In routine times, MDA operates two helicopters per shift: the Southern helicopter at Sde Teiman and the Northern helicopter at Poriya Medical Center. An additional helicopter is kept in technical reserve to back up the fleet. On that Saturday, all three helicopters operated incessantly in the southern sector, treating and evacuating 21 critically and seriously wounded patients from the field to hospitals. At the hospital helipads, ambulances and Mobile Intensive Care Units (MICUs) awaited them, quickly transferring the casualties from the helicopter to the emergency room. These ambulances also assisted in transferring dozens of additional wounded, who arrived via IDF helicopters, from the hospital helipads to the emergency rooms.
The helicopters are staffed by senior, veteran paramedics who have undergone specialized training for this unique mission.
Typically, MDA helicopter crews are dispatched to treat victims of road or work accidents occurring in locations far from a hospital. Occasionally, they are also dispatched to treat patients suffering from heart attacks or strokes in areas remote from a medical center capable of providing specialized care, where time is a critical factor in their chances of recovery.
Dr. Shafir Botner, who also serves as MDA’s Chief Paramedic, heard the numerous sirens that Saturday and left his home in southern Israel for the MDA station to assist at rocket impact sites. Very early in the morning, he was not yet aware of the terrorist infiltration.
He spoke with Shimon Alkobi, the regional director, who asked him to go to Ofakim or Beersheba.
“I decided that I wouldn’t be of much help at a rocket impact site in Ofakim, so I headed toward Beersheba. That was the first time I was saved, because at that time, terrorists had already positioned themselves at the entrance to Ofakim and were shooting at anyone passing on the road. Had I continued, I likely would have been hit and perhaps even killed.”
Shafir arrived at the MDA station in Beersheba and assisted the teams there, but shortly afterward, he received a phone call. “I was asked to go to our helipad at Sde Teiman to activate a third helicopter along with Rami Miller, the Director of the Medical Department. The two helicopters—carrying our colleagues in the southern helicopter, Ziv Shapira and Moshe Salah—were already working non-stop treating the wounded, and now our help was needed. We dropped everything and went to the helipad. We got into the helicopter to set it up. Rami Miller and Dr. Rafael Strugo, MDA’s Deputy Director General of Medicine, arrived with me. I hadn’t even managed to get inside when I received a call from the dispatch center:
Three critically wounded soldiers will arrive at the helipad within five minutes. We were ready within minutes and received the wounded, and from then on, we treated and evacuated patients in one long shift that began Saturday morning and lasted until Monday.
I remember several incidents that are etched in my memory. During one of the many times we arrived to evacuate wounded to Barzilai Hospital, a siren went off. We couldn’t reach a protected area, so we lay on the floor as required by the instructions. Suddenly, an agitated woman ran toward us with a baby in her arms, screaming. She had arrived independently
at the emergency room with her son, who had been injured during a previous siren, and she couldn’t reach a protected area. She was helpless. It was amazing how, by instinct, we all shielded them with our own bodies.”
After one of the evacuations, a rocket fragment hit the helicopter’s rotor while it was running. The crew experienced moments of terror and even reported over the radio: “We’ve been hit.” Fortunately, thanks to the pilot’s resourcefulness, he managed to maintain control of the aircraft, and the damage was limited to property. Moments later, Shafir would discover that his report
over the radio, which hundreds of MDA personnel heard with great horror, had even reached his family.
“We were supposed to transfer three wounded patients from Barzilai to another hospital. We were in the helicopter with the patients, who were stabilized and being treated, with the engine running at full throttle. A siren sounded followed by an insane ‘boom’; it was indescribably terrifying. I was sure we had been hit—that’s how it felt. I reported over the radio that we were hit.”
While Shafir attempted to treat the wounded in the helicopter, the pilot, with great resourcefulness, managed to shut down the engine.
“We realized we weren’t out of danger yet. We got out, afraid that a fire could break out at any moment, and moved the wounded out of the helicopter to protect them. It later turned out that shrapnel had hit the rotor. When I had a moment to look at my phone, I saw that my daughter had been trying to reach me many times.
She is an MDA volunteer and had heard that an MDA helicopter was hit; she knew I was on shift on the helicopter and was terrified. One of the police officers we treated had come from the fighting near the party site and was shot in the stomach. He was very seriously wounded, had lost a lot of blood and was already drifting in and out of consciousness… He asked me if he was already dead.
I told him he was alive. I calmed him down. Then he begged me: ‘Save me, I have children.’ Of course I did everything I could for him and for the other wounded.
I fought for his life with every means at my disposal and hoped he had survived. I didn’t know what had happened to him. Not long ago, my brother-in-law, who is a police officer, told me about a fellow officer of his who had been seriously wounded and was trying to find the team that treated him. After checking, it turned out to be the very same casualty.
He made it through, and I had the privilege of meeting him.”
You can read about this moving meeting on this website.
“The wounded who passed through our hands essentially represent the essence of the disaster. We treated a young woman seriously injured at the party, we treated a police officer hit by an RPG, another casualty shot in the abdomen. One after another, like a bad movie,” Shafir said, “and above us all this time, a missile war.”
“On the flight back I looked around and felt like I was in a war movie. The helicopter floor was covered in blood, we were flying over explosions and smoke, with sirens all the time. It was very surreal. That night we treated a critically wounded soldier; he was bleeding from everywhere, his blood draining out of him. Two more soldiers with gunshot wounds came with him, one in the leg and the other in the arm.
They lingered a little outside the helicopter, so I hurried them along to evacuate the casualty as quickly as possible. Suddenly the one with the bullet in his leg started running, faster than me, and said: ‘If it’s urgent, it’s urgent.’ We landed at Hadassah Hospital, and to save time the wounded soldiers carried their wounded friend’s stretcher together with us.
I look from the side: one wounded man with a bullet in his leg and a tourniquet, the second with bullets in his arm and a tourniquet, and they are both carrying their wounded friend’s stretcher with us so as not to lose a single moment. Such camaraderie and devotion is something extraordinary. I left with the realization that the people who fought
there that Saturday were superhuman, superheroes. Looking at them, you understand where our slogans ‘Am Yisrael Chai’ and ‘Together We Will Win’ come from; all the supposed clichés are realized in them,” Shafir concluded.
