At just 20 years old, Nagham Haj Ali’s resume is filled to the brim.
She is a social-media influencer with almost half a million followers, a certified piercer with a small business, and a full-time hospital volunteer through Israel’s National Service (Sherut Leumi) program.
Last month, Haj Ali was invited to the official residence of President Isaac Herzog in Jerusalem to receive a 2024 Presidential Award for Volunteerism for her work assisting physicians at the Rambam Health Care Campus in Haifa, where she is in her second year.
A day in the life
“During my first year I was at one of the departments of internal medicine, and I was just providing general assistance to nurses, secretaries and even to logistics workers,” Haj Ali tells ISRAEL21c.
After she finished her first year with honors, Haj Ali was enrolled by the hospital in a phlebotomy training course so she could continue her service by assisting in collecting patient blood samples.
“I start my day in Rambam at around 8am and finish at around 3pm, working in both the emergency room and the rheumatology unit,” she explains.
Besides taking blood, her responsibilities include measuring blood pressure and performing electrocardiograms.
“Then I go home and start work at my piercing business,” she adds.
Internet celebrity
Despite her busy schedule, Haj Ali does not neglect her followers, constantly posting content on social media, where she frequently collaborates with different companies and brands.
“Ever since I was a child I wanted to be famous; I liked having pictures of me taken,” she laughs.
When she was 14, Haj Ali opened an Instagram account, uploading videos and pictures depicting her everyday life.
She quickly started gaining followers despite running the account all by herself.
“Recently my mom opened an Instagram account, and she’s asking me all the time, ‘When will I have as many followers as you?’”
National service as an Arab Israeli
In Israel, National Service is an alternative to mandatory military service. However, as a member of the Arab Muslim minority, Haj Ali is not bound by law to enlist in either one.
She lives in the Arab Israeli city of Shfar’am near Haifa. The 43,500-strong city has a Sunni Muslim majority and large Christian Arab and Druze minorities.
She admits that although the Haj Ali family is very proud of her for choosing National Service, not everyone in the community welcomes the decision.
“Many Druze and Christians do National Service, but among the Muslims here it’s less accepting; I do get negative feedback from some, but I also get positive responses,” she notes.
Haj Ali says that she isn’t too fazed by the negative feedback. “I’m not listening to what others are saying, I only listen to myself.”
She adds that support from the hospital staff and Rambam’s National Service coordinator, Ilana Dodeles, has helped her overcome whatever doubts she had about the position. “Rambam truly is the best place to volunteer.”
Haj Ali says that her voluntary service has acquainted her with sectors of the population she had never met before, and helped improve her Hebrew skills.
“Unfortunately, in the Arab community, spoken Hebrew is not taught properly,” she notes.
An influential nurse
Haj Ali explains her decision to do National Service partly stemmed from her aspirations to become a nurse.
“If before I contemplated going to nursing school, now I know that I will do it because I know what it’s like,” she says.
Haj Ali posts videos she films at the hospital on her social media.
“I post my day-to-day, and encourage people to go volunteer at a hospital as well; I always recommend volunteering,” she says.
“The work the National Service girls do is very important; we are essentially part of the hospital staff.”
It’s not lost on her that her time at the hospital coincides with one of the most unstable periods for Israel’s security in recent memory. As the largest medical center in the north, Rambam has been treating many soldiers and civilians wounded by the Hezbollah terror group attacks.
“We have been getting the wounded patients here, and sometimes it can be emotional, but I just do my job,” she says.
“Generally, I am not afraid of blood and needles — unless someone would stab me with a needle, then that would scare me,” she laughs.
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