Israel’s largest voluntary emergency services provider, United Hatzalah, dismissed 288 of its 6,000 volunteers who refused to be vaccinated against the coronavirus.
“All the volunteers of United Hatzalah, our EMTs, paramedics, and doctors who go out and respond to nearly 2,000 medical emergencies a day, bear a responsibility to protect the health of those they treat, as well as their health and the health of their families,” stated Eli Beer, president and founder of the organization.
“It is for this reason that I instructed the management of the organization that every last volunteer be required to get vaccinated. The vast majority of our volunteers understood the importance of this and complied with our request.”
“I personally suffered from this disease. I was hospitalized one year ago almost to the day and I almost lost my life. I said goodbye to my family and my chances of survival were very slim. I want to prevent anyone ever having to go through that experience. I don’t want anyone to suffer needlessly due to accidental exposure to the virus—neither our patients nor our volunteers nor their families.”
“I love each and every one of the volunteers who give of themselves and their time to help others and save lives. It causes me great pain to say goodbye to some of our volunteers, who for personal reasons have chosen not to receive the vaccine. They will now be departing our organization and our family, but their lives and the lives of the patients whom we serve are more important. Should any of these volunteers change their mind and elect to receive the vaccine, or should this virus disappear completely, we would welcome them back with open arms. In the meantime, I wish them all continued health and success in their future endeavors.”
(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)
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17 Responses
That was the morally, medically, and halachically correct measure to take. Those 288 individuals are welcome to avoid davening with minyanim, learning in Batei Midrashim, and can find new forms of employment, preferably work-from-home opportunities.
This story doesn’t make sense because the vaccine doesn’t stop a person from getting covid — just severe symptoms and it also doesnt stop transmission to others…. Just saying that something is not adding up… Time for some fact checking before posting stories
Sounds like a Chelm story.
Is someone going to G-d forbid hemorrhage rather than be attended to by an EMT who did not get a covid shot?
Well that’s stupid. Even if you’re a raging pro-vaxxer, dismissing people who may well respond to over 10% of the potentially life-threatening calls per day (288 dismissed, 2000 calls per day) – the risks of that are far far greater than not being vaccinated for Covid, especially when 90% of the country over 16 is already vaccinated or recovered from it.
WELL DONE!
Very well said. Eli Beer speaks from experience & honestly, if I needed Hatzalah and I was really sick, I wouldn’t want someone who isn’t vaxed to treat me.
I know the vax doesn’t eliminate the chances of being infected: I caught Corona a few weeks after the first dose and not being vaxed greatly increases the chance of getting it. It’s selfish for Hatzalah members to refuse it.
Good going! No human has a right to refuse an untested vaccine! Get those despicable people off the team.
With this act, Eli Beer has unintentionally founded another Hatzalah organization in Israel. I am almost certain that those members will organize themselves in a new Chevra Hatzalah.
With all due respect this is a punitive measure and is not going to make anyone safer. If the person they are visiting already has corona they will not be worse off and if they dont – most people suffering an emergency would prefer a person respond with a remote chance that he has corona than to wait and die. So this measure is a typical democrat type punishment threat thing to force people to comply with their thinking and is not based in science or logical thought. And BTW I personally am definitely very much in favor of the vaccine.
This is because EMTs are too invested in commercially-sponsored allopathic health models as are so many others in our days.
This essentially began with the clandestine sponsorship by the Rockefeller Foundation (Rockefeller Institute in those days) of the Flexner Report in 1910 by having the Carnegie [Mellon] Foundation pay the report’s costs. This kept Rockefeller out of the picture until later.
The ‘homogenized’ allopathic (AMA) medical school curriculums in the US that eventually followed through legislation (and in many other places around the world – China wouldn’t allow it), caused the demise of many alternative medical and health modalities. (Many added lab study requirements were added [and animal experimentation] that the more naturopathic practitioners and schools were not comfortable with and didn’t subscribe to. Therefore the allopathic model became more or less the standard, and Rockefeller then began sponsoring the professorships and Rockefeller-backed lab-synthesized (and petro-based) patent remedies became the accepted taught therapeutic solutions.
@hml, how can you call an Hatzalah member “selfish”, when they give their time, heart and soul away for others?!?
Lets be clear, with all due respect, Eli Beer had a very bad experience on a personal level with COVID and therefore to him the choice is very clear. Rather go for the vaccine although it’s still new and practically an experiment on the public, than to get COVID. But others might disagree with him especially younger volunteers who are at a very low risk or those who had it already. Especially if they had it very mild.
If Eli Beer got covid now he wouldn’t get as deathly ill as he did last year when no one knew much about the virus and there were virtually no treatments. You can’t compare a year ago to today. He’s understandably scared for others to go through what he did but chances are very slim at this point
This is so wrong I don’t know where to start . How about by NOT calling people who refuse to be guinea pigs “anti vaxxers” for one thing
They are absolutely justified in refusing to be experimented upon especially if they’re at low risk
To make it like they are morally wrong is just dishustjng
In the end minus 288 members society at large will suffer. Hopefully those 288 people will organize into a new and better group.
I will no longer be donating to them.
workingmom – I personally know of people who were infected by Covid over the past few months – people who were are deathly ill and died and others who were deathly ill and be’chasdei shamayim are now in rehab trying to recover. And others are in hospitals still fighting for their lives. So while it’s true that there are more known treatment options now than a year ago, people are still dying of Covid even in Israel where a good portion of the population are vaccinated. These deaths are either people who became ill before the vaccination became available to them (the younger than age 60 population) or others who could have been vaccinated but chose not to. That said, I think that the volunteers who choose not to vaccinate and don’t have Covid antibodies (negative serology) can treat people who do have Covid antibodies OR there is no one else available nearby in a life-and-death situation. Better live and be exposed to Covid than die Covid-free! Volunteers without Covid antibodies should be a reserve force in the above circumstances. If Eli Beer’s point is to make a social statement, then having these volunteers serve only as a reserve force rather than frontline responders most of the time can still send a strong message both to them and to the public that getting vaccinated is the socially responsible thing to do.
So basically all of you who are cheering on Eli Beer with his decision, agree that you should be forced to be an experiment for the government because they signed an agreement with Pfizer to make the country a guinea pig. I wonder why you don’t cheer on Dr Mengele who was doing the exact same thing . Experimenting with vaccines on these children. It’s amazing how people never see themselves as repeating history , and that is exactly why it repeats itself . It’s mind blowing , all the brainwashing that has been going on .
When the people with the vaccine will start dying off because their immune system has shut down, I wonder if Eli Beer will feel any responsibility for those that will die from it , for pushing them to get the vaccine . Good Luck to Israel. It will be a sad time .
No more money to Hatzala from me.