WESTCHESTER COUNTY, New York — A volunteer synagogue security guard struggled to wrap a tourniquet around the thigh of a “terror victim” who shouted and writhed on the ground in agony.

Another volunteer moved to pin down the victim’s flailing upper body, and an Israeli medic offered a marker that the guard could use to write the time on the victim’s forehead to inform medics when they arrived.

The volunteer applying the tourniquet, a middle-aged theater professional from New York City, tied a T-shirt around the victim’s other leg in a second, improvised tourniquet. She inserted the marker into a knot and cranked it in a circle to cinch the shirt tight.

“Listen, it’s not the right way, but it’s stopping the bleeding, and you move on to the next patient,” said another volunteer, a veteran medic. “We’re not going to have 100 tourniquets and 20 bags and this and that. Use your shoelace. Use anything.”

The Thursday drill was part of a course that Israeli first responders from Magen David Adom (MDA) taught to members of the US-based volunteer synagogue security group, the Community Security Service (CSS). CSS and American Friends of Magen David Adom, the group’s US branch, announced the partnership on Monday.

The collaboration marked an expansion of CSS’s efforts to protect American Jewish communities, drawing on lessons from terror attacks in Israel, as US Jews grapple with the threat of mass casualty incidents caused by terrorism.

Israel trauma lessons come to US

CSS, a nonprofit, trains Jewish community members in security methods to protect synagogues and Jewish events around the US. The program also recently launched street patrols in Jewish areas of New York City. Magen David Adom (MDA) is Israel’s national emergency response service.

The partnership’s first two-day course for CSS volunteers was held in CSS’s headquarters in Westchester County, north of New York City. The group keeps the exact location and the identities of volunteers and some staff confidential for security reasons.

Twenty volunteer guards attended. They hailed from around the US, including the New York region, Philadelphia, Illinois, Florida and Washington, DC. CSS says its network includes more than 7,000 volunteers at more than 500 synagogues.

After completing the course, the volunteers will incorporate the lessons into training for other guards at their synagogues.

Benjamin Erbs, CSS’s senior vice president for training and security, said the program’s goal was to teach guards how to begin treating victims and preparing for first responders’ arrival in the aftermath of an attack.

“What we learned from past terror attacks is that it takes time for the EMTs, even police, or if it’s a fire department, to come on the scene, and even if they come, if the scene is still hot, they won’t engage,” Erbs said in an interview. “That means you, as the security personnel, are left with the situation on hand and you don’t have help at the beginning.”

Guards’ priority is preventing and disrupting attacks, and the medical protocol only begins after a scene has been secured, Erbs said.

He added that MDA has “a lot of experience with terrorism.”

“In Israel, things are happening daily which are out of the normal........

© The Times of Israel