HAVIV RETTIG GUR

SHACHAR Zahavi is quiet and mild mannered, not at all what you would expect from someone who dreams of building one of the world’s great aid organisations in little Israel.

In recent years, the 34-year-old has become a known figure in the Israeli and non-governmental organisations (NGO) world. He is the chairman of IsraAID, a coalition of 16 aid organisations, whose latest efforts took teams of Israeli medical and aid experts to the devastated Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince.

Within a couple days of the January 12 earthquake, IsraAID had organised a 14-member team of experts in emergency medicine and search-and-rescue operations. Two weeks in, that first group was replaced by a second 16-member team, whose expertise is relief and trauma work. The group is now working to mobilise additional teams of experts in reconstruction and development work to help the shattered Caribbean nation back on its feet.

For Zahavi, every day that Israelis are not active in the world’s most damaged regions is a tragedy. Israelis, he insists, are uniquely qualified for international aid work because of the singular combination of their culture of initiative, the experience of military organisation, and expertise in desperately needed fields, such as agriculture, water and trauma medicine.

“Faced with a disaster, we Israelis can react quickly without waiting for the bureaucracy to catch up. Unlike many other teams that landed in Haiti, ours didn’t wait in the airport for coordination. We went looking for work. That kind of initiative is desperately needed in the first few days after a disaster,” Zahavi explains.

The IsraAID teams are a diverse group, coming from small kibbutz communities, large urban centres, Israel’s secular and religious sector, as well as the Israeli-Arab minority.

“Israel has a huge amount to offer in such a disaster. Everything that has to do with water resources, with public hygiene, with care for infants, are Israeli areas of expertise. Our high-tech industry is among the most experienced in constructing – or reconstructing – communications infrastructure, which collapsed in Haiti and disconnected the country from the global grid. Most Haitians live on agriculture – a field Israel leads worldwide,” Zahavi insists.

Israelis also have the life experience to make them particularly dependable in the chaos of emergency work. “Most of our people served in the army so they are very experienced in the logistical side of managing living quarters [for disaster victims] or in reaching remote areas that other aid organisation have failed to reach so far.”

Israelis also want to help. “When Haiti happened, we got hundreds of CVs and emails from people asking to join us. Many people said that if we didn’t have the space to take them, they would go to Haiti on their own.”

For Zahavi, all that adds up to the realisation that Israel can and must become a real force in international aid.

“If little Israel can create a Teva [pharmaceutical company] or a Checkpoint [software company] or an Israel Aircraft Industries, why can’t it develop a billion dollar foreign aid organisation that makes use of its incredible capacity for initiative and improvisation?”

For now, Zahavi is looking to establish a fund that would allow IsraAID to respond instantaneously to global disasters without being forced to fundraise while stricken victims wait. He is looking for donors who share his vision of Israel as a potential hub of international aid.

“One of the most memorable moments of Haiti was being woken up in the middle of the night by an SMS from one of the guys on the ground saying that they had pulled a little girl out of the wreckage a week after the earthquake and were able to save her – that’s one hell of an SMS to get on your phone.”

In the 1902 utopian novel Altneuland, political Zionism’s founding father, Theodor Herzl, saw Jerusalem as the home of the “Palace of Peace”, an organisation that received a nonstop flow of donations from around the world because of its reputation as the world’s greatest aid agency. In the vision of one of Israel’s earliest “seers” and in the 2010 dream of a young Tel Aviv social entrepreneur, Israel is a nation to which all can turn for help. Zahavi’s dream is as old as Zionism itself. It is time to make it a reality.

Haviv Rettig Gur is the Jewish world reporter for The Jerusalem Post.