It was natural that Israel should send a rescue mission to help in the aftermath of the Surfside disaster in Florida.
Diaspora Affairs Minister Nachman Shai departed on Saturday night to the area, where a building collapsed on Thursday leaving more than 150 missing and most likely dead. The building is in an area with a high Jewish population and a large number of the missing and their families are Jews.
Shai planned to meet with Miami-Dade Mayor Danielle Levine Cava and local Jewish community leaders to hear their needs and propose various means to help. When he returns, he will present Prime Minister Naftali Bennett plans for assistance to the Jewish community. En route to Miami, Shai told The Jerusalem Post, “We will do whatever we can to help the Americans in any way they deem fit. America can learn from Israeli experience. Unfortunately, we have too much experience with disasters.”
Shai rightly noted that his visit sends a powerful message about the relationship between Israel and American Jewry being a two-way street.
This is a message also being embraced by the prime minister. On Friday, Bennett tweeted: “We are following with concern the difficult images that are coming out from Florida. Our Foreign Ministry representatives in Miami and Israel are doing everything possible to assist and address the situation.
“The entire nation of Israel prays for the safety of those injured and missing in the disaster. From here we send support to our brethren in the Jewish community in particular, and to all Florida residents in general, and express our sorrow during this tragic event.”
Defense Minister Benny Gantz on Saturday night announced that an emergency delegation of engineering and rescue specialists from the IDF’s Home Front Command was going to Miami to assist the complicated rescue operation.
“We will make every effort to help save human lives, and to offer our support to the Jewish community and to our American friends,” Gantz said.
Foreign Minister Yair Lapid said that in such difficult times, Israel must stand with its friends in America, and the Jewish people in Florida, in particular.
Teams from Zaka, specializing in the identification of bodies in disaster situations, and of United Hatzalah’s Psychotrauma and Crisis Response Unit are among those who have also flown to Florida to help and are working alongside volunteers from Magen David Adom’s International Unit. El Al Israel’s national airline sponsored the flights.
As hope fades of finding victims alive, experts from these organizations undoubtedly will have an important role to play.
The PCRU mission will be led by Vice President of Operations for United Hatzalah Dov Maisal, who has led disaster response missions to Nepal, Haiti and Japan, a reminder that Israelis have helped out in many disasters around the globe.
Shai’s predecessor as Diaspora Affairs minister, Omer Yankelevitch, also stressed when she was in the position, that “world Jewish solidarity isn’t a meaningless slogan – we truly care.”
As Yankelevitch noted in an oped in The Post last year, our support for our Jewish brethren must be unconditional – it is beyond politics, affiliation with religious streams, or the idea of encouraging aliyah, emigration to Israel.
Israel can be proud of its response. It is a sign of the strength of the relationship between Israel and the Diaspora as well as Israel and the US, despite all the challenges. This solidarity is important not only in sudden emergencies but also in combating the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and the recent sharp rise in antisemitism.
Kol Yisrael arevim zeh bazeh – “All of Israel are responsible for one another” – is a basic Jewish tenet. The importance of the principle of Jewish solidarity around the world should not be underestimated.
In the wake of the Surfside disaster, this message of solidarity, of course, is not just to the Jewish community but to the US as a whole. Israel and the US are more than allies. They are friends.
From Jerusalem, we send our prayers and support and pray that the warm feelings of solidarity between our countries be expressed not only in emergency situations and disasters, but at all times.