ZAKA INTERNATIONAL SEARCH & RESCUE

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                                     Noahide Nations is proud to be a supporter of the ZAKA International.  They are one of the elite search and rescue
organizations in the world. Maintaining the best equipment, best training and a desire to preserve life, this is what makes them one of the best first responders to all types of disasters.  Because of their tremendous humanitarian efforts Noahide Nations recognized ZAKA by awarding them with our Tzedakah Award at our 2011 Noahide World Conference.  We hope you will help us to help them by DONATING HERE.

True virtue (Chesed Shel Emet) – this is the highly visible and emotionally distressing work for which ZAKA is best known. The ultimate act of loving kindness and altruism (performing a deed for which the recipient cannot express gratitude), true virtue is the very hallmark and foundation of ZAKA.

The ZAKA volunteers are professionally trained in all aspects of their work related to identification of the deceased, preserving the honour of the dead and ensuring a full and proper Jewish burial. ZAKA is the only organisation authorized by the Israel Police to handle any and every incident of sudden death, be it traffic accidents, murder, suicide, terror attacks, mass casualty incidents or natural disasters.

ZAKA volunteers attend professional training courses given in conjunction with the Israel Police and their Forensics Department, studying everything related to identifying the deceased: fingerprints; DNA testing; dental testing; forensics and Jewish law.

ZAKA volunteers learn and practice body identification in accordance with the latest professional verification techniques and Jewish law. In the course of their work, the volunteers use the most advanced equipment in order to identify the bodies and body parts beyond any doubt, thereby avoiding any halachic uncertainty and unnecessary distress.

By virtue of their unique experience, ZAKA volunteers also operate in similar circumstances outside of Israel, helping Jews or Israelis wherever they may be caught up in natural disasters or mass casualty incidents.

Wherever the crisis, whenever the need, ZAKA is always there. From the tsunami to Mumbai, from Istanbul to Taba, the UN-recognized international humanitarian organization sends volunteers and paramedics to terror and mass casualty incidents around the world.

Missing Persons Unit

Thanks to the special structure and deployment of the units, hundreds of ZAKA volunteers for missing person searches can be called up and deployed in a short space of time and in high concentration of numbers – trained volunteers who carry all the necessary equipment for a missing person search.

Joint ZAKA-IDF Home Front Unit

In this unit, which was formed as a result of lessons learned from the Second Lebanon War, certified ZAKA rescuers who have undergone specialist training from the IDF's Home Front Command, work in conjunction with the Home Front Command in mass casualty disasters and home front incidents that require a large number of professional rescuers.


 Climbing and Rappelling Unit

A team working within the Rescue Unit, responsible for rescue situations that involve climbing and rappelling. This elite group of extremely fit volunteers with medical knowledge has undergone specialist training in order to offer an immediate response in natural and urban disasters.

Divers Unit

A highly qualified team, the Divers Unit is equipped with various levels of diving equipment for immediate response in the search for people missing at sea or those in distress and deployed from Haifa in the North to Eilat in the south.

The idea for establishing the Divers Unit was borne out of a real need identified by the ZAKA Rescue Unit commanders. It was during the search for the late Moshe Caniel, who drowned off the coast of Tel Aviv in 2005, that hundreds of volunteers combed the coastline while helicopters hovered above – only to realise that they were unable to reach the depths of the sea due to lack of the appropriately qualified personnel. ZAKA, quick to learn from this incident, established a Divers Unit in the name of Caniel, 30 days after his body was recovered. In February 2007, the Divers Unit flew to France to assist in the search for a missing Israeli diplomat and succeeded in locating and retrieving his body. The ZAKA Divers Unit comprises 150 professional (and mostly secular) divers, including ex Navy commandos, doctors, lawyers and businessmen who regularly train together.

Canine Search and Rescue Unit

There are only ten search and rescue dogs in the unit, due to their special nature and their complex training as search dogs. These dogs are used around the country to assist in dozens of search operations, including searching for senior citizens, Alzheimer sufferers and people with suicidal tendencies who have gone missing. The unit, which carries out joint exercises with the IDF's elite Oketz canine unit, is ready to move anywhere in the country for the benefit of the community and to save lives at any time and in any place.

A search and rescue dog can identify the scent of a person in distress or a dead person (up to 48 hours after death) from a considerable distance. The dog handler leads the dog against the wind that carries scents undetected by man. The dog can distinguish between the scent emitted by someone stationary (the missing person) and that of someone moving (the search team), even at night and if the person is camouflaged or hidden. As soon as the dog identifies the scent, he will lead the dog handler to its source, sit down and bark.

The dogs are brought to the scene of the search in real time, and released in the area to search, with the dog handler in pursuit, noting the path taken by the dog. The dogs are capable of locating a dead body in just five minutes in a 500 square meter area, even if this is a stony and difficult terrain that is not reachable by the search team.

 

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