That morning, Amihai Shaham, a volunteer EMT with Magen David Adom and a resident of Kibbutz Alumim, was at home with his wife Zahava and their three young children. He was scheduled to start a shift at the cowshed. When the sirens began, Zahava took the children into the safe room, and Amihai left the house to help.
In the shelter near the foreign workers’ quarters, he found dead and wounded individuals with gunshot wounds and severe limb injuries. That was the moment he realized this was a different kind of event:
“At the entrance to the shelter, I saw two fatalities, and inside the shelter were the others, lying one on top of the other, some with gunshot wounds, some without legs. I suppressed the shock, and automatic pilot took over. I immediately provided them with initial treatment. I stopped the bleeding
using a tourniquet and pressure bandages, and at some point, I realized I had used all the medical equipment in my identification vest,” he recounted.
He stopped bleeding with tourniquets and fought for the lives of the wounded until the medical supplies he carried ran out. Alongside him was Gilad Honwald, an EMT and volunteer ambulance driver with MDA. When Gilad went to look for a vehicle to evacuate them, Amichai stayed with the wounded.
Later, Amichai spotted terrorists approaching his home and thought only of drawing the danger away from Zehava and the children. He fired at them and managed to draw their fire toward himself. Amichai was badly wounded in both hands and made his way to the home of Michaela Kurtzky, the kibbutz nurse and a midwife by profession, where Eyal Jung, a member of
the kibbutz rapid-response squad, with a gunshot wound to the chest. Amichai realized that Eyal’s life was in danger. Despite the injuries to his hands, he helped Michaela give the initial treatment to save his friend’s life. “I hugged him and told him we’d get out of this together,” he recalled.
All that time, Gilad, his friend and fellow MDA volunteer, treated the wounded and organized evacuation runs outside the nurse’s house. At some point Gilad also arrived there, and it turned out that each of the two MDA EMTs had believed the other had not survived the inferno. “Seeing each other gave us both inexplicable strength to carry on,” Amichai said.
Eyal’s condition deteriorated and required urgent evacuation. Gilad brought a vehicle to the house under fire. Eyal and Amihai were loaded into it under the cover of the standby squad members, and Tzviki, Michaela’s husband, drove the vehicle with the wounded under fire, joining Magen David Adom teams for further treatment and evacuation. Gilad remained in the kibbutz and continued to reach casualties, stop
bleeding, and organize additional evacuations in coordination with the Magen David Adom dispatch center.
Amihai was evacuated to Soroka Hospital and then transferred to Meir Medical Center for continued treatment of his injuries. He underwent surgeries on both hands, wound treatment using a negative pressure device, and later a skin graft. Alongside the surgical treatment, a rehabilitation process began, including occupational therapy. During his hospitalization, Amihai expressed his
gratitude to the teams who treated and accompanied him and his family. He describes the period as one of great pain, alongside gratitude for the care and support they received.
Three years later, Amihai chooses life. He and his family returned to their beloved kibbutz, to agriculture and tranquility. Amihai resumed shifts at Magen David Adom with his friend Gilad:
