Pope Francis was presented with a silver miniature ambucycle by Eli Beer, Founder and President of United Hatzalah to commemorate an actual ambucycle that was dedicated in honor of his visit to the Israel. The meeting took place at the Heichal Shlomo event which was hosted by the Chief Rabbis of Israel.
Eli Beer, United Hatzalah president and founder explained the significance of the organization’s holy work, which saves thousands of lives of Jews, Muslims and Christians each year. By using ambucycles casualties could be reached and assisted within minutes, the life-saving United Hatzalah model which he stressed could be copied anywhere else in the world.
Pope Francis was particularly moved to learn that Ichud Hatzalah had just started a chapter in Argentina and has plans to expand internationally wherever possible. The Pope was visibly moved by the dedication of a new ambucycle in his honor, which was donated by Isi Danon of South Africa and will be immediately be deployed on the streets of Jerusalem.
At the special event, Chief Rabbi David Lau also commended the work of United Hatzalah specifically during the Second Intifada, when Jerusalem was hit by a wave of deadly suicide attacks, moments away from Heichal Shlomo where the event was held.
“The Pope seemed very interested to hear about how United Hatzalah saves the lives of men, women and children, Jews, Muslims and Christians on a daily basis. He was visibly moved by the donation of an ambucycle in his honor. I explained that the more ambucycles we have, the quicker our response time will be, and that we are now trying to get our response time down to 90 seconds, and save even more precious lives.”
(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
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5 Responses
this ‘man’ may well be from the chesidu imus haolam.
Kabdei’hu v’chashdei’hu.
IH only came into existence after the second intifada, oh those pesky facts….
Until and during the second intifada there were lots of small “Hatzola” chapters which decided to unite *after* all attacks started to stop and with it foreign donations dried up.
(To be exact they united after the second Lebanon war, 2006/5766)
As Ichud grows it also strays further and further from the path the rabbis set for it, while MDA is trying to make efforts to become “more religious” (ie. rules and regulations that will help remove unnecessary chillul shabbos, yichud issues etc.)
#3 I agree 100%.
“As Ichud grows it also strays further and further from the path the rabbis set for it”
The operation is out of control and response figures are made up for donation purposes. They mention 90 second reponse times. It’s more like 4-6 minutes.
IH detached itself from the rest of Hatzolah’s around the world and constantly breaks the policies that Rabbonim set for it.
“The Pope was visibly moved by the dedication of a new ambucycle in his honor”
I’ve shown the video to at least 5 people who all agreed that in the video the pope is totally disinterested and looks irritated at being part of a media “donation” stunt from IH.