There is a difference between tragedy and exploitation. On October 7, tragedy spoke for itself in the screams of the dying, the silence of the murdered, the disarray of a nation caught unprepared. Exploitation came later, draped in orange vests, armed not with medical kits but with fables, stitched together to shake loose dollars from sympathetic donors abroad.
In the Jerusalem Post on January 15, 2024, United Hatzalah 1221 CEO Eli Pollak published an essay claiming that his organization was “the only medical service on the ground.” That sentence alone is an act of desecration. It erases the sacrifice of Magen David Adom, Israel’s national EMS, which answered more than 26,000 emergency calls that day and deployed ambulances, motorbikes, intensive care units, and air crews under fire. Pollak did not merely exaggerate his organization’s role. He stole credit from the men and women who actually gave their lives doing the work the state entrusted them to do.
On October 7, MDA lost several of its own. Amit Mann, 22, a paramedic and clinic manager, was murdered while treating the wounded in the clinic at Kibbutz Be’eri. Aharon Haimov, 25, a senior EMT and paramedic, was shot to death inside an MDA ambulance while driving to Ofakim to help the injured. Evgeny Galsky, 34, a firefighter and volunteer MDA EMT in the Ayalon region, was also killed that day. These names deserve remembrance, not erasure. To claim United Hatzalah stood alone is to spit on their sacrifice.
And the lies do not stop there. Pollak boasted that United Hatzalah responds to “2,000 emergencies a day” and “750,000 a year.” The math collapses instantly. Two thousand multiplied by 365 equals 730,000, not 750,000. Elsewhere the organization insists each volunteer responds to about 240 emergencies per year. Multiply that by 8,000 volunteers and you get nearly two million responses. Which number is real. Seven hundred thirty thousand. Seven hundred fifty thousand. Two million. None of them align. This is not serious reporting. It is sleight of hand designed to dazzle donors.
Pollak also proclaimed that his organization “saved more than 2,500 lives” on October 7. The number is repeated endlessly, but it is a fabrication. Who are these 2,500. What are the criteria for “saved.” Where is the case-by-case accounting. There is none. Because this is not medicine. It is marketing. To conflate “responded,” “treated,” and “saved” is not carelessness. It is deliberate deception meant to inflate impact. Every time Pollak repeats this line he insults the real responders who bled, fought, and died without turning their sacrifice into a fundraising slogan.
Even the way Pollak frames United Hatzalah’s structure is dishonest. He wrote of his NGO as if it were Israel’s backbone EMS, boasting of helicopters, boats, tractors, and motorcycles as if these alone made it the nation’s first line of defense. In reality, Israel already has a national backbone. It is Magen David Adom, designated by law, operating the 101 line, dispatching across the country, and subject to state audit. United Hatzalah is a volunteer NGO, not the state. Pretending otherwise is not just misleading. It is a fraud against the public and against donors who are sold a counterfeit story of exclusivity.
This is not simply exaggeration. It is the weaponization of grief. Pollak took the chaos of October 7, a day when Israelis were butchered and first responders were overwhelmed, and turned it into a sales pitch in the pages of a national newspaper. He diminished the sacrifice of MDA’s murdered medics, erased the role of the IDF and hospitals, and presented his NGO as the lone savior of Israel. It is a textbook case of exploiting national trauma for organizational gain.
The truth would have been enough. There was real courage on October 7 among United Hatzalah volunteers. But courage does not excuse dishonesty. Courage does not justify stealing valor from the dead. Courage does not entitle an NGO director to rewrite history in order to rattle a donation tin.
Real honor is found in telling the truth, even when it makes your role smaller. Pollak chose to lie. He chose to tarnish the memory of Amit Mann, Aharon Haimov, and Evgeny Galsky and other responders who paid with their lives by pretending his volunteers stood alone. He chose fundraising over truth. That choice is not only undignified. It is dishonorable. And dishonor, in the long run, costs more than any ambulance or helicopter ever purchased with donor dollars.
