NORTHERN ISRAEL (BP) – Burned, torn, dismembered bodies. Chemical smells. Even the noise. Yasmeen Mazzawi handles it all as a volunteer paramedic with the Israeli emergency medical services organization Magen David Adom (MDA).
“It’s not easy to see this and come back home at the end of the day and put my head on the pillow,” she told Baptist Press. “I think of everything I saw.
“We have missile attacks every single day here in the north.”
As an MDA team manager, she responds to various missile strikes in northern Israel, assesses the damage and decides which personnel and response units are needed to treat the injured.
“Could I have done things better?” she asks herself. “To think about the patients and the families, the families who lost their beloved ones.”
A year after Hamas wrought the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust, killing at least 1,139 people and injuring at least 8,730, Israel’s retaliation rages and is intensifying in northern Gaza. Responses to Hezbollah attacks have spawned fighting in southern Lebanon and Beirut.
Israel is fighting on seven fronts, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Oct. 7, naming Hezbollah on the north, Hamas in Gaza, the Houthis in Yemen, terrorists in the West Bank and Shiite militias in Iraq and Syria, added to Israel’s promised retaliation to Iran’s Oct. 1 missile attacks on central and southern Israel. Most of the 200 missiles were intercepted, U.S. and Israeli leaders said.
Rabbi Steven Weil, chief executive officer of Friends of the Israel Defense Forces (FIDF), said Israel’s military is stretched, the country burdened.
“It’s a strain on the military, and the reason is,” he said, “is because the military itself is limited. And what you do is you take reservists … out of university, out of work, you’re taking them away from their family and they’re fighting. In this case, they’re fighting in Lebanon.
“It’s a huge stress on the country, on the home front, on the families. It’s a huge stress on these young men,” he said. “They’ve been fighting a war now for 12 months. For a small country, that’s a huge, huge burden.”
FIDF, established in 1981 by a group of Holocaust survivors, works to ease the burden, providing spiritual, financial, educational and medical support for soldiers, as well as various support for the families they leave behind while fighting, and those widowed in war.
Since the Israel-Hamas War began, FIDF has supplied “tens of millions” of dollars to IDF, according to fidf.org, with 50.7 percent going to medical equipment and supplies, 44.3 percent to emergency well-being and support, 2.3 percent to emergency lone soldier support, 1.7 percent to wounded soldier and bereaved family support and 0.5 percent each to spiritual support and search and rescue equipment.
“The generals and the ministry of defense tell us … their most critical needs,” Weil said. Blood plasma, bullet-proof ambulances, field hospitals, medical equipment, emergency medical packs and funding to treat PTSD are among the top needs cited.
“The PTSD is very significant,” he said. “That’s the biggest concern. We’ve set up centers all over the country. We’ve trained psychologists and social workers who don’t have a background in PTSD. They’re being trained and they’re being managed, so that everyone gets very serious therapy.”
Israel has lost 784 soldiers, reservists and local security officers fighting in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon in the past year, the IDF said Oct. 7, and another 4,576 have been wounded. Many of those, 347, were killed during the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, and 2,299 were injured, IDF said. IDF attributed 56 of those deaths to friendly fire in Gaza and other military-related accidents.
Weil volunteers in his position with the support of a volunteer board of more than 50. Weil is vested in the work, as he lost most of his family in the Holocaust.
“It’s crucial to Israel that there be a Jewish homeland, and that the Jews will be able to be protected in that homeland,” he said. “And that’s personal.”
FIDF funds spiritual resources and support at military bases, providing clergy for Christians, Muslims and Jews; synagogues, and rooms with holy books and educational resources.
“Part of what we fund is there are six days a year every soldier gets where they are learning about their history,” he said. “They have to understand why they’re defending Jerusalem.”
Mazzawi, an Arab Christian, volunteers while also working as a business consultant on the analytics and AI team with Deloitte, with understanding and cooperation from her employer. While the Deloitte office is located in central Israel, she has been almost exclusively in northern Israel since the war began.
She is one of 1,000 paramedics with MDA and serves among 30,000 volunteers in the nationwide crew of 33,000 medical workers. MDA lists 38 deaths and 33 injuries in the first year of its response to the war injured, as well as damage to its fleet of emergency vehicles. But 5,000 volunteers have signed on since the war began, MDA said.
Overwhelmingly, the soldiers Mazzawi has treated have spoken with a brave resolve, she said.
“I really like to talk to soldiers whenever I have this opportunity,” she said. “The sentence I’ve heard a lot from many soldiers is, ‘Please, keep going and go treat whoever needs help. I’m OK. I’ll be OK.’ They’re always, not stressed, but they’re really dedicated and the sentence they say all the time is, ‘We are strong.’ And they ask about the other soldiers in their team.”
Mazzawi sees her volunteerism as a calling, as a ministry to her colleagues and as an example to others that everything doesn’t have to be done for a profit. She appreciates praying, building community among coworkers and encouraging friends whose loved ones are still among the hostages.
She finds strength in Psalm 23:4 and in Matthew 24:6-7.
“There is a power in praying and in faith, and that helps me a lot during these days,” she said. “In times like these, the words of Jesus in Matthew 24:6-7 really echo in my mind. It says, ‘You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.’
“And as I witness the fear and the devastation around me,” Mazzawi said, “this verse reminds me that these events are part of maybe a larger picture. And it’s a call to not lose heart, to hold onto hope and to continue to serve, even when things seem uncertain.
“But knowing this gives me the strength to keep going and to serve and to bring a sense of calm to those who are scared around me.”
