,000 dry meals, 70 tonnes of sanitation
items and 20 tonnes of medication.
The aid
doesn't stop there. The group, called "IL 4 Syrians," has been
sneaking post-trauma care specialists into conflict zones to help.
A
clandestine mission
Up to 1,200
Israelis work for the organization and wish to remain anonymous in order to
protect their lives and their work. The volunteers, who have completed military
service, come from a variety of backgrounds and work in four fields - medical,
post-trauma care, mass feeding and rescue. They train Syrian nurses and
community workers to work in the refugee camps.
Syrian
refugees need all the help they
can get
|
"We do
want to help organizations who are not currently receiving official help from
Israel," she told DW. "We're not invited in - we've worked in
Pakistan, Sudan, Iraq, Indonesia and for all those years we were never invited
in - we go in and out to get the work done," she said.
No
directors, names or contacts are listed on the group's website, simply a
statement saying that "we focus on countries that lack diplomatic
relations with Israel, transcending differences." They argue that the
sanctity of human life should be respected as part of Jewish tradition and
culture. "This applies to Israel's toughest and cruelest enemies as well
as anyone else."
Gila said
that when Syrians find out that Israelis are helping them, their reactions are
mixed. She said she recently met with a group of Syrian political leaders and
eventually disclosed she was Israeli. "To continually lie is a burden and
it's a heavy one - it's against my values."
Gila told
the Syrian leaders the aid she was facilitating into Syria largely came from
Israelis, and they were shocked.
"One
of them stood up and shouted at me saying 'you're not even my friend, you're my
enemy.' He almost broke the table."
She said
the men decided to cast a vote on whether they could still work with Gila and
her team - the result is that they now work together on aid for Syrians.
In another
case she arranged for a Syrian man's son to receive life-saving heart surgery
in Jerusalem. "It was a very emotional time for him, he was initially
nervous about Israel. He showed me a cellphone photo of the aid distribution
boxes he had been helping distribute in Syria and I pulled out an identical
photo showing him I was behind that aid - he said he was amazed Israelis were
helping when their own President (Bashar al-) Assad wasn't protecting
them."
Covert
treatment
Near the
Golan Heights, scores of patients have been covertly brought across the border
from Syria to be treated by Israeli doctors. The hospitals rarely reveal how
the person arrived at the hospital, usually saying Israeli Defense Force
personnel brought them.
Some of the
IL4 Syrians members have performed life-saving operations in field surgery
tents they have sent to conflict zones that are designed to be as sterile as
possible. They have supplied emergency medical aid kits that include IVs,
saline, bandages, disposable wound treatment, sewings kits for surgery and disinfectant
liquid and ointment.
The group has provided medical assistance to Syrians |
She said
the group distributed 500 digital cameras to Syrians prior to the chemical
weapons attack and she believes some of the photos the world saw came from
those cameras.
The group
has encountered significant challenges while operating undercover, with the
Muslim Brotherhood refusing to allow some people to access aid that has been
distributed at mosques.
Gila said
that many of her colleagues have families and she understand the risks faced by
those standing up to the Muslim Brotherhood or the Syrian government.
"There
is no smart way to deal with fear. But the choice to do this, to feel that you
are in the right place at the right time and that you are helping make a
significant change, is so rewarding."
No comments:
Post a Comment