A Magen David Adom paramedic inspects a building damaged by a shock wave next to a direct hit site of an Iranian ballistic missile in a residential neighborhood in Tel Aviv, Israel, June 22, 2025. Photo: Matan Golan / Sipa USA via Reuters Connect

A patient is rushed into an emergency room in Israel, bleeding badly. The team does not know the patient’s name, their faith, who they voted for, or which side of any argument they fall on. They know the patient needs blood, and so they reach for it. In a country as divided as Israel, that single unit of blood quietly does something almost nothing else in public life still manages to do — it does not care who the patient is.

Sunday, June 14, was World Blood Donor Day. The theme this year, set by the World Health Organization, was “One Drop of Humanity. Give Blood. Save Lives.” It is a phrase worth sitting with, because behind every one of those drops, is a stranger who gave it without ever knowing who would receive it.

Israel is home to Jews, Muslims, Christians, Druze, and people who disagree on almost every imaginable question. Yet they share the same hospitals and the same blood supply. The divisions make headlines around the world. The bag hanging beside a hospital bed in Jerusalem, Haifa, or Beersheba knows none of it. Neither the donor nor the patient gets to choose the other.

One Friday, an Arab man came to Magen David Adom (MDA)’s donation center in Afula to give blood for his mother. Moments after he finished, a Jewish yeshiva student arrived for his regular donation, heard that the man’s mother was in need, and rolled up his own sleeve without a second thought. “Without a doubt,” he said. “I would be very happy to help.”

The blood for a wounded soldier and the civilian beside him is drawn from the same reserves. No one is asked to prove anything. No one is turned away. The system is, by design, blind to everything except need.

Strip a person down to the moment they are most vulnerable, when their life depends on a stranger’s generosity, and the arguments we spend our days defending fall away. What is left is need, and need looks the same in everyone. It is the quietest argument for our shared humanity that I know of, and the most honest.

That is what makes this year’s theme more than a slogan. In Israel, it is close to a literal description of how things already work, and it all runs through one remarkable blood bank. In 2023, Magen David Adom opened the Marcus National Blood Services Center, which processes about 325,000 units annually. Built largely underground and heavily fortified, it is engineered to keep working without pause even when the country above it is under fire. It is a blood supply built to survive the worst day imaginable and distributed on one criterion alone: who needs it most.

America does not need to copy that model to learn from it. Our own blood centers do extraordinary work, and the generosity of American donors keeps countless people alive every day. What Israel offers is not a critique but a reminder of the spirit behind it all. Every time someone gives blood, they are already doing the very thing we keep insisting is impossible. They are trusting a stranger and asking for nothing in return.

That instinct is worth protecting because it is also perishable. The American Red Cross estimates that someone in the United States needs blood every two seconds, and the supply most often slips into shortage during the summer months, when school and college blood drives pause, and regular donors travel.

So this week, in honor of World Blood Donor Day, find a blood drive or donation center near you and give. Bring someone who has never donated before. You will never meet the person who receives what you give. You will not know their name, their faith, their politics, or their story. They will not know yours.

Yet for a brief moment, two strangers will be connected by an act of trust that asks nothing in return. In an age when we seem determined to sort people into categories, blood remains stubbornly indifferent. It asks only one question: who needs it now?

Catherine Reed is the CEO of American Friends of Magen David Adom.