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The IDF Arrives in Surfside

(Tablet) Armin Rosen - A small team from the Israel Defense Forces' Homefront Command arrived in Surfside. They joined a psycho-trauma unit from Israel-based United Hatzalah, and paramedics from Magen David Adom and Zaka who had also traveled to Miami from the Middle East. "We're here to show support, solidarity," Maor Elbaz-Starinsky, Israel's Consul General in Miami, told me. The Israelis are here for the living. That the Israeli visitors have succeeded in alleviating anyone's suffering shows what the Jewish state can mean to people thousands of miles away during the worst moment of their lives. The tragedy in Surfside shows that the connections between American Jews and the Jewish state are not merely political and go beyond the strictly rational. The bonds are resilient in ways that perhaps only a crisis can fully surface. In moments of need, all other contexts retreat into the background, and the Jews can still resemble a family. Nachman Shai, Israel's Minister for Diaspora Affairs who was in Surfside last week, said: "It's important for Jews in the diaspora to know that we care for them and that we will come any time they need us." In the official Israeli view, and in the view of many American Jews, the Jewish backyard extends for thousands of miles, meaning that every crisis is inevitably an intimate one. Part of the Israeli theory of trauma reduction is that when people are stressed, make them be active. The IDF's presence could be thought of as part of the healing process. Describing the layout of an apartment, or a distinguishing physical feature or piece of jewelry or clothing to Col. Elad Edri or one of his colleagues is an activity that assuages one's sense of helplessness. Some 80% of the families of the missing, Jewish and non-Jewish, talked to the IDF team.
2021-07-08 00:00:00
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