‘The Jewish ambulance service saved my baby’s life – this attack is abhorrent’

A volunteer ambulance service which was targeted in an antisemitic attack saved a one-week-old baby’s life last year, Metro can reveal.

The Hatzola crew arrived within just five minutes when Yossi and Esti Glass’ newborn daughter, Aliza, started choking last December.

She was rushed to a north London hospital in the very ambulance her Rabbi grandfather’s synagogue had just fundraised to buy.

Esti said she was forever grateful for the charity, and called the early-hours firebombing on its vehicles an abhorrent tragedy.

She told Metro: ‘Hatzola volunteer’s saved my daughter’s life. They are angels.

‘[The attack] is a complete tragedy. I do not understand it. There are some really nasty people in the world.’

Four ambulances belonging to the Hatzola were set on fire in an antisemitic attack outside a north London synagogue in Golders Green.

The attack was branded ‘particularly sickening’ and a ‘war on humanity’ by faith leaders because of the charity’s work providing free emergency care and transport for the Jewish community.

Yossi and Esti brought their newborn baby, Aliza, to meet Esti’s parents in Mill Hill, north London, on December 12 when she stopped breathing and went blue in the face.

Esti recalled: ‘She started to choke on it and foam at the mouth. Her face went blue. She was unable to breathe’.

Rabbi Schochet desperately gave the baby mouth-to-mouth while her parents called for the Hatzola.

The first responder from the charity arrived just five minutes later and gave her rescue breaths before an Hatzola ambulance could take Aliza to hospital.

That same ambulance had just been added to Hatzola’s Edgware fleet because of a fundraising drive from Rabbi Schochet’s synagogue.

The charity’s links meant they organised for emergency responders to meet Aliza at the doors of the hospital, while a team stayed with Esti and Yossi as they waited for her to be treated.

The family were later told the Hazola’s quick response and care saved their baby’s life.

Esti said: ‘I am forever grateful to Hatzola and the volunteers who saved her life. I talk about it all the time.’

Reacting to the antisemitic attack on the Hatzola fleet in neighbouring Golders Green, Esti said: ‘It is abhorrent. It is painful to see.’

Despite this, the mum says she ‘knows the community are coming together to rise above it’.

Already more than half a million pounds has been donated money to the Hatzola NW charity in the past few hours.

Health Secretary Wes Streeting said earlier the London Ambulance Service would also provide four temporary ambulances to the Hatzola before the government funds the permanent replacement of the vehicles.

Rabbi Schochet described the firebombing as ‘terrorism plan and simple’.

He told Metro: ‘To target ambulances is a war on humanity itself. The Hatzola service is the most outstanding service in Jewish communities around the world.

‘This attack is what happens when antisemitism is tolerated or excused.

‘We have created an environment where Jewish people feel unsafe. This is not who we are as a country.’

Rabbi Schochet added: ‘If one person dies because these ambulances were out of action, that is on the perpetrators and all those who have tolerated this for too long.

‘We will not be intimidated as a Jewish community. But we should not have to be resilient. We should be protected. Enough is enough.’

Footage shared on social media shows three hooded figures walking towards the parked ambulances at around 1.40am before flames erupt from the site.

A source told Metro the suspects had buckets potentially filled with accelerant. They then set fire to rags, triggering the oxygen tanks inside to explode.

The synagogue next to the ambulances on Highfield Road was damaged in the attack with the stained-glass windows shattered.

Damon Hoff, the synagogue’s president, said the fire was ‘terrifying’ and ‘an attack on the Jewish way of life’.

The Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis called the attack a ‘particularly sickening assault’.

He added: ‘The targeting of Hatzola by people so committed to terror, hatred and the desecration of life is a most painful illustration of the ongoing battle between those who sanctify life and those who seek to destroy it.

‘At a time when Jewish communities around the world are facing a growing pattern of these violent attacks, we will meet this moment with shared resolve and stand together against hatred and intimidation.’

The Prime Minister called it ‘deeply shocking’, saying that antisemitism has ‘no place in our society’.

Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.

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