Unit 669 alum Bar Reuven spent years training to save lives, not take them

Bar Reuven isn’t your standard IDF combat officer.

For his initial 18 months of service, he had to continue simple battalion training, wire rescue, giveaway diving, parachute, counterterrorism and medic courses.

As a result, he’s now a master in navigating how to duty in puncture situations on land, sea and air. While many chosen fight units spend weeks or months training for a specific practice – and even bear custom-tailored simulations so soldiers have a clarity of what to design on a belligerent – when Reuven is dispatched, he has probably no time to prepare.

That is since his unit, an chosen hunt and rescue group in a Israel Air Force, is usually dispatched when things go horribly wrong. The emergencies are unpredictable, and soldiers are given reduction than a five-minute warning before they’re sent to a field.

Take, for example, a harrowing occurrence final year, where an clandestine operation in Gaza went badly and erupted in a firefight between the IDF and Hamas. Unit 669 parachuted onto a stage around helicopter, and in reduction than 3 mins a section was means to collect all IDF soldiers, including one who was killed in accessible glow and another who was wounded.

Unit 669 doesn’t usually save their own: They also save civilians – and even enemies. Reuven cites a horrific mudslide final year on a Jordanian side of a Dead Sea where 18 students were killed as an instance of a section during work. They were also on a stage in a arise of a Mavi Marmara occurrence in Turkey, where they saved both Turkish activists and Israeli Navy Seals.

Although Reuven wasn’t concerned in those sold incidents, these kind of last-minute scenarios tangible many of his infantry career.

“I was supposed into a Navy initially, yet afterwards we listened and was intrigued by Unit 669,” Reuven explained, adding that usually 50 of a some 10,000 margin are accepted. Further, during a strenuous training process, another 20 dump out.

“The training unequivocally tests one’s care skills and patience underneath pressure,” he said. “A lot of what we do is how we hoop pressure, and these scenarios are formidable to replicate.”

Each 669 infantryman is a profitable item to Israel. In further to a government-mandated 32-month infantry requirement for all males, Unit 699 soldiers offer an additional dual years. The army also pumps a innumerable of resources into these soldiers, so many so that training any particular costs NIS 1 million.

After his use though, Reuven, like many 669 alumni, couldn’t shake off a need to continue to do good in a world, that is since he founded American Friends of Unit 669, expecting to widespread a unit’s summary of meaningful accurately what to do when disaster strikes.

Reuven recalls an occurrence in a Brooklyn transport a integrate of years ago, when he saw a lady tumble on a hire platform. Given his endless training, Reuven rushed to a woman’s assist to discharge CPR, yet onlookers gawked during him in shock. He satisfied afterwards that many Americans don’t know what to do in puncture situations and, given a magnitude of mass shootings and incidents of cardiac detain in a country, Reuven believes his imagination can be useful.

The New York Times reports that 900 Americans die per day from remarkable cardiac arrest, and a “victim’s chances of presence tumble by 7% to 10% any notation a heart fails to pump.”

In a many some-more frightening scenario, such as when an active shooter is present, a statistics are even grimmer.
“During an active-shooter situation, it is estimated that law coercion response times might be 5 to 6 minutes,” Steve Guerrero, executive of confidence for a nonprofit Green Dot Public Schools in Los Angeles, told a Huffington Post. “And on average, an active shooter conditions lasts anywhere between 5 and 8 minutes.” That singular time frame, then, compels those on a stage to know what to do in sequence to save themselves.

Therefore, these discouraging total stirred Reuven to launch one of a organization’s initial project, that will be initial assist training for Jewish communities opposite a US.

“We wish to start in Jewish communities such as San Diego, that suffered an conflict in Apr 2019, or Pittsburgh, a year ago,” he said. “If – G-d dissuade – it happens again, if people know what to do and have a correct tools, we wish we can make a difference.”

In further to a training, Reuven wants to safeguard that Jewish village centers and Chabad houses are all scrupulously versed with initial assist kits, and that any of these institutions has one chairman in assign who knows how to work them in an emergency.

His burgeoning classification is perplexing to make an impact during home as well. For example, Unit 669 alumni have given initial assist training to Gaza Envelope residents, and a classification also binds an annual medical conference. In November, a classification will reason a gratifying celebration cooking to lift supports for these initiatives – and for alumni, some of whom humour from strident PTSD following harrowing events they witnessed in a field.

The nonprofit has also grown an app for 669’s alumni around a world, where they are told if someone is in distress. If a 669 alum is on vacation in South America, for example, he will accept a presentation that someone nearby to him needs puncture assistance, and if he is able, will rush to discharge aid.

“We can put out an warning and ask people, if they are tighten by, if they can assistance in a box of medical need,” Reuven says. “If something unequivocally critical takes place, we can examine either we can put together a group and send them to that location. We wish to be a charitable apparatus for Jews and Israelis who are in trouble – wherever they might be.”

Hitting a postponement symbol to insert oneself into an puncture is as healthy as respirating to these alumni, who are hyper-vigilant, wakeful of their surroundings, and spend many of their life prepared to open into movement should a need arise.

Reuven smiles while vocalization of his new honeymoon in Japan. Every impulse of what was mostly a regretful knowledge was spent with Reuven expecting what could go wrong and how he’d strengthen his mother should something terrible happen.

Many alumni feel that same clarity of hyper-awareness, and mostly they confirm to parlay their imagination into careers in medicine or puncture service services.

On another front, Reuven believes that his classification can assistance a IDF with a repute around a world. That’s since Unit 669 shows a face of a IDF that many outward of Israel are not informed with. While Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions activists penchant portrayal a IDF infantryman as a brutal, occupying force, 669 flips that account entirely, display that Israeli infantry save lives, regardless of one’s ethnicity or nationality.

“One of a reasons we’re doing this is to try and opposite a anti-Israel, anti-Jewish

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