“I couldn’t stop thinking about you even for a second”

Two and a half months later, two of the wounded described above, who were treated by Nissim and Talia from the Sharon region and then by Shafir and Rami from the MDA helicopter, came to the MDA helipad to meet the MDA personnel who saved their lives. The two are police officers from Segev Shalom: Lieutenant Or Yosef, an Operations Officer, and Lieutenant Yoni Deskalo, an Intelligence Officer and Detective. Both were seriously wounded during the fighting on October 7.

Lieutenant Deskalo recalls: “At the entrance to Kibbutz Re’im we heard a very loud explosion and realized it was an RPG. We knew that if we stayed inside the car we would die, so we decided to get out, take cover and wage a battle against the terrorists from there. During the fighting, we were hit by gunfire and shrapnel. I was hit in the stomach by a bullet, and Or was hit in the limbs.”

Lieutenant Yosef continues the story: “We were able to leave the area and drive towards Ofakim, where we stopped and flagged down an MDA intensive care unit that passed by. Nissim, the paramedic, ran over to us and immediately treated us and put us in the intensive care ambulance.”

MDA paramedic Nissim Sassi shares what he remembers about the moment he met Or and Yoni: “As we started treating you, we put you in an intensive care ambulance and at the same time I reported to the MDA call center about your condition. I knew that you needed to get to the hospital as quickly as possible, so I asked to take you to the MDA helicopter at Beit Kama Junction. During the evacuation to the helicopter, Yoni told me he was going to die. I held his hand and answered: ‘You’re not going to die, not on my watch.’ Seeing you here today walking on your feet proves to me how important the battle to save your life inside the ambulance was. I feared for your life and I’m overjoyed to meet you again.”

“We landed the helicopter in the Beit Kama area and immediately after landing we met the intensive care unit. We quickly put you in the helicopter, realizing that every second counts and that we need to get you to the hospital as soon as possible,” says MDA airborne paramedic and manager of the Paramedics School, Dr. Shafir Botner: “These were critical moments of fighting for your lives.”

MDA airborne paramedic and the manager of the medical division, Rami Miller, concludes: “We fight and struggle for every patient. We don’t think about who will most likely survive or, God forbid, not survive. This is a real battle for the life of every patient, and today, more than two and a half months after Black Saturday, in which we fought for the lives of Yoni and Or, I’m very excited to be here with them, two brave police officers who were seriously wounded and now stand on their feet and smile. It’s very exciting, I couldn’t stop thinking about you even for a second.”