The Israeli Druze EMT Who Saves Lives in a Truck
Last Monday, while driving down highway 672 near Isfiya, Rayan Amasha, a volunteer EMT saw a car accident occur. Two vehicles were involved in a car accident with three adults and a child. Luckily all four of them had only sustained light injuries.
“I deal with transport and I spend a lot of time on the roads,” said Amasha, who works as part of his family’s moving company. “It is not a simple thing to understand that at any given moment I can come across a person who needs medical attention. I am so grateful to be part of an organization that enables me to save a life wherever I am.”
Amasha has been a volunteer EMS first responder for the past four years and said that he can’t imagine doing anything more rewarding. “I drive in my truck and I save people while I am working. What could be more rewarding than that? Sometimes the people I help need just a little bit of attention, but sometimes the fact that I am there, on the scene as situations occur, makes the difference between life and death.”
In addition to saving lives while driving his big rig, the veteran EMT was also given an ambucycle that allows him to arrive at the scene of a medical emergency even faster. “I live in the Druze town of Isfiya, which is located in the Carmel Mountains. The ambucycle allows me to reach people in my town as well as hikers in the area faster.”
Amasha is one of the many active Druze volunteers of United Hatzalah who is proud of his EMS affiliation. “I feel very honored to take part in a national organization especially as I am a minority. I have never felt any different working with the rest of the volunteers in the organization, and I feel respected and welcomed as an equal. On the contrary, people respect me even more because of who I am and where I come from. In United Hatzalah, it doesn’t matter where they are from or what their religious beliefs are. We all work to save people no matter who they are or where they are from. At the end of the day, the people I help most are those in my own community, as that is where I am most often and that is where I am called upon to respond. This organization makes every community a better and safer place to live.”
Founder and President of United Hatzalah Eli Beer said, “United Hatzalah prides itself on being inclusive of everyone in the population of Israel. There is no monopoly on saving lives. Everyone who has the proper training, no matter who they are, or where they are from, can save the lives of those who need help around them. That is the idea upon which this organization was founded, and we will continue to live up to that ideal as long as this organization exists. Each of us, no matter who we are, can save the lives of those around us. That is what it means to be a community-based response organization. That is what it means to be a national organization with 3,200 volunteers and a 3 minute response time. We want to put a volunteer on every block of every community in every town across the entire country. We can save more lives together, united.”
