The great and the good descended upon the Museum of Tolerance Jerusalem (MOTJ) on the evening of May 1 to celebrate the achievements of Israel’s emergency response organization, United Hatzalah, acknowledge the accomplishments of its visionary founder and president, Eli Beer, and welcome U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee and his wife, Janet.
With the surrounding streets in central Jerusalem gearing up for postponed celebrations for Israel’s 77th Independence Day following the outbreak of the enormous wildfires in forests along the highway to the capital, there was a party atmosphere inside the museum’s grounds.
Huckabee spoke movingly about United Hatzalah and how its life-saving work had affected him on both a professional and personal level. He recounted that he once led a mission to Israel with several hundred people. Outside the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, a Wisconsin farmer began to feel unwell. Rejecting calls for medical assistance, the farmer preferred to try and tough it out.
Thankfully, there was a United Hatzalah ambucycle in the vicinity. The paramedic checked over the farmer, administered first aid, and arranged for him to have life-saving heart treatment at Hadassah Medical Center.
“If this had happened in the fields of rural Wisconsin, we would have lost that farmer. He’s alive today because of this organization,” Huckabee said. Additionally, the ambassador mentioned that when the brother of an embassy employee was unwell, United Hatzalah was called and a paramedic arrived within 90 seconds, saving the man’s life.
“I want to elaborate on something worth celebrating,” Huckabee remarked. The ambassador then recalled the heroic actions of United Hatzalah paramedics on Oct. 7, 2023.
Many of them went to Israel’s south on that fateful day, working around the clock to try and provide medical care to the wounded and the dying. The volunteers included Beer’s wife, Gitty. “They rode into the face of hell itself to save lives; and they did just that,” Huckabee stated.
He said MOTJ was the perfect location to host the United Hatzalah event, remarking there was “nothing quite like it anywhere else in the world.” He said of the museum’s “06:29 From Darkness to Light” exhibit that it was a reflection of the Jewish people’s own journey from darkness to light.
“It is a testament to pushing the darkness aside and turning on the light,” he maintained. Drawing a geopolitical lesson, Huckabee observed that “somewhere in Tehran, the Ayatollah and others are plotting how to kill everyone in this room. They are stubborn and consistent with their mantras of ‘Death to Israel’ and ‘Death to America.’ This whole evening is talking about how to bring, sustain and save life, when they can only talk about death. One of the things this organization shows is that you cannot hate when you’re trying to save a human life.”
Other speakers included Beer, Larry Mizel, chairman of the Museum of Tolerance, Sylvan Adams, president of the World Jewish Congress-Israel Region and a MOTJ board member, philanthropist Dr. Miriam Adelson and Pastor John Hagee, who presented Huckabee with a United Hatzalah Defender of Israel Award in recognition of his long-standing support for the Jewish state.
Adams’ speech was most noteworthy. He began by saying of Huckabee, “Israel never had better friends than you and Janet in this post. You seem to love us more than we love ourselves!”
He then segued into a more geopolitical section of his speech, where he reiterated that Iran’s attempts to distance itself from a nuclear weapons program were not “fooling anyone,” and called on U.S. President Donald Trump to ensure the Islamic Republic would never achieve an atomic bomb under his watch.
Adams recalled that the mullahs in Tehran have suborned at least two attempts on Trump’s life that we know of, and he said in no uncertain terms that the U.S. and Israel should conduct a committed bombing campaign. “The reimposition of sanctions, in addition to U.S. and Israeli action, and with the support of Iran’s long-suffering population, will advance the end of the Ayatollah’s regime,” he added.
Adams suggested that if the Islamic regime were to fall, he could see a future in which Iran could be added to the Abraham Accords. In the same vein, he called on the Nobel Peace Prize committee to acknowledge the work President Trump has done and continues to promulgate to foster Middle Eastern peace, and correct a glaring error of omission of not recognizing that before now, a comment which garnered a raucous standing ovation.
MOTJ managing director, Jonathan Riss, echoed Huckabee’s sentiments, remarking that “while Eli [Beer] is saving lives, we are promoting the coherence of the social fabric of Israeli society. We are creating bridges between people and consider the Museum a center of civic dialogue.”
The IDF Chief Cantor, Lt. Col. Shai Abramson, bookended Huckabee’s address with powerful renditions of the prayer for IDF soldiers and Naomi Shemer’s classic Jerusalem of Gold.
