By Abigail Klein Leichman
Facing square-on the ethical dilemmas that arise in times of conflict, Israeli experts shared their vast experience providing humanitarian aid at home and abroad with 65 medical students and activists from 25 countries. This up-close look at Israel's humanitarian medical programs took place at a four-day Humanitarian Medicine Conference led by 20 public diplomacy fellows studying at Tel Aviv University.
Participants, who came to Tel Aviv from countries ranging from Singapore to Nigeria, included the chairpersons of student medical associations in the United States, the European Union, Sweden and Bosnia.
Medical students from 25 countries visited Israeli hospitals to learn about Israel's post-disaster medical innovations.
"We had one student registered from Indonesia, but unfortunately Israel doesn't have diplomatic relations with Indonesia, and we did not manage to overcome that obstacle," says Amos Geva, spokesman for the StandWithUs International Fellowship program. StandWithUs is a non-profit Israel education organization based in Los Angeles.
Despite bureaucratic issues, Geva says that the fellows successfully recruited more than double the amount of students anticipated, by initiating contacts through student unions, medical student unions, universities and social networking, including humorous and clever videos on YouTube.
Those who came represented far-flung places such as Nigeria, Nepal and El Salvador - even some countries that have lukewarm relations with Israel.
Accessibility to humanitarian medical knowledge
Turkish medical student Onur Nihat and Tin Kazanovitch, the Croatian head of the European Student Union, say they came to gain better understanding of the delivery of humanitarian aid in areas of sensitive conflict. Yana Kalara, a medical student from Finland, hoped the conference would further her goal of providing medical aid in developing countries.
"Our ultimate aspiration in creating this event was to form a common denominator between students from all around the world in order to improve accessibility to humanitarian medical knowledge," says Itay Asael, the project's head coordinator.
Participants spoke with patients and doctors involved in a program in which Israeli and Palestinian medical personnel work together. Based at Jerusalem's Hadassah Medical Center, it provides Palestinian doctors from the West Bank with training to deal with cardiac emergencies, and also brings children from the West Bank and Gaza to Israeli hospitals for treatment and surgery. They also spoke with a Palestinian child injured in a car accident and the Israeli army officer who evacuated her to the hospital.
At Edith Wolfson Medical Center in Holon, they learned about Save a Child's Heart, which brings children from around the world to Israel for cardiac treatment and trains delegations to provide care in patients' home countries. They also heard from representatives of Magen David Adom (Israel's national emergency medical response organization), the Red Cross and the Red Crescent about how the three organizations coordinate their services.
Geva notes that one of the topics broached repeatedly was how Israel deals with the Palestinian population and ethical dilemmas that arise during times of conflict. Representatives from non-governmental organizations involved in such endeavors, including Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, IsraAid, Eye from Zion and Brit Olam addressed the visitors at a panel session.
Connecting through complexity
Israel Defense Force doctors and paramedics shared personal experiences from the battlefield, and conference participants toured an army medical corps training camp base and observed a disaster drill. "Anatomy is the same for everyone around the world," Major Assaf Hampel told them, "and these are the principles we teach our soldiers."
Michael Dickson, director of StandWithUs Israel, says an important part of the program was sharing knowledge of Israel's medical innovations and rapid emergency missions to help victims of natural disasters around the world. After a presentation from Col. Dr. Itzik Kreiss, head of the Israeli delegation to Haiti, Singaporean medical student Jeffrey Lau asked how he could be part of a future IDF medical rescue team.
"We were impressed that from the first day they made great connections," says Geva of the StandWithUs fellows and the conference participants. "They want to stay in touch and work on more projects together. They are all in contact through their Facebook group, and with the help of various organizations we may see cooperation between them in the future," he adds, stressing that follow-up to the four-day experience is actively being addressed.
The StandWithUs Fellowship program, now in its fourth year on six campuses across Israel, runs in cooperation with Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs as well as the Student Union of Israel. The program annually trains 150 goodwill ambassadors under the aegis of StandWithUs, which works to empower Israeli students to speak out about the multifaceted realities within Israel and the Middle East.
"We believe that the humanitarian issue should be a top priority," says Iris Adler, a medical student at Tel Aviv University's Sackler Medical School and one of the founders of the Humanitarian Medicine Conference. "By facing the many conflicts and humanitarian dilemmas that constantly arise from the complexity of Israel's current situation, we [wanted] to connect young students from around the world."