Magen David Adom’s National Dispatch Center is staffed by exceptionally experienced dispatchers whose roles require them to be professional, quick-thinking, and composed. Michael Dor, a shift supervisor at the National Dispatch Center who managed the morning shift on that Saturday, is exactly that kind of person.
Michael had functioned in major emergency events in the past, but he feels, like many Magen David Adom personnel, that the events of that Saturday were on an entirely different scale. Michael has been a youth volunteer since the age of 15 and a Magen David Adom employee from a very young age. He held several positions in Magen David Adom dispatch centers, and in the five years preceding October 7, 2023, he served as a shift supervisor at the National Dispatch Center.
Michael describes the shift that Saturday, which was scheduled to begin at 7:00 AM: “I left the house and heard the sirens. I heard everything over the radio, and by 6:35 AM, I was already at the shift supervisor’s station in the dispatch center. It was very strange. I’ve been through wars, I’ve been through security escalations, I’ve been through difficult and major events.
This time it was different from the very first moments. Tzofit Bartal, the shift officer who had worked through the night, sat in front of the Home Front Command alerts screen and reported every siren. It was madness. The national dispatch center manager, Omri Levi, was also called in and reported that there were drones in the air coming from the Strip. Shortly afterwards a call came in about two soldiers who had been shot at Yad Mordechai Junction, and at exactly the same time the Home Front Command situation room at the ‘Urim’ base next to the Gaza Strip called us.”
Michael takes a breath and explains that phone call: “There is a direct phone line between us, an emergency line. Every day we check its functionality as part of the system checks at the start of the shift to ensure our connection is working properly. So, when the phone call was received from them early that Saturday morning, I thought it was a system check; I answered and asked if we could talk later. The soldier on the other end of the line answered me: ‘I have a soldier shot in the stomach, there is an infiltration into the base.'”
Michael spoke with the soldier, instructed her on what to do, and simultaneously reported to his managers. During the morning, Michael received several more calls from that same soldier and spoke with two others. In retrospect, it turned out, unfortunately, that two of the three soldiers he spoke with were killed during the terrorists’ infiltration of the base. “A feeling of true horror,” Michael says, “realizing that we are in a different kind of event and therefore need to work in a different way.”
This was understood in the field, as well as by Magen David Adom management, whose personnel immediately grasped the gravity of the hour. Following a situational assessment, management instructed that the night shift teams not be released. This decision created a significant force multiplier and was of great importance, especially on a Saturday. This directive was possible because it was given before 7:00 AM, the time for the shift change between the night and morning teams.
Michael describes: “We instructed all night shift employees across the country that they were not released to go home, but there was no need to tell them that; all Magen David Adom men and women felt a sense of mission and understood the magnitude of the task. We all understood that we were in the midst of a historic event. Magen David Adom management even ordered an emergency alert status: we raised the alert level across the country to the highest state, ‘full manning,’ meaning there wasn’t a single ambulance at a station that didn’t have a team assigned to it. For this purpose, we sent immediate messages that reached 30,000 Magen David Adom men and women at that moment.”
Magen David Adom’s ability to transition, almost in an instant, from full routine to an emergency state is made possible by a winning combination: innovative technology at the service of a professional and regularly trained staff.
Following the situational assessment, Magen David Adom’s Deputy Director of Operations, Gil Moskowitz, directed that bulletproof ambulances be sent to southern Israel from all Magen David Adom regions. Michael remembers relaying the instruction while hearing the occurrences around the shift supervisor’s station in the dispatch center: “Very difficult conversations were heard around me. I heard the dispatchers talking, but I couldn’t truly process the words,”
he says, “the dispatchers dealt with the horror through the line. I saw them managing inconceivable conversations, delving into every detail to understand where the emergency was and exactly what happened there. I heard them giving instructions for life-saving actions—applying a tourniquet, hiding, lying flat on the floor in cases of fire. From the phone calls and radio reports, we created a situational picture. Parallel to the calls about the shooting incidents, we received reports of several fatalities from rocket fire in one of the Bedouin communities in the south.”
The flow of information at the National Dispatch Center was endless: the center relayed Magen David Adom management’s instructions to the field, and at the same time, the center received information and passed it on to the IDF, hospitals, and other emergency agencies.
“I received information from the dispatchers: a call about six soldiers shot at the Zikim base, a call about soldiers at Yad Mordechai, wounded soldiers at the Re’im base, over 15 wounded being treated at the Sderot Magen David Adom station. We quickly realized that there were dozens of infiltrations into bases and communities. The country was ablaze, and I saw it all. Videos and photos sent to us by the wounded or those who called began to arrive in Magen David Adom’s command and control system. I saw them all, and the sights were harrowing. The amount of information that passed through me that Saturday is inconceivable. I recorded everything.”
Michael continues his story: “At Magen David Adom, they always taught me that you fight for every wounded person. A helicopter will reach a wounded person in a remote or inaccessible place; a boat will reach a wounded person at sea; the Navy will be involved; search and rescue units will be involved; Magen David Adom has reached the wounded in terror attacks and disasters even in distant countries. And here, there isn’t just one such wounded person, but hundreds for whom we need to fight, and we fought to the very limit of our ability, with everything we had. In routine times, Magen David Adom operates two helicopters, and on that Saturday, a third helicopter was also activated, and they all worked non-stop.
Beyond that, throughout the day, the Air Force maintained an open communication line with us; in fact, a representative from the control center and a representative from the aviation authority sat with us physically in the dispatch center. It was awe-inspiring and gave me strength. Dozens of wounded people owe their lives to this. I already mentioned that I sat down at the station at 6:35 AM; I stood up for the first time at 4:30 PM.”
Michael also speaks about his personal loss: “Among all the events, I heard that contact was lost with a Magen David Adom employee, paramedic Amit Mann, may God avenge her blood, my good friend. During the shift, several calls were received from her at the dispatch center. As is known, she was besieged in the kibbutz clinic and treated the wounded there. She was a good friend of mine, and I went through a very difficult time; I immersed myself in work so as not to face her loss.
It’s hard to explain my mixed emotions: on one hand, I would have wanted to talk to her in her final moments, and on the other hand, I know that if I had spoken to her, I wouldn’t have been able to continue functioning. And Amit wasn’t the only one; I received difficult reports about Peter Lesnik who was shot at the Urim junction, about Hananel Jarfi who was shot in Sderot, Aviya Hetzroni from Be’eri who was bleeding and they couldn’t reach him—everything passes through me and I try to work professionally, like a kind of autopilot.”
