Bennett, Ben-Dahan help pregnant women in snow

Both MK's used their personal jeeps to help transport women in labor, other sick and needy to hospital during storm.

By GIL STERN STERN HOFFMAN
Naftali Bennet 311 (photo credit: Courtesy)
Naftali Bennet 311
(photo credit: Courtesy)
Bayit Yehudi leader Naftali Bennett and his deputy in the Religious Affairs Ministry, MK Eli Ben-Dahan, both engaged in a different kind of public service during the ongoing snowstorm on Sunday.
Both of them used their jeeps to help transport women who delivered babies through the storm and other charitable acts.
Ben-Dahan started his weekend Friday by helping a family from Jerusalem's Beit Hakerem neighborhood get across town to the Har Homa neighborhood for the Brit Mila ceremony of their son. He then hosted for Shabbat at his Jerusalem home four families of more than 20 people from a poor neighborhood who lacked electricity in their apartments.
On Saturday night, the ZAKA organization asked Ben-Dahan to take a sick woman from her home on a narrow road in Jerusalem's Har Nof neighborhood to Sharei Tzedek Hospital in his Toyota Landcruiser. The deputy minister pushed several cars out of the snow on Sunday.
Ben-Dahan helped a woman who had given birth recently get to Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital on Sunday to remove her stitches. He then drove a woman who gave birth three days earlier at the hospital return from the hospital to her home across town in Jerusalem's Ramot neighborhood along with her husband and newborn baby.
"I drove jeeps in the IDF and I love taking jeep tours," Ben-Dahan said. "The government should have called in more volunteers with jeeps. I am sure if they would have, many more people could have been saved. There are people who are embarrassed to volunteer to help like I did, but if they would have been asked, I am sure they would have come." On a tour of communities in Samaria, Bennett helped a pregnant woman get from Ofra to Meir Hospital in Kfar Saba. He delivered pitas to communities that had not had bread deliveries since before the storm began Thursday morning.
Bennett encouraged people in communities that lacked electricity to leave temporarily. He helped people remove their cars from the snow.
"This is the only freeze there will be around here," he reassured the residents of Samaria. "I am proud to see so many people helping each other. The solidarity among the people here is very impressive."