Day 421 - 56-year-old combat medic on over a year of reserves

The Times of Israel Daily Briefing

The Times of Israel

News

4.4 • 864 Ratings

🗓️ 30 November 2024

⏱️ 43 minutes

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Summary

Welcome to The Times of Israel's Daily Briefing, your 20-minute audio update on what's happening in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world.

Times of Israel blogger Tuvia Book joins host Amanda Borschel-Dan for today's bonus What Matters Now episode.

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploring key issues currently shaping Israel and the Jewish World with host deputy editor Amanda Borschel-Dan.

Tuvia Book was honorably discharged as a combat medic in the Israel Defense Forces following the 2006 Second Lebanon War. Like most Israeli reservists, however, he stashed a uniform in his basement, "just in case."

That emergency occurred on October 7, 2023, when Book, learning of the Hamas murderous onslaught on southern Israel, pulled out that uniform and, hearing a rumor that some units based in the south were lacking combat medics, packed his car and drove. He arrived, without enlistment papers and no longer registered in the draconian IDF bureaucracy.

He was accepted into the Palmar Asaf Medical Extraction Unit and fought his way back into the IDF system.

Book, who in "real life" is a Times of Israel blogger, a tour guide, author and Jewish educator," has served in the reserves for the past 12 out of 14 months of war.

At the end of November, the Medical Corps reported that some 5,300 wounded soldiers had been treated amid the ground offensive in the Gaza Strip and another 700 in Lebanon.

Book describes his unique reservists unit, and how a combination of speed, professionalism and technology is resulting in a vastly lower case fatality rate — the proportion of wounded who end up dying -- than in any previous war.

For news updates, please check out The Times of Israel’s ongoing live blog.

Subscribe to The Times of Israel Daily Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was produced by the Pod-Waves.

IMAGE: Reservist Tuvia Book, a combat medic in the Palmar Asaf Medical Extraction Unit, on a Gazan beach, 2024. (courtesy)

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to What Matters Now, the Times of Israel's weekly podcast, diving into one issue
0:10.9	of facing Israel and the Jewish world right now. I'm Deputy Editor Amanda Borchelle Dan,
0:16.7	today here with Tuvia Book, who is part of the Palmar, Asaf Medical Extraction Unit.
0:24.0	Tuvya, thank you so much for joining me today in our Jerusalem offices.
0:27.4	It's a pleasure.
0:29.0	Just this week, some stats came out from the Medical Corps, and it was reported that about
0:34.5	5,300 wounded soldiers have been treated amid the ground offensive in the
0:39.8	Gaza Strip and another 700 in Lebanon. Just for some comparison sake, during the entire 2006
0:47.6	Second Lebanon War, 833 soldiers retreated, and in the 2014 Gaza War, 709 soldiers retreated.
0:57.5	So that's 5,300 in Gaza so far and another 700 in Lebanon.
1:03.8	Now, the case fatality rate, the CFR, is the proportion of wounded who end up dying.
1:10.5	And it's really significantly decreased compared to past wars,
1:15.2	with the Medical Corps reporting that it stands at about 6.9% in Gaza and 7.1% in Lebanon.
1:23.6	Again, for comparison's sake, the second Lebanon war saw cfr of 14.8 percent and the 2014 gaza war saw 9.2
1:34.9	percent that's really remarkable in its reduction so a lot of it is attributed to better and faster
1:42.4	treatment for wounded soldiers including the use of whole blood transfusions
1:46.8	on the battlefield for the first time, and some 300 soldiers have been given such transfusions
1:53.9	so far. Now, Tuvia is here, and he's going to talk to us about this, and other things, such
1:59.1	as the speed in which soldiers are
2:01.1	treated and how quickly they reach hospitals after our break.
2:11.7	This episode of the Times of Israel podcast is brought to you by the Jewish Communal Fund,
2:17.1	helping individuals and families
	...

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