By Stephen Epstein
The lights are bright, people are coming and going, but everyone has a destination and everyone has a purpose. My wife Alison and I were sitting in the waiting room of the emergency department at Barzilai Hospital in Ashkelon last night. We were watching a tragedy unfold before our eyes.
About an hour earlier, we were both in our apartment in Ashkelon. Alison was working on the design of a website; I was on the phone with a foreign journalist, who was looking for someone in Ashkelon to interview. As we were talking, the Red Alert app opened a window on my computer screen, showing me the locations of the latest rockets. I pointed out to the journalist that the sound she was hearing was the warning of rockets, and I started naming the locations that were displayed on my screen; Sderot, Nir Am, Alumim, Nachal Oz… I did not have to wait for the words “Ashkelon: to appear, I heard the dreaded siren from outside our window and immediately hung up and rushed to the shelter in our apartment. It only took 35 seconds for the first rocket to hit. It was loud. It was close. Another one slammed into a building, then another and another. The sounds were not the Iron Dome taking out the missiles, we heard the rockets hitting nearby houses and apartments at random. Civilians. War Crimes.
We opened the windows and saw smoke rising from several locations near our apartment, then a fire. Alison recognized the location and we knew immediately that it was right next door to our friends’ house. He had heard the crash and went outside to discover that the house next door received a direct hit. Our friend forced open a gate, crossed over a burning mat and helped to pull a child out of the house. He banged his head, blood on his arms, hands, legs and forehead. His wife, who had been visiting their daughter in a nearby city, called and asked us to take him to the hospital.
On our way to Barzilai Hospital, we see a field in the national park is on fire. The police have blocked the road. A cop sends us on a one-way street with cars coming the other way. We get to the emergency entrance and there are dozens of first responders, reporters, photographers and videographers. Our friend is seen by a nurse in triage and is taken to a bed. We wait, and watch.
The large TV screen in the waiting room tells the story of what is going on around the country, but we did not need the TV to tell us. At that point, we are living it live.
I ask staff about the casualties — mostly minor, some serious — a five-year old boy from Sderot. Tzeva Adom sirens go off and the first responders and media come in for the protection the building offers. The siren ends and everyone goes to their destination. EMTs come in with new patients, a hospital spokesperson is huddled with reporters. Women with notepads consulting the names and numbers…everyone has a purpose.
Our friend is in good spirits, but is in pain.
A group of people are gathered around a woman, maybe an aunt or other relative of the boy. A man in a hospital gown with an unlit cigarette, women from Sderot wearing bright yellow vests, officials of some sort. Someone speaks with the woman. Her scream pierces the waiting room. Everyone knows. It is not the scream of fear, it is the scream when a person receives the worst possible news that a person can hear. Silence afterwards. Even the journalists stay away from her.
The news websites do not carry the child’s name. The father is not here and does not know that his son has died. The mother is in serious condition.
We wait, the lights are bright. The staff from ZAKA arrive. ZAKA, which stands for Zihuy Korbanot Ason (Disaster Victim Identification), is made up mostly of Haredi Jews. When there is a piguah (terror attack), traffic accident or any disaster, these volunteers help identify the victims and ensure that not a drop of blood or any body part remain behind. ZAKA workers, like Chevra Kadisha volunteers, perform the ultimate chesed. Now they are here to prepare the body of the child so that the father will not see his son in the state that he is in from the hit.
Another rocket volley and everyone outside the doors comes in. We wait until the barrage is over and they go out.
A black sedan with red and blue emergency lights pulls up. Men in uniform get out, one seems to be more important than the others.
They gather outside the entrance to a room. Everyone in this drama is waiting. Waiting for the father and what comes next. We still don’t know the child’s name.
We are watching life in this waiting room. It is not like what I saw in my six years of working at Toronto General Hospital or Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children. Alison and I are sitting 10 meters away from the room where the boy’s body waits.
These are our people, lives taken by terrorists. Rockets fired indiscriminately into civilian populations. The world tells us to de-escalate. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, while confirming that Israel has the right to defend itself from rocket attacks, pronounces “All sides need to de-escalate, reduce tensions, take practical steps to calm things down”.
Here we go again. Back to the false equivalence idea that refuses to pin the blame on the Palestinian terrorists, the true offenders. It is a comparison between apples and oranges. Israel, a true democracy vs. a terrorist organization. While we have had four elections in two years, Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority is in his 16th year of a four-year term and just cancelled the elections, again. Apples and oranges.
President Biden, are you out of your mind? You allow your Secretary of State to say such things? If you would have been a politician during WWII, would you have told the Allies to “de-escalate, reduce tensions, take practical steps to calm things down”? Are you aware of what goes on outside of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue? Who is running the show?
I keep on thinking about how the Biden administration plans to restore $235 million in US aid to Palestinians, including $150 million to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA). UNWRA is the organization that according to a recent report, has been found to include hate-filled material that is taught to the over 300,000 students studying in hundreds of UNRWA-run schools across the Gaza Strip, West Bank and Jerusalem.
The report says that UNWRA schools have taught an encouragement of violence, jihad, terrorism and martyrdom, rejection of peace, intolerance, disrespect and demonization, libel and conspiracy, conflict-oriented discourse, erasure of Israel and erasure of Jews.
Americans are financing the hatred that drives the terrorists to build and launch missiles at civilians. Shame on President Biden for softening the US stance against the corrupt Palestinian leadership. Restoring aid did not bring them closer to peace, it brought this 5-year-old boy closer to his grave.
Brendan O’Neill, editor of Spiked, asks in an article, Why won’t Israelis let themselves be killed?
He sums it up, “This is the question anti-Israel campaigners have never been able to answer: why do they treat Israel so differently to every other nation on Earth? Why is it child-killing bloodlust when Israel takes military action but not when Turkey or India do? Why must we rush to the streets to set light to the Israel flag but never the Saudi flag, despite Saudi Arabia’s unconscionable war on Yemen? Why is it only ‘wrong’ or at worst ‘horrific’ when Britain or America drop bombs in the Middle East but Nazism when Israel fires missiles into Gaza? Why do you merely oppose the military action of some states but you hate Israel, viscerally, publicly, loudly?”
Our friend is taken for x-rays and more tests. Our medical system kicks into high gear and is dealing with the emergency situation in the south.
The father arrives and is ushered in to see his son’s body. Everyone is silent.
I am sitting next to a young woman, a hospital employee. She is holding it together and I ask her if she has kids; “no, I am not married.” Her voice tells me that she is aching inside, but she shows the resilience you see in Israelis that make us go on, continue to fight for what is ours, despite the hate. I don’t know if she votes left or right, there are no politics in this emergency waiting room.
I talk with the ZAKA guys. Meir talks with me in English until he realizes that I speak Hebrew. Avraham is from Flatbush and speaks with a soft voice. After they prepared the body, they brought fruit trays to the medical staff. They have seen the worst scenes a person can imagine and they now walk around the nurses’ stations ensuring that the tired staff have something to eat. Strength to go on.
I ask a police officer why there are all these officers here. He explains that the mother is a social worker and works with them.
People are speaking in hushed voices, sensitive to the family, to the situation.
The journalists are outside waiting for more stories; results of patients who were brought in. Briefings from the hospital staff on the number of casualties and their condition. I see women with notepads and people with microphones.
The mother is a patient in serious condition, hooked up to machines, people whisper about her with sadness. These are our people; this is the price of defending our own country. We have no other choice. We need to go on. We need to live. At this point I am aching inside. Jewish lives matter and we care, because no one else will. We have learned the hard way that we have to defend ourselves. We can’t rely on the US, our closest friend. Obama’s many actions proved that. Friends can be fickle.
More booms. They sound close. They will be taking the body out soon. Family is gathering. It looks like the father is going to visit his wife who is being hospitalized in another section. Avraham explains that any blood or body parts are buried with the body. He tells me that if the bombardments continue, the boy might have to be buried quickly.
It is almost five hours and we have seen just one family’s tragedy unfold. There are so many others. There are many more deaths in Gaza, which is a mere six miles away. That does not make me happy, but until the Palestinian leaders reject the path of bloodshed and accept that this was, is and will always be our land, we have little to discuss.
As long as the world media and politicians and their governments talk about the “cycle of violence” this will not stop. As long as the US sends pallets of cash to Iran, a state sponsor of terror and money to UNWRA and the Palestinian Authority, this will not stop. And, as long as members of the mainstream media adhere to a double moral standard for Israel, compared to other countries, this will not stop.
Our friend is released, we drive him home. The city is quiet.
The name of the little boy is Ido Avigal.
Say his name.
Listen to the recording of the rocket attack that sent our friend to help his neighbor.
