Linoy Elazra, an EMT and dispatcher at MDA’s Lachish dispatch center, arrived for her morning shift at the center that Saturday and felt as if she had entered a battlefield:
“The first call I received was from someone shouting: ‘Terrorists!’ I heard screams and gunfire, and the call disconnected. I tried to call back, but there was no answer.” It was this call that made her realize they were dealing with an unprecedented, large and difficult event. Linoy noticed that the dispatchers
around her were receiving similar calls from all directions, alongside incessant rocket barrages. Everyone was on high alert.
Then another call came in. On the other end of the line was a small voice. Michael, about nine years old, called for help. He told Linoy that terrorists had shot his father and mother. Linoy tried to understand if his parents could be saved and asked him to call out to his parents. Michael called out: “Dad? Mom?” but there was no answer. At Linoy’s request, he described
their injuries, and she realized she had to do everything to save the child. Linoy instructed him to lock the front door and enter the safe room. “And then I hear him saying: ‘Amalia, come!'” Linoy realized with a broken heart that there was another little girl, about six years old, in the house. A lump formed in her throat. But she had to save the children. She
instructed them to close the safe room door, but they couldn’t. So Linoy told them to find a closet, hide inside it, and not come out until good people arrived. “When I looked up,” Linoy says, “I saw that everyone was on calls like these. No one moved from their chair; everyone was fighting to save lives.”
The children, Michael and Amalia, hid in the closet for many hours until they were rescued. Their parents were murdered. Their younger sister, Avigail, was only recently released from Hamas’s clutches.
Credit: Private photo
