When the history of “The Black Sabbath” October 7 is written, special note will be taken of the brave men and women of Magen David Adom who literally risked their own lives to rescue and comfort Israeli citizens in their darkest hours.
MDA – Israel’s emergency medical service and ambulance provider – is composed of about 3,000 team members augmented by 30,000 volunteers. During the height of the crisis, these first responder heroes ran into the fray on Oct. 7 and experienced horrors that no training could possibly have prepared them to see.
Last week, several of the paramedics and dispatchers were in Washington, D.C. to attend the 300,000-person March For Israel on the National Mall. They sat for an interview with me to share their inspiring – and heartbreaking – stories of the Hamas nightmare attack of Oct. 7.
HADAS ERLICH is a 25-year-old paramedic from Jerusalem who was on duty when hostilities broke out that fateful Saturday morning.
“As a first responder, the No. 1 rule in our protocol is ‘if it isn’t safe for you, don’t treat people,’” Erlich said, “but on October 7, we had no choice because if we didn’t attend to people they were going to die.”
So, with rockets exploding overhead, Hadas and her driver were dispatched to the city of Sderot near Gaza. There, this brave young woman (barely one year older than my own daughter) spent the next 13 hours among unimaginable carnage.
“You don’t stop to think how much danger you’re in, you just keep going,” she told me. “I saw an old woman dead on a bench; her dog was next to her waiting for her to wake up. Little kids were scattered dead on a playground. People in their Shabbat clothes on the street…the way they went out to live is how they died.”
RONIT GLASER is a single mother of two girls aged 12 and 9; she works as a dispatcher.
“When I was awakened on October 7 as war was breaking out, I called my supervisor and said I was bringing my daughters with me to the station because there’s no real safe room in our house,” Glaser said.
“During the 10-minute drive, we stopped three times because of more sirens, meaning more missile attacks. My girls laid down on the ground and I laid on top of them with my hands on their heads. My 9-year-old asked: “But Eema (mother) who’s going to cover your head?”
At her dispatcher post, Ronit dove into work – fielding calls and dispatching paramedics to help. But all the while knowing her young daughters were in the next room, overhearing dispatchers shouting things like, “Say that again? The man’s arms and legs are all blown off?”
Ronit knew her little girls’ hearts must be being torn apart by hearing talk of war, and sure enough, one of her daughters asked: “Eema, is it true that kids are being killed? Is it true there are terrorists all over the country?”
“I do not lie to my kids, so I told her, Everything you heard is true. I’m really sorry to tell you. Crying is good. Let it out, but I want you to remember that no matter what, I will always do everything I can to keep you safe.”
Glaser worked until 9:30 p.m. that evening, then returned to serve again starting at 4 a.m. on Sunday.
“I’m so proud of my daughters,” Ronit adds. “My 9-year-old opened a lemonade stand with all the money she made going to the children and dogs of the western Negev settlements.”
Like mother, like daughter…the next generation of servant hearts at work.
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