As Hezbollah rockets fall, emergency medics in the north work double shifts |
JTA — When sirens once again sounded in the northern town of Kiryat Shmona on a recent Thursday, Ala Ghassan, a paramedic trainee with Magen David Adom, gazed up at the sky with concern.
Pausing for only a few seconds to check for incoming missiles or outgoing interceptors, Ghassan, wearing an MDA flak jacket and helmet, raced toward the shelter located in the basement of the MDA’s Kiryat Shmona station.
The day before, Hezbollah coordinated with Iran to launch a strike on northern Israel, firing more than 200 missiles in the span of just a few hours. Since Hezbollah joined the conflict on March 2, it has launched more than 3,500 rockets, missiles and drones at Israel. Multiple Israelis have been killed, including a soon-to-be-married woman on Wednesday and a man in Nahariya on Thursday.
The assault on the border region has ignited sharp anger from some local leaders, who have demanded that the Israeli government come up with a better strategy to protect residents. But inside the shelter, Ghassam, aged 21 and on the job for only weeks, was focused only on the task at hand, waiting to learn where he would be dispatched to assess damage and treat victims.
Ghassam recounted why he had decided to join Israel’s volunteer emergency response service. “Seeing what they did in Majdal Shams is why I am here,” he said.
He recalled how, during Israel’s last war with Hezbollah before the negotiated ceasefire in November 2024, a Hezbollah missile struck a soccer field in the Druze town of Majdal Shams, killing 12 children.
“The oldest was only 16,” Ghassan recounted, with tears in his eyes, tugging at his collar to reveal a pin depicting the Druze national colors.
Ghassan is Druze, like much of the community in the Golan Heights, which Israel annexed during the 1967 war and which the United States recognized in 2019 as under Israeli sovereignty. The Druze community in the Golan is small and incredibly tight-knit, forbidding intermarriage and maintaining a strong sense of collective identity.
Like Ghassan, most of the paramedics at the Magen David Adom station in Kiryat Shmona are either from the community or have lived there for years. They are Druze, Christian and Jewish and range across decades in age.
And they all harbor a shared hope: that as Israel endures yet another war with Hezbollah, “this will be the last,” Omri Hochman, the Kiryat Shmona station director, said hopefully.
Magen David Adom is Israel’s civilian ambulance and emergency response service. Drawing on a network of more than 37,000 employees and volunteers, it has been on the front line of every disaster and conflict response in Israel since it was founded in 1930.
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