Solidarity in Action: U.S. and Hungarian Doctors Support Israel’s Medical Frontline

The following story comes courtesy of Partnership2Gether Global Network, the Jewish Agency for Israel, and Jewish Federations of North America

By Hillel Kuttler

 “Expand your spheres of influence,” read a slide projected on a wall by Louis Profeta, an emergency-medicine physician from Indianapolis during a talk he gave in the auditorium of the Galilee Medical Center this past January 14.
That’s precisely what some of Profeta’s 13 colleagues in the audience, physicians from the central United States and Hungary, said they’d do once they were back home.

 
     The 14 physicians had come to the Western Galilee on a weeklong medical mission organized by Partnership2Gether, a project of the Jewish Agency for Israel that strengthens ties between American and Israeli communities. P2G’s Central Area (which includes 16 communities in Illinois, Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, Iowa, Nebraska and Texas, along with Budapest, Hungary) is linked to Israel’s Western Galilee, which includes the Mateh Asher region and Akko; the connection is known as Partnership2Gether Western Galilee.
     Profeta’s message, he told an audience that included the hospital’s physicians and other staff, was this: “We should not be content enough just to be doctors, because we have so much [more] to offer.”
His comment resonated with fellow participants. Several explained later that they had plenty to bring back to their home communities by way of Israel advocacy.

     While they’d come to learn — and did learn — from their Israeli colleagues in various specialties during the program’s five full days, they said they’d be returning better equipped as first-hand observers to speak about Israel’s reality during this challenging period. The mission occurred during a ceasefire in the war that the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah launched against Israel on Oct. 8, 2023, the day after Hamas’s massacre of approximately 1,200 Israelis near the Gaza Strip.
     GMC is Israel’s northernmost hospital, sitting in Nahariya, just six miles from the country’s border with Lebanon. Moments after Profeta’s presentation, the P2G delegation walked through the hospital’s basement to attend another talk, passing a ward that had been moved underground more than a year ago as a precaution against Hezbollah-launched missiles.

     The delegation also came to learn about critical medical services they could provide during a future emergency that might arise in Israel.
“You come here and you really see how it is. Because I’ve been coming here so long, I feel connected to the Western Galilee region [and] to the hospital. My heart brought me here,” said Sandy Bidner, M.D., an orthopedist in Austin, Tex., who co-chairs P2G’s medical committee.
 The committee’s Israeli co-chair, Aya Kagade, is the director of GMC’s international affairs department, which organized the mission’s program. “The connection of the medical center to the P2G program is significant in showcasing a shared commitment to resilience, preparedness and solidarity,” Kagade said.
It was the second visit to Israel since the war began for Matt Schocket, M.D., an anesthesiologist and pain management physician, like Bidner from Austin. “This is not a trip about being an active physician. This is a solidarity mission. My purpose for coming here is reporting back what I’ve seen and increase people’s connection to Israel,” he said. “This was an opportunity to come and learn and see — and take it back to my home community.”
The delegation had much to observe that morning during a comprehensive drill the hospital’s emergency department ran to test the response to a mass-casualty scenario involving 16 patients brought in following a crash between a bus and a car. The hospital’s top officials, CEO Prof. Masad Barhoum, M.D., and deputy director Tsvi Sheleg, M.D. — both of whom had addressed the P2G group — were among those attending the exercise.
 “I can go back to my hospital and tell them how everyone works together here and that drills are much more realistic — decades ahead, without question,” said Eric Schreier, M.D., who specializes in physical medicine and rehabilitation in Fort Wayne, Ind. “Everyone works together. It’s [very] organized: the signs, the labels, the technology. They take it much more seriously.”

     P2G participants received temporary credentialing from Israel’s Ministry of Health. Some saw patients. Anna Roshal, M.D., an oncologist based in Indianapolis, attended clinic visits, allowing her to communicate with some patients in Russian, her mother tongue, having grown up in Belarus. She also engaged in valuable one-on-one teaching and provided immediate guidance to her junior colleagues in oncology and palliative care.
     She had been in Israel just four months earlier to visit relatives. Profeta then told her about P2G and the medical mission in January. Roshal said she responded, “A medical trip? I can’t imagine any way a cancer doctor could be helpful. He said, ‘You do not understand. You’ll be helpful by being here, and then you’ll come back and join me in Indianapolis and talk to people.’ ”
     And so she signed on — the first of her 10 trips to Israel that wasn’t family-centric. “The first time I came to Israel [in 1992], it changed my life. All of a sudden, I realized who I am,” she explained.
     Like Profeta, Michelle Elisburg, M.D., who practices pediatrics in Louisville, Ky., used the word “helpful,” but the equation went the other way for her.
     Visiting the Jewish state and speaking with local pediatricians was a relief from the anti-Israel rhetoric she often encounters back home. “When you’re being bashed and demonized all the time, talking to like-minded people is helpful. It’s self-care, because you don’t feel so alone,” said Elisburg. “It’s war, and I want to do something. If we were here at peacetime, we’d be talking about something else.”
     The delegation’s program included observing procedures, making clinical rounds, seeing the hospital’s wartime underground command center, attending a lecture on treating oral and maxillofacial injuries suffered during the war and off-site visits to the Magen David Adom ambulance service’s local branch and to a military base’s medical clinic.
     Participants also socialized at a home-hospitality program hosted by Toni Ziv, a member of P2G’s management committee and a longtime P2G volunteer. The program and medical context appealed so much to Denver pediatrician Michael Milobsky, M.D., that he joined the mission, at his own expense, even though he doesn’t come from a P2G Central Area community.
     “I wanted to show up in some way, with skin in the game, and … do something more meaningful,” Milobsky said.
     Milobsky gained insight into Israeli healthcare professionals’ commitment when he attended a presentation on the medical center’s preparation for potential attacks from Hezbollah.
     “Here’s a hospital that in an incredibly short period of time had to create a complex system to redistribute patients, move them to an underground bunker if necessary and have everyone available to fill their role,” he said. “Everyone’s willing to be part of the bigger picture. There’s a bigger job to do, and they’re willing to do it together.”

     

      Writer-editor Hillel Kuttler can be reached at hk@HillelTheScribeCommunications.com.

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