27/03/2026
"Why do Jews need their own ambulance service?"
Following the recent arson attack on Hatzola North London ambulances, this question has been circulating
This is the wrong question. Hatzola is a registered charity, funded and run by the Jewish community, but they respond to anyone in a life-threatening emergency. To question why a community-funded ambulance exists, especially while those vehicles are still smouldering from an attack is more than just a distraction. It is an attempt to justify the unjustifiable.
Attacking a service that exists solely to save lives, and then interrogating its right to exist because of the community that pays for it, is immoral.
The real question we should be asking is: "Why does the UK rely so heavily on voluntary emergency services?"
For centuries, British communities of all backgrounds have stepped up to "fill the gap." Our emergency framework is built on the goodwill of people who refuse to wait for someone else to act. Hatzola is not an anomaly; it is part of a vital network of "blue light" charities that protect us all:
* St John Ambulance (A charity with deep Christian roots providing frontline emergency response)
* The Order of Malta Ambulance Corps (A Catholic-founded voluntary service providing emergency care)
* הצלה - הדף הרשמי Hatzola (A Jewish-founded emergency service operating in 6 UK locations)
* St Andrew's (The primary volunteer responders in Scotland)
* The Air Ambulance Service (21 regional charities that provide life-saving specialist care)
* BASICS (A network of volunteer doctors and medics responding to the most serious 999 calls)
* LIVES (A charity of volunteer responders providing emergency care across Lincolnshire)
* Tynemouth & South Shields Volunteer Life Brigades (Independent coastal rescue charities, founded by local people in the 1860s)
* Mountain Rescue (The voluntary "ambulance service" for the UK’s peaks and fells)
* RNLI (The voluntary emergency service for our coastline)
* Lowland Rescue (Teams of volunteers searching for and treating the vulnerable)
* Guernsey Ambulance & Rescue Service (The island’s charitable emergency provider)
*Plus many other medical, rescue and disaster volunteer organisations that we have the pleasure to work with such as British Red Cross
Whether it’s a Christian-rooted organisation, a Jewish-funded crew, or a local coastal brigade, these groups don’t exist to separate us. They exist to ensure that when a 999 call goes out, help arrives as fast as possible.
To target these services is to target the very best of our society.
