In a courtyard in the Ben Shemen Youth Village, inside the complex that houses the offices of the Rashi Foundation, two men in polo shirts, chinos and moccasins are standing beneath a leafy tree. They look like two cheerful French tourists who just landed in Israel. It turns out that they look this way because they really are two cheerful French tourists who just landed in Israel -- but unlike "ordinary" French tourists, Didier Maarek and Gerard Ben Hamou did not head straight for the beach. Instead, they came for an interview about their company, Pharmadom. A philanthropic effort, Pharmadom was established about 10 years ago in France. Until recently, roughly four million euros ($5.4 million) were donated through Pharmadom for various projects in Israel: the acquisition of ambulances for Magen David Adom, the purchase of advanced medical equipment for Israeli hospitals; the establishment of the Pharmadom Desert Spirit Village, a comprehensive treatment and rehabilitation community in the Negev for recovering teenage drug addicts; and nighttime emergency medical clinics in Yeruham and Mitzpeh Ramon. Related by marriage (Ben Hamou is married to Maarek's sister), both men come from the families of French-Jewish pharmacists. Both of them own pharmacies in Paris, and they are part of the community of Jewish pharmacists in France -- a community with a glorious tradition, long history and quite a bit of economic influence. Maarek and Ben Hamou conceived the idea Pharmadom in 2002, as they sat drinking excellent French espresso in Ben Hamou's home while discussing the troubles of the Jewish community in Israel. "Both of us are Zionists," Maarek said, "and even though we don't live here, we always keep up to date with what's going on Israel. The year 2002 was a busy year: the intifada broke out, an international boycott was imposed upon Israeli products that were sold abroad and there was talk about an academic boycott. In short, it was not a good year for Israel, so we thought about what we could do to help." A confluence of several events showed them that they could not remain idle any longer. The Mecca-Cola company, which is owned by a Saudi Arabian businessman and sells cola-flavored soft drinks to France's Muslim population, announced that 10 percent of the revenue from its product would go to benefit the Palestinian armed struggle in Israel. At the same time, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, which was trying to break into the French market, encountered difficulties stemming from the boycott of Israeli products in France. "The whole situation bothered us a great deal," Maarek says, "and we started to get angry. We thought: how could it be that an Israeli company with good products, such as Teva, was being ignored by the Association of Jewish Pharmacists in France, while a Muslim company received support and donated a portion of its profits to the Palestinian struggle? We realized that we had to do something, and that's how Pharmadom was created." Starting small Pharmadom started as the brainchild of Maarek and Ben Hamou, together with a few of their former classmates from university. The goal was to create a pharmacists' association that would sell Teva products in their pharmacies. In exchange, Teva would donate a certain percentage of the revenue from the sale of its products to a cause in Israel of Pharmadom's choice. It took Maarek and Ben Hamou two years to bring Teva's officials in Israel and in France on board. In the meantime, they recruited more and more French pharmacists for Pharmadom. "We concluded that the more people we had, the more Teva products would be sold, and this would mean larger amounts of money that could be donated to Israel," Ben Hamou said. Pharmadom had only 50 members during its first year. "We took the plan to the CEO of Teva, the late Eli Hurvitz, and told him how the plan would benefit all sides -- Teva itself and the State of Israel," Maarek says. "It was a good deal that came just at the right time. After all, Teva had just gotten into the French market and needed a way to break in -- a way that we, as an association of local pharmacists, could provide for it. We wanted to find a way to help Israel, and suddenly we had a golden opportunity." As a company located outside Israel, Pharmadom could not donate directly without getting into trouble regarding payment of taxes and fees and having to deal with questions from the French authorities. A donation in their name made through Teva was an excellent solution. "We decided which projects the money would be used for," Ben Hamou says. "At the end of each year, we added up all our revenue and calculated the percentage that would be donated. Then we decided what to do with the money, where to donate it. Then we passed our decision along to Teva, who did as we requested." Maarek says with a wink, "Let's say that our activity, at least in the first years, was not a hundred percent legal. In France, not everyone can transfer money wherever he feels like it. There are agencies that can do that, but with certain limitations, such as tax payments. Pharmadom's method was a creative way to avoid these difficulties." How did Teva's officials respond to your initiative- Maarek: "They didn't welcome it so much at first. Like I said, it took us two years to get them to understand that all the parties involved would benefit. As time went on, we managed to bring more and more pharmacists on board, and when we reached 120 members, it was obvious that we had power that could not be ignored." Pharmadom's first donation was a state-of-the-art ambulance for Magen David Adom that cost about a million euros. "When we saw Pharmadom's logo on that ambulance, the first one we had bought with the money that had been collected thanks to our idea, we were as happy as little children," Ben Hamou says. The winning connection Since the moment that the agreement with Teva was approved, the members of Pharmadom have collected tens of thousands of euros in the form of medical equipment for hospitals and for the Israeli army. But it has not been easy. Besides the difficulty in bringing Teva on board, Maarek, Ben Hamou and their friends came up against anti-Semitic responses from customers and even from their own colleagues. "So far, we have been keeping the company at a low profile because we didn't want the pharmacists who had joined with us to suffer, which we feared might happen if people knew that some of the money from their purchases was going to be donated to Israel. There are quite a few people in France who might be disturbed by that. There are large Muslim communities in France who receive service at some of the pharmacies in our association. We have had some instances of customers refusing to purchase a medication we offered them because it was made by Teva. If they knew that some of their money was being donated to the Israeli army, for example, they would boycott us." Ben Hamou adds, "It's happened so many times. We know that the imams in their mosques tell them not to buy Israeli products. Teva, for example, is not a popular company in some of our pharmacies. We have even heard from pharmacists who expressed interest in joining Pharmadom, but refused when they realized the nature of our initiative. Pharmadom has some non-Jewish members, of course, but the vast majority are Jews." Despite the difficulties, Pharmadom continued to expand, gain new members and sell even more Teva products, which enabled it to make larger donations to Israel. Their biggest leap came about six years ago when one member, the son of the vice president of the Rashi Foundation (a philanthropic foundation that is active in the health, education and welfare fields) told his father about Pharmadom. The two foundations joined forces, and from that moment everything changed for Pharmadom and for its two founders, who discovered that they could receive even larger donations with help from the right infrastructures and connections. "The Rashi Foundation gave Pharmadom what it had been missing in terms of logistics and familiarity with the territory," says Itzik Turgeman, the foundation's executive director. "These people have an amazing idea and the financial ability to carry it out, but lack the knowledge to get the maximum out of it. That's where we come in." How does the connection between you work- "They are in France, but their donation is here, and they're not all that familiar with what goes on here. We are the largest foundation in Israel. We have a whole construction department with engineers and architects, relationships with government ministries and other foundations and HMOs, and comprehensive logistical knowledge. We are their link to what is happening on the ground. We provide the logistical aspect, assistance on the ground and more partners who can take projects of whatever kind to different places. "Take the project of the nighttime emergency clinics in Yeruham and Mitzpeh Ramon, for example. The clinic in Yeruham is in its sixth consecutive year, and the one in Mitzpeh Ramon is in its second. They are a project of the Health Ministry, the HMOs and Pharmadom, which, practically speaking, takes the place of the regional council, which has no budget for a thing like this." Success and satisfaction Thanks to its cooperation with the Rashi Foundation, Pharmadom has succeeded in transferring significant, long-term donations to Israel. It is Teva's third-largest customer in France, and as a result, the donations made at the end of every year continue to grow. Were you surprised at the size of your success- Maarek: "We are still simple pharmacists from France. To tell the truth, we still don't realize that this is really big. We are here to help. We know that we're helping, but it's hard for me to think about it as something 'big.' We have been doing this for 10 years already because we love it, and we find added value in the help we are offering. That's what is important to us. We enjoy it. It gives us satisfaction. The satisfaction in meeting a challenge one sets for oneself is more important to me than any description of 'big' or 'not big.'" Ben Hamou: "Our success happened so quickly that we had no time to stop and digest it. We simply saw the numbers growing steadily larger at the end of each year and we were glad that we could afford to buy better and nicer things for Israel. Today, we can be ambitious and take pride in our work. Israel's success is our success, and if we reach it by means of our donations, that is the only thing we could have wished for."
