Mark Gerson, the American financier who has chaired United Hatzalah’s board for close to 20 years, continues to accuse Magen David Adom of blocking UH’s volunteers from emergency calls. Yet Israel’s courts and Ministry of Health have already ruled those claims false. In 2021, the Tel Aviv District Court found that MDA had not withheld calls or caused preventable deaths. The Ministry of Health confirmed the same. United Hatzalah was ordered to pay damages for what the court called a defamatory campaign against Israel’s national emergency service.
Despite this judgment, Gerson and United Hatzalah’s leadership have carried on with the same narrative, insisting that MDA “kills people.” In 2022, he sent a private email to an inquiring individual accusing MDA’s “power and ego” of costing lives. When confronted about that email, Gerson said he did not recall it. “I do not recall that email or statement, but I appreciate the opportunity to share the context, with the hope of a positive resolution with the UH-MDA issues that will result in more lives being saved,” he told The Mael Review.
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More: United Hatzalah: The Full Investigation“The essential issue that United Hatzalah has had with MDA, over many years (since at least 2010, and maybe before), is MDA not sharing emergency calls with United Hatzalah,” Gerson said. “As a result of this practice, there have been many instances of United Hatzalah medics not receiving calls from victims in dire need of immediate life-saving assistance, even when they are right nearby and ready and desperate to help.”
Those words echo the very charges rejected in court. “There is therefore an unequivocal determination by the regulator, the Ministry of Health, that there is no basis for United Hatzalah’s claim,” the Tel Aviv District Court wrote. “Therefore, United Hatzalah’s claim that there was justification for the campaign is incorrect and there was no justification for defaming MDA.”
Israel’s emergency framework is clear. Since 2014, the Ministry of Health has designated MDA as the national dispatch authority. All emergency calls are routed to its centralized system. A 2017 regulation reaffirmed that United Hatzalah, one of more than a dozen Hatzalah organizations in Israel, may participate if its volunteers register and use the government-approved app. Ministry inspections concluded that “in all incidents tested, first responders that were close to the scene of the incident were dispatched” and that “there is no discrimination between first responders due to their organizational affiliation.” In 2024, Ministry officials even observed MDA’s dispatch center for two months and officials confirmed that the system was operating fairly and professionally.
MDA’s scale underscores why the state has entrusted it with this responsibility. In addition to serving as Israel’s national blood service, MDA operates more than 200 stations across the country, fields close to 4,000 vehicles, and relies on over 34,000 volunteers. Its dispatchers receive an emergency call every nine seconds. This is not a boutique charity; it is the backbone of Israel’s emergency medical response.
“MDA’s command-and-control system dispatches all registered first responders according to their proximity to the incident, regardless of organizational affiliation,” said Uri Shacham, MDA’s chief of staff, in a statement to The Mael Review.
The disconnect between Gerson’s private rhetoric in 2022 and his softer public comments today reflects a deeper credibility problem. In the email, he accused MDA of “killing people.” His comment this week struck a more measured tone, praising the professionalism of both organizations’ medics, but still repeated the same central claim. Regulators, courts, and even United Hatzalah’s own reporting have contradicted that assertion. At times UH has acknowledged that its call figures include information received from MDA, which undermines the charge of exclusion.
And the rhetoric has not been limited to Gerson. As recently as October 2024, a group of UH donors were told by founder Eli Beer in the lobby of their hotel that supporting Magen David Adom equals “killing” people in Israel. According to multiple accounts, Beer insisted that anyone who wishes to save lives in Israel can only support United Hatzalah. This statement, like Gerson’s accusations, runs directly contrary to the findings of Israel’s Ministry of Health and judiciary. It also demonstrates how UH’s leadership continues to use the most inflammatory framing when speaking directly to donors.
Concerns about United Hatzalah’s credibility extend well beyond the MDA dispute. After the October 7 terror attacks, Beer made several dramatic public claims that were never substantiated. He said UH volunteers had killed or captured more than one hundred terrorists. He described alleged atrocities, including babies found in ovens, a baby cut from a pregnant woman’s stomach, and a woman raped in especially brutal ways. These accounts were repeated widely, but Israeli officials and independent journalists later reported that they could not confirm them. To this day United Hatzalah has not retracted those fabricated claims. In the months that followed, the organization raised tens of millions of dollars from donors in Israel and abroad.
Financial transparency has also come under scrutiny. A Mael Review investigation found that United Hatzalah of Israel reported receiving $77.8 million, while its American fundraising arm reported disbursing $132 million to Israel. The discrepancy of more than $50 million remains unexplained. For an organization that depends almost entirely on donations, such gaps demand accountability.
If so many of the most shocking stories have not held up, it raises another pressing question. Are the organization’s widely repeated numbers about its scope and success accurate? UH regularly claims to take a certain number of emergency calls, to save a specific number of lives, and to field thousands of active volunteers. But given the proven record of exaggerations and fabrications, those figures deserve rigorous independent verification. Just as courts and regulators have shown UH’s accusations against MDA to be false, donors and the public are entitled to know whether UH’s self-reported metrics reflect reality.
The pattern is difficult to ignore. United Hatzalah’s leadership makes dramatic claims, those claims collapse under scrutiny, and the organization continues to benefit financially. Donors respond to emotional appeals, while the factual record shows that MDA is fulfilling its mandate as Israel’s national dispatch authority.
MDA by contrast operates under government supervision, responds to hundreds of thousands of emergencies each year, and is recognized internationally by the Red Cross. Its credibility underpins public trust in Israel’s emergency system. Allegations that it is “killing people” or blocking volunteers risk undermining that trust, even when those allegations have already been rejected by regulators and courts.
The solution for United Hatzalah is straightforward. Retract the false claims that Israel’s Ministry of Health and courts have already dismissed. Reconcile financial reporting so donors can see clearly how funds raised abroad are used. Ensure that every public statement is accurate and evidence-based. And stop spreading unsubstantiated accusations about MDA.
Israel’s emergency services depend on public trust. That trust cannot survive repeated falsehoods. Until United Hatzalah accepts responsibility for its words and actions, its credibility will remain in question. MDA, meanwhile, continues to do the work assigned to it by law: dispatching the nearest available medic to every emergency. The Ministry has confirmed it. The courts have upheld it. And the calls answered every nine seconds across Israel are the final proof.
