Eli Beer

On June 2, 1978, Beer witnessed the bombing of the #12 bus. He was struck by the chaos of the incident and the dearth of emergency rescue resources.[1] This traumatic experience inspired him to volunteer on an ambulance at the age of 15, while attending school and working in his family’s book and real estate business.

At the age of 17 Beer realized that a more flexible system had to be established to improve emergency response times. He was familiar with the Hatzalah model established in the United States and began to organize a similar model by launching a volunteer unit in his Jerusalem neighborhood. This unit purchased their own communication gear, medical equipment and supplies and was funded by the community.

Beer began to work with Hatzalah Jerusalem in 1992. With him as fundraiser and operational coordinator the organization grew and changed its name to Hatzalah Israel reflecting its nationwide scope. Hatzalah Israel acted as an umbrella organization, incorporating many Hatzalah chapters that had been established throughout the country.

In 2006 Beer changed the name of the organization to United Hatzalah to represent the partnership of Jewish, Muslim, Druze and Christian volunteers from all religious spectrums working together in order to save lives.

United Hatzalah established its reputation as an EMS organization by being at the forefront of medical innovation. It was the first EMS to introduce the Ambucycle, a motorcycle equipped with all the medical equipment of an ambulance aside from a stretcher, which allowed its volunteer first responders to reach the patient on average of 3 minutes across Israel, 8 to 15 minutes ahead of the first ambulance. In 2008, United Hatzalah launched Israel's first GPS-based dispatch system, which was able to locate and dispatch the five closest EMS responders within 3 seconds of the emergency.

In 25 years, the organization has grown to more than 5,000 volunteer medical responders treating over 300,000 people per year. All services are provided free of charge to all citizens regardless of race or religion.

Beer's vision is to bring United Hatzalah's life-saving model to other communities across the world. In 2015, he expanded internationally with the establishment of branches in South America and other countries, including "United Rescue" in Jersey City, US, where the response time was reduced to just two minutes and thirty-five seconds.

During his voluntary career as an EMT, Beer has been a medical responder at the scenes of the Ben Yehuda Street bombings, the Versailles Wedding Hall disaster, the Second Lebanon War in the north, and Operation Cast Lead in the south.

Beer was invited to be a speaker on April 2013 on TEDMED, an annual conference about health and medicine. His talk[3] was later featured on the TED website.

Beer is married to Gitty, and they have five children: four girls and a boy.

In April 2020, Beer tested positive for COVID-19 amidst the worldwide pandemic and was taken to an intensive care unit for treatment. He recovered from the disease and was greeted by several of United Hatzalah workers upon returning.[4]

• Eli Beer at TED