“I was privileged to work on an intensive care unit donated in memory of my brother-in-law”

Paramedic Ronen Shunem Halevy also rushed to an MDA Station that Saturday morning. Instead of wearing holiday clothes and going to synagogue for the festive Simchat Torah prayer, Ronen, an observant man, put on his MDA uniform and rushed to the MDA Station in Kiryat Gat. “Karl and I staffed a second intensive care ambulance, in addition to the one that was already being used,” he says, “We started hearing what was happening on the radio, and the reports were terrible. We looked at each other. We understood that nothing like this had happened before. After a while, they rushed us to the Kokhav Michael junction to receive wounded people who were brought to us from the Gaza Envelope in bulletproof MDA ambulances. We evacuated several people with gunshot wounds of varying degrees in several rounds of evacuation – civilians who had gone through hell, soldiers, police officers and members of the security forces. We treated them, stopped their bleeding, treated the pain and listened. We heard what they went through; we saw serious injuries, scenes of battlefield, war.”  

Ronen is the brother-in-law of the special police unit fighter and paramedic Noam Raz, may God avenge his blood, who fell in a battle with terrorists in Operation Breakwater near Jenin, in May of last year. “I was privileged to work on an intensive care unit donated in memory of my brother-in-law, Noam. On the ambulance door there is a dedication in his memory. At one point, a special police unit fighter came to my ambulance with a gunshot wound, and when he was put into the ambulance, he looked at me and said: ‘I know you.’ I immediately understood where he knew me from, and I told him: ‘I’m Noam’s brother-in-law, look at the dedication on the door.’ It was a chilling moment. It was as if we are continuing Noam’s will, his life’s work to save lives, which is actually all of our work, all of our mission and all of our commitment.”