RAMLA, Israel—A steady hum fills the main dispatch room at the fortified national operations center of Israel’s emergency service, where staff handle the unusual combination of incoming missile alerts and routine medical emergencies in an intense wartime environment.
It is all part of a day’s work at Magen David Adom’s national operations center in the central Israeli city of Ramla, near Tel Aviv. In a sign of the times, the organization moved into the six-story fortified building on Oct. 7, 2023, the day of the Hamas-led invasion of southern Israel.
The state-of-the-art $130 million facility, funded by donors to the predominantly volunteer organization, houses the national ambulance dispatch center as well as underground national blood and human milk banks.
