Noam Levi, a senior medic and Magen David Adom Jerusalem call center operator, shares:
“One of the calls that affected me most was with a girl who reported that terrorists had broken into her home. She was in the safe room with her family in Kibbutz Be’eri when terrorists threw grenades inside. She told me they had shot her and her father. I tried to help her apply
tourniquets to stop the bleeding, but she disconnected the call because at that moment, more terrorists entered her home. Afterward, she called again, and we had a video call with her. I asked her to be quiet and to show
me her father’s injuries. At that point I realized that her mother and a brother had been murdered. She had a gunshot wound in her legs and couldn’t move. She reported that her father was gasping. On the video I saw that the whole safe room was full of shrapnel and that the father had been shot many times in the legs, unconscious but breathing.
I asked her to crawl to the closet and try to grab any piece of clothing so she could put a tourniquet on her father, but she hung up again when terrorists were standing outside the safe room. I lost her. I didn’t know whether she had been murdered or kidnapped.
For two days I checked again and again for any sign of life from her, and we found nothing. To our joy, a few days later a shift officer who works with us told us that on that same day her husband had driven an ambulance south to treat the wounded, and reported that he had most likely evacuated her and her father to the hospital.
A few weeks later we met the girl in the rehabilitation ward at Tel HaShomer. She and her father survived, but her father’s leg was amputated because of his many gunshot wounds. It was moving to see her walking after she hadn’t even been able to crawl because of her injury. She is a hero; she gave us so much strength, even in the midst of the inferno.
She acted and functioned calmly, next to her injured parents, held on, and communicated with us well. If our children, young children, can perform such heroic acts, I have no doubt that we will get through all this inferno. Our people have immense strength,
and that is strengthening. I am proud of my colleagues, the dispatch center staff. I saw dispatchers go outside and break down in tears. The personal and national pressure and anxiety are breaking, but everyone stepped up and remained professional and focused. This is the heroism of the dispatch team—to function and save lives amidst the chaos on the ground,” says Noam.
