Customer support
Filed under: design, General, History and Culture, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness, Life
Back home after a long sojourn away this summer, and there’s no question I’m glad to be here, even with, or perhaps because of the enticement of housing protests, stroller protests (read this), dairy farmer protests, the high cost of cottage cheese, and, today’s discovery, the differences in customer service after vacationing in the proverbial land of plenty.
I was in one of the local camping stores, LaMetayel (for the traveler), a shop I frequent quite often given the number of nieces and nephews who are in that traveling stage of life, when backpacks, camping equipment, water bottles and the like are appreciated and, come in handy as possible gift items. This particular gift — a fleece liner for a sleeping bag — was for my nephew Eitan, who is being drafted into the IDF tomorrow. As per tradition, we were having a small family dinner to send him off, and another nephew had suggested the liner as a good gift, given the slight sleaziness of IDF-issue sleeping bags that one has to sleep in for months on end.
Anyway. Found the fleece (pronounced fleez) liners, picked the one I wanted and brought it up to the counter. The young guy behind the counter approved of my choice, offered other ideas in case I was interested and then offered to ring it up. Great. I paid, and then asked him to wrap it, as it was a gift. Wrapping at Lametayel generally involves a paper gift wrap bag that you just tape at the top. It’s not a complicated task, particularly when juxtaposed with some Israeli shops that insist on wrapping your gift in yards of clear paper, then tying with many ribbons, raffia or other complex wrappings, such as tissue lining and fabric flowers. But either this guy was very busy — he had another customer waiting for him — or just couldn’t be bothered, because he asked me to wrap it for him. Not a big deal, but, somewhat surprising, right?
As I was busily taping the top of the bag, it occurred to me that I’ve clearly gotten used to this kind of service in the last 16 years. No wonder I was always offering to help salespeople wrap my gifts and packages back in the States, or had to restrain myself from stacking plates and silverware in restaurants.
You see, it’s not that it’s not customer service here, it is. But it leans more toward support, and less toward service. The Lametayel salesperson supported my purchase, helped me carry it out, but, that support had to end somewhere. And as I spent four months wrapping gifts at Lord & Taylor during one Christmas season long ago, and he clearly has never had that experience, it really does make more sense for me to wrap the package.
It’s good to be home.
IDF soldier saves Palestinian baby
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, General, health, Israeliness, Life, News
IDF Corporal Levin baby Jude
At the same time that IDF Chief of Staff, Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz was paying a shiva call to the Fogels at another settlement of Neve Tzuf, a taxi carrying a 20-year-old Palestinian woman in an advanced stage of labor arrived at the gate of the community.
According to Ynet, army paramedic Cpl. Haim Levin, reached the scene followed by civilian paramedics, and discovered the umbilical cord was wrapped around the baby girl’s neck.
“When I arrived I saw a woman covered by a blanket in a yellow Palestinian van,” he said. “I moved closer and saw the baby’s head and upper body. The umbilical cord was wrapped around the baby’s neck, and the baby was gray and did not move.”
Levin assisted by other paramedics immediately cut the cord, and he then pinched the baby, who started crying. Both the mother and baby were reported to be fine.
Ynet reported that Palestinians from the nearby village of Nabi Salah gathered around the paramedics and thanked them, adding that the baby had been named Jude.
“I volunteered for Magen David Adom since age 15 and it’s the first time I witnessed childbirth,” said Levin. “It was an amazing feeling, to hold the girl that was just born in my arms, and to know that in this complex place we did something good.”
Gadi Amitun, who heads the Magen David Adom team at Neve Tzuf, told Ynet that they often help Palestinians in distress.
“They know we have a skilled medical team here, and in any case of accident or injury they arrive and we help them,” he said.
Ambulance driver Orly Shlomo who helped cut the cord said she had mixed feelings about the incident.
“It was touching, but I couldn’t help but think that a few meters from there, people were sitting Shiva for another baby, who was murdered,” she said. “I was touched to see the face of the new baby, but I also thought about the face of the murdered baby.”
Death and life in the West Bank only days apart and under very different circumstances. Just as the terror attack last week made it difficult to think there’s any possibility of peace, the birth this week made some people realize that there’s no alternative.
Raise your mask
Filed under: A New Reality, education, General, History and Culture, Holidays, Israeliness, Life, Music, Pop Culture, Religion
Purim is right around the corner, and to get everyone in the mood, here’s an astoundingly good musical performance by the Ein Prat Fountainheads, a pre-army mechina (Academy for Leadership) located in Kfar Adumim near Jerusalem.
According to the academy’s website, it “was established in order to breathe new life into ancient values – to encourage high motivation for a significant military service in the IDF through reviving the Zionist heritage from its ruins.”
The students already cut their teeth a few months ago with their first video in honor of Hannukah – based on the Black Eyed Peas’ song “I Gotta Feeling.”
This one – based on Pink’s “Raise Your Glass” may even be better. Enjoy and let your inner Mordechai out.
No standing on ceremony here
Filed under: A New Reality, General, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness, Life
We headed down south to Dimona this week for an army ceremony for our daughter who finished up a four-month commanders’ course.
I don’t think I’ve been in Dimona, about a half hour from the Beersheba, the nearest city, more than once in the 25 years I’ve been in Israel. Entering the nondescript town, our task was to find ‘the soccer stadium’. And following most of the cars in front of us, we located it on the other side of town pretty quickly.
Hundreds of vehicles were already lined up in the dirt parking lot, and the ‘stadium’ was little more than a crumbling concrete wall surrounding a soccer field, with one section of bleachers.
Maybe because the ceremony for the some 300 soldiers graduating from the commanders’ course was taking place in a soccer field, the mood among the spectators and family was somewhat less solemn than previous IDF landmark ceremonies we’ve attended. It was almost like attending a… soccer game!
Some soldiers had cheering sections with signs and megaphones they would use to should out their loved one’s nickname. All fine and in good spirits, except they were doing this in the middle of speeches by decorated generals and during roll calls for awards given for exemplary service by soldiers in the course.
Standing behind the cyclone fence generally used to keep hooligans off the soccer field, we even had to turn and ‘shhhh’ the neighbors more than once, exposing our genteel, Anglo allegiance to decorum.
Thankfully, the ceremony, like most in the IDF, was so short that our blood was only halfway to boiling before it was over and everyone crowded onto the field to find their special soldier. We can stand a little Israeli obnoxiousness, realizing that the recipients of the calls and cheers were kids our daughter’s age who had also just gone through the rigorous travails to become a commander.
As one father, who a minute before had been yelling out his son’s name at some inopportune time, told some other soldier’s mother who had muttered out loud that she couldn’t see where her son was lined up: “It doesn’t really matter. They’re all our children.”
It’s a wrap
Filed under: A New Reality, design, General, health, Medical Breakthroughs, News, Technology, War
We first became aware of it back in 2005 when ISRAEL21c reported how American soldiers wounded while fighting in Iraq were being treated with a special, new Israeli-made bandage that effectively stopped traumatic hemorrhaging wounds with a built-in pressure bar.
The Emergency Bandage, developed by First Care Products, a tiny four-man Jerusalem start-up, allowed medics to twist the bandage around the wound once, and then change the direction of the bandage, wrapping it around the limb or body part, to create pressure on the wound. The pressure bar also enables a soldier to use the bandage on complicated injuries like the groin and head, which require wrapping in different directions.
The Emergency Bandage was back in the news this week in another more recent context – the January 8 shooting of Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. First responders credited the Emergency Bandage, commonly known as “the Israeli bandage” with saving lives in the aftermath of the shooting in Tucson, Ariz., that left six dead and 13 wounded.
According to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency report by Ron Kampeas, Pima County officials displayed the kit at a Jan. 21 news conference in Tucson, along with other military-grade gear used in ministering to the wounded in the Jan. 8 shooting.
“Without this care it would have definitely been a different situation,” Dr. Katherine Hiller, who had attended the wounded at University Medical Center, told The Los Angeles Times.
While it wasn’t clear whether the Israeli innovation was used specifically on Giffords, the bandage is known for its utility in stanching head wounds, and one model covers both entry and exit wounds, which Giffords is known to have sustained.
Since its 1993 invention, the Emergency Bandage has become standard issue in militaries throughout the world and is considered the first major innovation in bandages since the 1940s. It was invented by an American immigrant to Israel, Bernard Bar-Natan, who served as a medic in the IDF, and disgruntled at the stunted growth in the bandage field, formed First Care.
If there ever was a case to back up claims that Israeli ingenuity and saving lives around the world, this is it. Even Michael Oren, Israel’s ambassador to Washington, reportedly said that learning of the bandage’s role in saving lives in Tucson has been a highlight of his stint as ambassador.
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