President Sisa: ”The international Red Cross let us know if they are alive, it is its duty. Thousands of blood donors queuing every day at the Blood Bank, mothers are giving their milk to the orphans of the October 7 massacre”.
He will ask for ”a meeting with the Prime Minister” Giorgia Meloni Sami Sisa, president of the Friends of Magen David Adom Association in Italy, to ask her to ”put pressure from above” to ”know how the hostages are doing” ‘ who have been held in the Gaza Strip for a month. Because, he explains to Adnkronos, it is necessary for the International Red Cross ”to act according to its principles” and ”to let us know if they are alive, if the children are changing their diapers, if they are giving the elderly medicines”.
Instead, he states, ”it is an absolute shame” that the international Red Cross, of which Magen David Adom has been a member since 2006, ”never asked Hamas to see the over 200 hostages, including newborns, children, the women, the elderly” who were kidnapped. ”We are not asking for the hostages to be given back to us, we can accept that they are part of a possible negotiation. We are asking to know if they are alive, if they are well” and this, Sisa recalls, ”is a duty of the international Red Cross, it is not a possibility. Instead they close the doors to us every time we make a request”.
Sisa recalls what ”the principles of the international Red Cross” are, starting from ”impartiality. The movement makes no distinction between nationality, ethnicity or religion, social condition or political affiliation. It strives to alleviate people’s suffering solely based on their needs by giving priority to the most urgent cases”. And he asks himself: ”What could be more urgent than a newborn baby torn from its mother? Why does the international Red Cross come to ask for Hamas prisoners and has never asked to see our prisoners who are not only held by Hamas, but also by many civilians who are not guerrillas’?’.
Thousands of blood donors, mothers give milk to 7/10 orphans
Meanwhile, in Israel, Magen David Adom ”goes ahead with obstinacy, we will do more and more”, even though, says Sisa, ”we haven’t slept for a long time”. Of that October 7th ”we retain in our minds and in videos a horror of which not even the Nazis were capable”. That day Magen David Adom lost ”11 people, some killed with a shot to the back of the head while we were trying to carry out resuscitation maneuvers on people in cardiac arrest”. Since then, in Israel Magen David Adom has mobilized all the resources at his disposal, even if ”it is very depressing to see one’s ambulances hit, it is happening to us every day”, and an appeal has arrived from Italy to to donate.
A donation which, in Israel, is also blood and milk. The first for the wounded, civilians and soldiers, the second also, and above all now, for the children left orphaned after October 7th. ”There are thousands of people queuing every day who donate their blood to the Ramle Blood Bank”, a cutting-edge facility not far from Tel Aviv, also because ”we have no friends around who can donate blood to us blood, as France or Switzerland could do for Italy”. And this great willingness to donate, Sisa underlines, ”is the only thing that saves us in this moment of urgent need” because ”life is in the blood”. As well as in breast milk. ”My daughter is also a donor, because she recently had a baby,” she says. ”The milk is stored and given to newborns who would not be able to live on artificial milk”, at this time ”also to the orphans of the October 7 massacre”.
A structure of excellence, with a global hematological research center also built with donations from Italy, which was ”a necessity”, ”built three floors underground” to protect it from missile launches” ‘which continue” from the Gaza Strip and which fell ”near the previous blood bank”. But ”blood is important for a country, so much so that the exchange of blood between two countries takes place at the level of prime minister. So we made a joint effort and built in a very short time a blood bank with three underground floors in total safety, highly armored against bacteriological warfare and all types of wars”. The Bank is twinned with Avis del Piemonte, ”steel point of blood donation in Italy”, but Sisa explains that ”it is impossible to receive blood from them”.
Magen David Adom, Sisa finally underlines, ”is an institution in Israel that truly represents the entire population. We have Druze, Bedouin, Muslim and Christian paramedics for their representation in the country”. He himself, he says, had as an instructor ”a Palestinian Arab from East Jerusalem, an exceptional paramedic, who was rewarded by President Herzog for having intervened at the site of a terrorist act to save people, not noticing that they continued to shoot’ ‘.
Source-www.adnkronos.com