By Emily K. Alhadeff, Associate Editor, JTNews
Seventy-two hours after an earthquake devastated Haiti in 2010, Israel was the only country to have a mobile field hospital up and running in Port-au-Prince. From his home in New York, William Recant watched the relief effort take shape on TV.
Recant, the assistant executive vice president of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee’s international development program and the principal coordinator of the Jewish Coalition for Disaster Relief, and his American team had spent the first hours after the earthquake purchasing and coordinating supplies with the Israelis. Israel had generators, but no orthopedic equipment to deal with more than 300 amputee patients, and no incubators to protect premature babies. Recant’s team made sure they went in prepared.
On the news, the reporter asked the Israeli general surgeon in charge of the unit and a Haitian civilian why they were there. The surgeon responded: “Israel has the ability to respond and help people in need wherever they are.” The Haitian man, in turn, pointed to a nearby incubator holding his newborn son. He had named the baby Israel.
Recant’s role in mitigating massive natural and man-made disasters goes back to his Ph.D. dissertation on Soviet Jews and his early work as the executive director of the American Association for Ethiopian Jews, which closed down when its mission of getting Ethiopian Jews to Israel was accomplished. In fact, it goes back further, to growing up the son of Holocaust survivors.
“”˜Where was the rest of the world, why don’t I have grandparents, where was the great American community in my family’s hour of need?'” he asked himself. “I met the Ethiopian Jewish community, heard from them, “˜I want to go to Israel,’ and couldn’t turn a blind eye. What “˜never again’ means in 2014 is “˜We know.’ We can’t say we’re not aware.”
Recant visited Seattle on Tues., March 4, to meet with a private gathering of JDC supporters about the organization’s work.
The JDC, or Joint, provides medical, food, education, Jewish life, and humanitarian assistance to both Jewish and non-Jewish communities in need in over 70 countries. The coalition Recant built through the JDC in 1994, during the Rwandan crisis, is made up of 48 Jewish organizations, and currently is aiding Syrian refugees in Jordan, victims of Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, and sufferers of the famine in the horn of Africa.
Recant remembers at the beginning of the Rwandan genocide seeing seven full-page New York Times ads over six weeks from Jewish organizations asking for relief funds. Most of the money was being funneled through the Red Cross, while the JDC was working on the ground. The ads, said Recant, were costing each organization $65-70,000.
So he approached them to form a coalition.
“Anytime there’s a crisis we come together and decide if we want to form a coalition,” he said. “It’s a way of coordinating Jewish organizations, making sure we’re speaking with one voice.”
Members of the coalition responded to the refugee crisis in Kosovo in 1999, multiple major earthquakes over the past 15 years, the Indonesian tsunami in 2004, the Carmiel fire in Israel in 2010, Darfur, and more.
As for the current crisis in Ukraine, Recant said the Joint is focusing on the impoverished Jewish community it already serves. They are waiting to see if non-sectarian aid will be needed.
“No one could have read the tea leaves and said Russia would have troops in Crimea today,” he said. But “the Joint was prepared for eventualities such as this…. We were there before, we’re there now, and we will be there to help with needs wherever they are.”
The JDC and the coalition assess needs on the ground, often from the vantage point of the local Jewish community, if there is one.
“We work with local Jewish communities wherever they are,” Recant explained. “In Kosovo, there’s a Jewish community of 180 in Skopje, Macedonia.” The tiny community told the Joint that they didn’t need any more water or blankets.
They said, “”˜Just come in and let us be the hub of your humanitarian relief effort,'” Recant said.
In Indonesia, which has no diplomatic relations with Israel, the JDC and its coalition had to go in quietly until they gained the peoples’ trust. Eight months later, an Indonesian trade delegation went to Israel. Recant has more than one feel-good story of new friendships between communities receiving aid and the Jewish people.
“Now there’s a baby Israel in the Philippines because of the country that gave life to their child,” he said.