Following an attack by two Palestinians who stabbed an Israeli border police officer at the Tapuah Junction in the West Bank Friday, paramedics with the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) used “expensive, cutting-edge plasma treatment” to save one of their lives, reports the Times of Israel.
According to the IDF’s Lt. Moshe Cohen, a team of paramedics used the treatment on one of the attackers as he was on his “last breaths.”
The other attacker died before paramedics arrived on scene.
“I checked the first terrorist’s pulse and saw that he didn’t have one, that he was definitely dead,” Cohen, a 23-year-old medical officer from Be’er Sheva, told the Times of Israel. “The second terrorist was face-down on the ground. The paramedic checked him, saw that he was still breathing, really his last breaths.”
Several Israeli paramedics began treating the attacker, including members of both the IDF and Israel’s Magen David Adom (MDA) emergency rescue service. According to Cohen, the attacker received a “very, very expensive” blood substitute that is flown in from Germany. According to a 2013 article published in Haaretz, the IDF was actually the first army to use powdered plasma in the field, and is considered a revolutionary treatment.
The plasma, Cohen said, saved the attacker’s life.
Earlier this month, Eli Bin, director general of the MDA, sparked controversy amongst Israelis when he said that paramedics could choose to treat injured Palestinian terrorists before treating Jewish Israeli victims with lighter wounds.
“When I see my enemy wounded I no longer treat him as a terrorist, but as a human being. He has surrendered; he no longer poses a threat, so I’ll treat him,” Bin told the Tel Aviv-based radio station 103FM.
Yehuda Meshi Zahav, director of ZAKA, another Israeli EMS organization, said that he instructs volunteers “to first take care of all Jews, because they were harmed just because they are Jews, while the terrorist murderer is deserving of death,” Israel National News reported. “We need to know that there is also a limit to morality,” he said.
Speaking of the Palestinian terrorist who was saved by plasma treatment, Cohen said, “What he did before and what he will do afterwards, that’s not up to me. This wasn’t the first time, and I assume it won’t be the last time that we treat terrorists.”
