The world could learn a lot from an Israeli ER

If anyone tells you that Israel is an apartheid state, has clearly never been in an Israeli emergency room.

I don’t have so much headspace right now as I’m sitting with a loved one, but I’ll say this.

The emergency room is where the true face of Israel comes alive.

Arab and Jewish doctors and nurses working side by side, treating patients from all religions and nationalities together.

I saw an American volunteer handing out lunch “to work on her Hebrew.”

A Jewish nurse with a head covering making jokes with the Arab doctor.

Arab families looking concerned, next to Jewish families crying.

Everyone of every skin color, pacing around, worrying about their loved ones.

There’s no yelling here.

Just quiet requests, beeping, coughing, and a hum of rolling beds and the squeak of sneakers on the floor that gets washed every twenty minutes.

The Russian woman on the next bed smiled at me and offered me a sandwich. The Muslim mother on the next station smiled at me warmly.

There’s a bookshelf above the nurses station with books, I see all religions represented. All signs are in multiple languages.

The energy here is tense. People are worried and sick.

But not because we are all together.

There is misery here. But there is also sweetness.

Hijabs, tichels, Kippot, sheitals, or nothing at all.

God is here with us.

So don’t let them lie to you and tell you there is an apartheid here.

The world could learn a lot from an Israeli ER.