United Hatzalah volunteers on an ambulance shift (illustration)
Early Sunday morning this week, Shimon Afgin and Avi Gian, two Jewish volunteer EMTs with United Hatzalah, were on their scheduled ambulance shift in Jerusalem when they were alerted to a nearby emergency on A-Sahl Aljadid street, in the heart of the Sheikh Anbar neighborhood of eastern Jerusalem.
The two EMTs calculated all the information they had received from the dispatch center, along with the danger of entering eastern Jerusalem during the ongoing violence of the past few weeks. They decided that a life was on the line, so Shimon turned on the siren and they drove off to the location.