Israeli Nurse Breastfeeds Palestinian Baby For Critically Injured Mother

By John Vibes / Truth Theory

Although there are daily media reports about the ongoing conflicts between the Israeli and Palestinian people, there are also people on both sides who are pushing for peace, and there are plenty of examples from everyday life where people from these two different cultures have managed to come together.

In one case, in June of 2017, a 9-month-old from Hebron named Yamen, was taken to the emergency room at Hadassah Ein Kerem Medical Center in Jerusalem. The parents of the small infant were involved in a bus accident in the West Bank. Sadly, the child’s father was killed in the accident, and his mother was badly injured.

Somehow Yamen managed to escape the incident with only minor injuries, but his mother was unable to feed him, and he was refusing to eat from a bottle because he was exclusively breastfed. A nurse at the hospital, Ola Ostrowski-Zak, was asked if she could find someone to nurse the child, so she decided to do it herself.

“That was my first instinct. I thought to myself, ‘I must help this baby,’” Ostrowski-Zak told the TODAY Show.

“I felt a unique connection with him. It felt pretty similar to feeding my own son Ayam,” she added.

She even made a post to social media to organize other volunteers to help out when she finished her shift, and she ended up receiving responses from women all over the region who were willing to travel to the hospital and help out.

For years, peace activists in Palestine have been teaming up with other peace activists in Israel as well as the United States and Iran to spread a message of love and unity among people of all geographical locations.

These efforts include the Palestine loves Israel and Israel loves Palestine campaigns, which started out as a viral Facebook phenomenon where Palestinians and Israelis would send messages of love to one another.

Photos courtesy of Hadassah Spokesperson Department

Written by: John Vibes

John Vibes is an author and journalist who takes a special interest in the counter culture, and focuses solutions-oriented approaches to social problems. He is also a host of The Free Your Mind Conference and The Free Thought Project Podcast. Read More stories by John Vibes