50 days and counting serving in the Homefront Command
Meet the reserve officer who spent over 50 days dealing with corona virus while teaching remotely.
By ANNA AHRONHEIMLt.-Col. (res.) Sharon Michaeli-Ramon(photo credit: IDF SPOKESMAN’S UNIT)
For over 50 days Lt.-Col. (res.) Sharon Michaeli-Ramon has been splitting her days into three: reserves in the Homefront Command, teaching, and her family.Michaeli-Ramon, who serves as the Public Behavioral Commander in the Homefront Command’s Dan District, was called up for reserve duty when the coronavirus outbreak in Israel began in March.“It’s been 50 days and counting,” Michaeli-Ramon told The Jerusalem Post during a short break in her busy schedule on Thursday.With thousands of reservists called up, the IDF’s Homefront Command played a central role in handling the crisis. Troops were sent across the country, handing out food to residents living in cities placed under lockdown, evacuating sick individuals to coronavirus quarantine facilities, bringing incoming travelers to coronavirus quarantine hotels, and running those hotels and more.The Homefront Command was critical in being the liaison between authorities and various communities hit hard by the virus, including the Ultra-Orthodox and Arab communities which saw a large number of cases.“The Homefront Command had a lot of responsibilities, and we had to deal with an event we never dealt with before. We had to understand a lot of practical things about various communities and provide help to thousands of people we never helped before,” she said. “The Homefront Command is rarely in Arab and religious communities, but we were able to help these communities in all sorts of ways we never have before.”The handling of the crisis “would have been impossible without the Homefront Command,” Michaeli-Ramon said. “Our troops did all the hands-on work of the government and health ministry. It would have looked completely different had we not been there.”Running on four hours of sleep, Michaeli-Ramon commanded over six officers and 90 troops and with two young children at home, she had to keep up her family life as well.“I woke up every day at 6.30 AM and went to sleep at 2.30 AM,” she said. “Everything that I was able to push to the evening, meetings, reports, anything that could be done later in the evening or night was done then.”While Michaeli-Ramon was at first sent into the field to various cities in the Dan district which stretches from Netanya to Bat Yam, she later worked from home holding meetings and conferences by Zoom.
Principal at the Kulna Yachad school in Jaffo, which teaches both Jewish and Arab students, she didn’t stop her day job when she was called up. While schools have only now reopened, Michaeli-Ramon, like many other teachers around the country continued to teach their students online via Zoom and other teleconferencing applications.With the numbers of Israelis infected with the virus continuing to drop, Michaeli-Ramon’s reserve duty work has turned to writing reports on how to support the population dealing with closures and intervention in order to prevent post-traumatic stress disorder and other issues. She is also busy working on reports regarding Israel’s reopening of the economy and education system.And with schools across the country slowly reopening, Michaeli-Ramon’s also gone back to the classroom, greeting her students on Tuesday for the first time in two months.But with fears of another wave of the coronavirus expected to strike in the winter, Michaeli-Ramon knows that the country needs to prepare.“Israel is a country that knows how to respond quickly and adapt,” she said. “There will be very good learning curve but everything depends on the policies. If we use everything that we learned, the next wave will be different. Civilians will be more prepared and more informed. We don’t know if another wave will happen but we have to prepare, especially mentally.”
