Now, 10 years after the outbreak of the intifada, I look back at that period in time and still find it difficult to believe. That was when I and my fellow ZAKA volunteers would go to bed, fully dressed, with our shoes on and our emergency medical kits by our side. And, of course, that was when we hardly slept. 

We were constantly listening to our beepers, waiting for the next call. We would run from suicide bombings to bus attacks, from shooting incidents to road accidents. This was the atmosphere that defined those times and fixed the daily agenda. That was our life. 

I understood that Israel is in such trouble and that, in this situation, anyone who wants to help and contribute should do so. I understood that if we, as men of faith, have the strength to deal with such difficult scenes, then this is our place. At the scene of terror attacks, doing work that has to be done, work that can only be done by those who are fortified by their faith.

On several occasions, we would return home after working at a scene where entire families were wiped out and we would see that the sun still shines on high and people still go about their daily business. We would rely on black humor, sometimes even bordering on cynicism, to get us through those dark times. We relied on our families to help us return to some degree of normality.

We would also find ourselves dealing with difficult questions related to our faith. People would confront us and ask: “Why did it happen to this family? What did they do?” And I would reply: “You can ask me, but I have no answers.”

And then there were times when we really did break down. I can still remember the suicide bombing at the Sbarro pizza restaurant in the heart of Jerusalem in August 2001. We worked feverishly, trying to save those who were still alive and only then did we deal with the horrific carnage of death. With painstaking care, we cleared the scene, ensuring that every body part was collected, allowing a proper Jewish burial for all the victims.

It was then – and only then – that the full horror washed over me and my fellow ZAKA volunteers. We looked around and realized that we were literally standing in pools of blood, some 3-4 centimeters high. Here I was, in the centre of Jerusalem, the beating heart of the State of Israel, at the iconic junction of King George and Jaffa Road, and I was standing in Jewish blood. Slowly, carefully, we collected the blood into four large barrels for burial with the fifteen victims, seven of whom were children. That image, of four barrels of Jewish blood in the centre of Jerusalem, will never leave me.

With time came bitter experience. We were about 600 volunteers in ZAKA at that time and we quickly began to organize ourselves into an ever more professional operation. In the early days of the intifada, it took us 12-14 hours to complete our work at the site of a suicide bombing. We managed to get that down to three hours. We also learned forensics and identification techniques during those painful years – even the smallest parts can be the ones that result in a positive identification and therefore a burial.

At the time, I thought we were dealing with kavod hamet – honoring the dead. By the end, I realized that we were actually honoring the living, because a family whose loved one cannot receive a full Jewish burial has no rest. It is for them that we toiled.

(Yehuda Meshi-Zahav – YWN)