 International Rescue Unit
Selected ZAKA volunteers are able to leave Israel at a moment’s notice to offer assistance at humanitarian disasters overseas or at other international incidents in which Jews and/or Israelis are involved. ZAKA also works in cooperation with Israel's Foreign Ministry, and international police forces and relevant authorities to ensure swift and productive solutions to a wide variety of problems. In international disasters, as well as in Israel, ZAKA and MDA work in cooperation, dividing the tasks with ZAKA dealing with the victims and honouring the dead and MDA offering medical assistance to the injured.
ZAKA has been involved in helping the local security services at many international disasters, such as the Columbia shuttle disaster, the terror attacks in Mombasa, Bali, Taba, Turkey and Mumbai, the Tsunami disaster in Thailand, the Katrina hurricane disaster in New Orleans, the plane crashes in Phuket, Thailand and Namibia and many more.
ZAKA is also expanding its International Rescue Unit to include local, ZAKA-trained teams that are ready to respond in their local communities to any mass casualty incident.
 International Advocacy (Hasbara)
Out of a sense of identification and concern of the interests of the Jewish people and Israelis wherever they may be, ZAKA has placed itself at the service of the State of Israel in its activism and public advocacy campaigns (hasbara). Working in cooperation with the Foreign Ministry and the Office of the Prime Minister, ZAKA has trained volunteers who speak foreign languages to give interviews to the foreign media. Their function is to ensure that Israel is portrayed in a more just and balanced manner and to reflect the reality of living under the threat of terror.
One of the most potent hasbara campaigns conducted by ZAKA occurred in February 2004 outside the Peace Palace in The Hague, where the hearing on the legality of the security fence was taking place. ZAKA brought the blackened remains of the number 19 Jerusalem bus, in which 11 civilians had been killed in a suicide bombing in January 2004 – a stark, haunting reminder of the reality of terror. |
