When medicine unites what politics divides

If you read only the headlines, you might believe that Israel is a land defined solely by conflict, a place where division has become destiny. But if you look beyond the headlines, into the ambulances, dispatch centers, and emergency rooms of Magen David Adom, Israel’s national emergency medical service, a very different picture emerges.

There, Jewish, Muslim, Christian, and Druze medics work side by side every day. They share meals, laughter, and long overnight shifts. And when the sirens wail, they rush together into danger without hesitation, united by one mission: to save lives.

Recently, I had the privilege of hosting three of these remarkable women at Voices of Courage: Diverse Women Serving One Mission, an event in San Rafael that drew hundreds of people eager to hear their stories. Tehila Kadosh, a young Jewish paramedic from Efrat; Arz Heib, a Muslim dispatcher from Daliyat al Karmel; and Lelyan Hasson, a Druze paramedic from Zarzir, represent three different faiths yet all serve the same sacred calling.

On October 7, Hasson was on the phone with a Jewish mother hiding in her home in Nir Oz, clutching her two-month-old baby as terrorists stormed the kibbutz. “I told her to stay quiet, that help was coming,” Hasson recalled. “Then I heard the shots. I was the last person she spoke to.”

Her anguish was not political; it was human. “For me,” she said, “it does not matter who someone is. Every life is precious.”

Heib, the Muslim paramedic, spoke about a quieter kind of heroism, the elderly woman she comforted after a fall, holding her hand until help arrived. “The best way to face challenges,” she said, “is to keep smiling, support each other, and keep doing the work.”

And Kadosh, just 21 years old, described leading triage under rocket fire. “When dozens are injured, you do not see religion or background,” she said. “You just see people in need. If we cannot work together, we cannot live together.”

That simple truth, if we cannot work together, we cannot live together, is one that Magen David Adom embodies every single day.

In a region so often portrayed as irreparably divided, Magen David Adom offers a quiet but powerful counter-narrative. Within its ranks are more than 33,000 volunteers and staff of every faith and background, all wearing the same uniform, all treating patients equally. Their ambulances carry symbols that represent the unity of the people they serve: the Star of David, the Red Crescent, the Red Cross. It is medicine not as a political act, but as a human one.

At a time when divisions seem to harden everywhere, not just in the Middle East but in our own communities, Magen David Adom’s example should matter to all of us. It shows that coexistence is not a slogan or a photo opportunity. It is a discipline. It is what happens when people choose compassion over ideology, service over separation, life over everything else.

We live in an era when images of conflict dominate our screens. But I have seen another image: a Jewish medic cradling a Muslim child. A Druze volunteer standing beside a Christian nurse. A Muslim dispatcher guiding a rescue team through chaos to save Jewish lives.

That is Israel too, and it deserves to be seen.

At Voices of Courage, as the three women took questions from the audience, the conversation turned again and again to one theme: hope. Hope that what happens inside an ambulance can one day happen across the region, that the same spirit of shared purpose that drives these medics might one day guide nations.

As one of them said, “All of us wear one uniform and have one mission, to save lives.”

It is a simple creed, but maybe it is the most important one of all.

Because while politics divides, medicine unites. And in that unity lies not just the power to heal bodies, but to heal a nation, and perhaps the world.