A 9-month-old Palestinian baby whose parents were seriously injured in a car accident has been saved by an Israeli nurse.
The best stories often emerge from dramas. On the night of June 2 to 3, a Palestinian Arab couple from the city of Hebron was the victim of a car accident. The man dies on his arrival at the hospital, and his wife, who was not wearing a belt, is seriously injured; she suffers from severe head trauma.
Their baby, Yaman, present in the car, is unharmed. But he finds himself alone, and he too is in danger. At nine months, he refuses the bottles offered to him. After seven hours without food, the nursing staff and the baby’s aunts, who arrived at the hospital, are worried.
A surprise for the aunts
It was then that one of the nurses at Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem, Ola Ostrovsky-Zak, volunteered to breastfeed the baby. She is 34 years old and has three children, the last of whom is only a year and a half old. She is Jewish, and her proposal surprises.
“The aunts told me that Yaman had been breastfed since birth by his mother,” she told the Huffington Post. He never drank from a bottle. They asked me if someone could breastfeed her. I told them that if they agreed, I could do it. The aunts expressed their surprise. They couldn’t believe that a Jewish mother agreed to breastfeed a Palestinian baby. They took me in their arms, kissed me, kept hugging me. »
“I was happy with this idea, and I breastfed him five times during the night,” adds the nurse. Then again on Saturday and Sunday.
A second mother
This selfless gesture does not leave the bereaved family indifferent. According to little Yaman’s aunts, and in the eyes of Islam, a woman who breastfeeds a baby five times becomes his second mother, reports the HuffPost. One of the uncles now considers Ola as his sister.
“I was very touched, is moved the nurse. Obviously, I will not replace his mother, but now I can say that I have a Palestinian son”.
A call heard
Upon returning home, Ola posted a message on a pro-breastfeeding Facebook group asking for help, and a replacement.
“A thousand mothers replied to me in two hours,” she rejoices. Jewish, Palestinian, Arab Israeli, whoever they are and who that child is, they all said yes. I’m sure if I had made this request in an open forum, half the country would have responded. »
Despite community tensions, it is always reassuring to know that when a child’s health is at stake, prejudices and cultural and political divides disappear.
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