95 years on the frontlines: The story of Magen David Adom

What those founders couldn’t have predicted was the scale of what they created: an organization that would become Israel’s national medical lifeline, its humanitarian presence abroad, and a cornerstone of civilian resilience.

At the time, these missions weren’t seen as heroic acts; they were simply necessary. The values shaping MDA for nearly a century – resourcefulness, volunteer spirit, and a fierce dedication to human life – were already present.

By the 1960s, as the young state grew, MDA’s role expanded with it. The organization had become the default responder during crisis, summoned for everything from traffic accidents to mass-casualty events, from immigrant absorption to sudden outbreaks of violence, with war accelerating its evolution.

In the 1967 Six Day War, crews rushed through bombed neighborhoods and desert frontlines. In the 1973 Yom Kippur War, the attack arrived so suddenly that MDA had no choice but to mobilize instantly, blending into the army’s medical corps. Kodinsky’s records make clear that MDA’s wartime status – an auxiliary to military medical units – was not abstract.

Volunteers and staff crossed between civilian and military care fluidly because the country required it. These experiences shaped a philosophy that would guide the organization for decades: Emergencies in Israel are not interruptions but a rhythm. To function, MDA needed to be ready before events unfolded, not after. That logic led to one of the organization’s quiet revolutions. In 1987, MDA opened the National Blood Bank in the Sheba Medical Center complex.

What began as a wartime necessity – collecting blood for wounded soldiers – became a modern medical system. Blood was screened, processed, and distributed nationwide. It was unglamorous, technical work, but it kept the country alive.

And the emergencies kept coming. During the First Lebanon War, MDA medics treated casualties in urban combat and rural encampments. In the Second Lebanon War in 2006, they responded to wave after wave of rocket barrages. For 34 days, MDA crews evacuated wounded families, tended to the elderly trapped in shelters, and maintained blood supplies even as the North came under heavy fire.

These were but two, albeit significant, events in MDA’s long journey from a rescue organization to a national institution – tested repeatedly, reshaped repeatedly, and forced to innovate not for prestige but for survival.

The turning point in MDA’s modernization occurred in the 1990s, when the organization started designing one of the world’s first comprehensive emergency dispatch systems. Maj. Gen. (res.) Yochanan Gur, who had managed logistics for the IDF, supervised the development of an in-house platform called Yoram, named after his son who died in a training accident during the Yom Kippur War. Gur and MDA’s paramedics aimed to create a system not for bureaucracy but for the realities of field medicine.

Over the decades, that system evolved into the ultra-fast, GPS-based network MDA uses today: a dispatch model that identifies the closest responder, whether a paramedic in an ambulance, a medic on a motorcycle, or a trained volunteer nearby, and dispatches them automatically.

“Our system is the best in the world,” says Prof. Eli Yafe, MDA’s deputy director of community. “The reason is that paramedics designed it for paramedics.” Yafe emphasizes that the most important person is the one the public rarely sees. “From the moment a call is answered to the moment an ambulance is on the road, it’s less than 10 seconds.”

In many cities worldwide, this stage alone takes more than a minute. Israel cannot afford minutes; MDA must operate in seconds, Yafe states. But speed wasn’t driven by technology alone.

The “volunteer revolution” came around the turn of the millennium, when MDA launched one of the most influential systems in Israeli civic life: the 24/7 volunteer first-responder network. The idea was deceptively simple. Volunteers could go about their daily routines but carry a device – initially a beeper, later an app – that would alert them if an emergency occurred nearby. They weren’t replacing ambulances; they were extending the organization’s reach into every highway, neighborhood, building, and office.

We took classic volunteers and made them responders all the time,” Yafe explains. Even off-duty medics could be on call if they happened to be near an incident. “No country in the world has this. Many tried to imitate it. None succeeded.”

The result was a new landscape of care: Help didn’t come from distant stations; it arrived from the next block, the next floor, the next streetlight. The system shaved critical minutes off response times, saving thousands of lives. It also democratized lifesaving.

Teachers, students, paramedics, tech workers, retirees, and anyone with training could become a first responder. MDA grew into more than a medical organization; it became a civic movement.

During the first years of the 21st century, MDA teams were deployed to earthquakes in Haiti and Nepal, disaster zones in Africa, and international relief missions where their improvisational skills proved crucial. The budding relationship between MDA and the International Red Cross and the Red Crescent Movement created even more opportunities for the organization to help in events the world over.

Kodinsky’s archives include images of MDA instructors training medics in Uganda, a striking contrast to the sepia-toned photographs of volunteers on Tel Aviv streets in the 1930s. A local rescue service had become a global entity.

While expanding internationally, MDA also faced a new domestic concern: communities cut off during mass-casualty events. The solution was Project Magen, an initiative designed to train local doctors, nurses, medics, and volunteers to operate as independent medical “islands.”

It was an unglamorous, practical program, but it was forward-looking. As Yafe explains, “Sometimes you have no choice but to function like an isolated island. What happens if your community is alone?”

The first emergency calls came at dawn on Oct. 7, 2023. Within minutes, the 101 dispatch center was overwhelmed. Gunfire echoed through phone lines. Entire kibbutzim called simultaneously. Dispatchers, paramedics, and EMTs had to extract critical details from voices trembling, whispering, or suddenly cutting off. Then the ambulances moved out.

“In the very first moments of that terrible day, our teams operated across the entire Gaza border community area – even under heavy fire,” recalls MDA Director General Eli Bin.

MDA medics drove into chaos: blocked roads, burning homes, and ongoing gunfire. Helicopters carried out evacuation after evacuation amid rocket fire.

One helicopter was hit in mid-flight while transporting wounded civilians. Paramedics protected patients with their bodies. “Our teams treated nearly 1,000 wounded people in a single day,” Bin says.

The toll was staggering. “Seven MDA personnel were murdered,” Bin adds. “Two were critically wounded, and many more were harmed while trying to reach the wounded.” In addition to the devastating human losses, 14 ambulances sustained damage, with three entirely destroyed.

MDA’s use of its blood bank exemplified this intensity. “Our blood services collected about 5,000 units of blood that day alone,” Bin says. Throughout the country, Israelis queued in extremely long lines to donate. In the South, local doctors and medics, trained years earlier in MDA youth courses, provided first aid in communities that for hours were unreachable by ambulances.

Nothing about Oct. 7 was predictable. However, MDA’s decades of investment – volunteers, algorithms, helicopters, motorcycles, blood services – culminated on a single day of relentless, improvisational heroism.

“Israel’s Home Front Command is composed of four national institutions: the IDF, Israel’s Police Force, the National Fire and Rescue Authority, and Magen David Adom,” Bin explains. “Each organization has the sole authority to manage emergencies and security issues. Just as we have one army, one force, and one fire department, we have a single national rescue organization – MDA.”

As Magen David Adom marks its 95th year, the organization stands at a crossroads, shaped by its history but equally defined by what the country now requires. Today, MDA operates nearly 2,000 rescue vehicles, 650 emergency motorcycles, 250 rapid-response cars, five helicopters, five urgent-care ambulances, and two rescue boats. It trains thousands of medics each year, supplies all of Israel’s blood, and responds by land, air, and sea.

“Magen David Adom is a unique organization,” Bin emphasizes. “It relies overwhelmingly on volunteers from all sectors, nationalities, and religions; and it is the only organization in the country where thousands of teenagers actively participate in daily lifesaving.”

He sums up the stakes clearly: “Without a strong, prepared MDA, Israel cannot maintain its civilian resilience.” The sentiment is both institutional and personal. MDA’s story has always been about ordinary people rushing toward danger when others are fleeing.

From the founders with their single stretcher, to the youth volunteers with their emergency bags, to the medics who entered burning homes on Oct. 7, the organization has been built by individuals who refused to look away. Thanks to historians like Kodinsky, the organization’s earliest chapters remain visible even as MDA adopts new technologies and prepares for future emergencies. What began in a small room in 1930 is now a nationwide, hi-tech, deeply human network.