Jewish Nurse Breastfeeds Palestinian Baby After Parents Get Into Fatal Car Crash

Ula Ostrowski-Zak, a Jewish nurse at Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital in Jerusalem, spent her entire shift breastfeeding a nine-month-old Palestinian boy Friday night after the child’s mother suffered severe injuries in a car accident on the West Bank’s Route 60.

Baby Yaman lost his father and nearly lost his mother when the family’s vehicle collided head-on with an armored vehicle. Yaman’s mother wasn’t wearing a seat belt at the time and suffered a serious head injury. Yaman ended up at the pediatric emergency room after the traumatic car crash. There, he refused to consume milk from a bottle, so nurse Ostrowski-Zak took on the maternal duties herself.

“The baby, who was lightly injured, was taken to the emergency room, but there was no one to feed him and he refused to eat from a bottle. For seven hours, until Ostrowski-Zak arrived, he didn't eat a thing and cried incessantly. His aunts were helpless,” reports Ynet News.

"They asked me if I could help them find someone who would breastfeed the baby. As a nursing mother, I didn't hesitate and suggested that I do it myself,” Ostrowski-Zak told Ynet.  "His aunts were surprised that a Jew agreed to breastfeed him, but I told them that every mother would do it.”

"I fed him five times," she added. "His aunts embraced me and thanked me. They were really surprised and told me that no Jewish women would agree to nurse a Palestinian baby they did not know."

Ostrowski-Zak has received an outpouring of support on social media for her empathetic nursing.

Yaman’s mother has yet to recover from her injury. Yaman was discharged after being tended to. He will stay at his grandparents’ home in Hebron, West Bank, indefinitely.