Nissim Sassi and Talia Slutsky, both from Magen David Adom’s Sharon Region, drove on the morning of October 7 to reinforce Magen David Adom teams in the south.
Nissim recounted: “Simchat Torah, at 7:30 AM, during the Hakafot at the synagogue, I received a message to come to the station in Netanya. I immediately dropped everything, took my young son home, and while still dressed in my holiday clothes, I set out with my team toward the south.
We arrived in Ofakim. We received a first call about gunshot casualties, and as we were racing toward the casualty, a police vehicle stopped us and three YAMAM officers got out. They said they had to escort us on the drive because gun battles were raging nearby. We began treating four casualties with varying degrees of injury from those battles.
After performing life-saving measures, we evacuated all four to Soroka Hospital. When we arrived there, we heard reports over the radio of more and more wounded people needing help, and we immediately headed back out into the inferno.
We returned to Ofakim and treated another casualty, this time a Yamam fighter who was seriously injured. I saw the fighter’s fear of death. He smiled at me in gratitude. The smile he had on his face will be etched in my memory forever. After we evacuated him, we immediately returned to the battlefield without a second thought, arriving at the Patish Junction area where we received
two casualties in serious condition from an RPG hit. After a quick assessment and stopping the arterial bleeding, I decided, in coordination with dispatch, to head toward a Magen David Adom helicopter to reach the hospital as quickly as possible. We carried out the rendezvous with the helicopter, while ‘Red Alert’ sirens did not stop for a moment in the background. Within a few minutes, the helicopter
was already in the air on its way to the hospital. All that time my clothes were filling with the casualties’ blood, and I tried to grasp the terrible event we were in, but unfortunately I didn’t have much time to dwell on it, because we immediately headed out again to help the soldiers who were fighting heroically.
arrived at a location where a fierce battle was taking place, resulting in three fighters being seriously injured; they were bleeding uncontrollably. After treating all of them, I saw that one of the fighters, who had taken a Kalashnikov bullet to the shoulder, was bleeding non-stop despite bandaging efforts, so I decided to stop his bleeding using my hand. I pressed as hard as I could. And so, for half an hour until we reached the hospital, my hand was inside his shoulder. Finally, at 9:00 PM, with the smell of blood still on my hands, we transferred a casualty from Soroka Hospital to Meir Hospital.
During the evacuation, his mother did not leave his side for a moment. She repeatedly said thank you that her son was alive,” Nissim recalled.
Two and a half months later, they arrived at the Magen David Adom helipad and met the Magen David Adom personnel who saved their lives.
Chief Inspector Yoni Daskalo recounted: “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 vehicle we would die, so we made the decision to get out, take cover, and manage the battle against the terrorists from there, during which we were hit by gunfire and shrapnel.
I was hit by a bullet in the abdomen, and Or was injured in his limbs.”
Chief Inspector Yosef Or said: “We evacuated ourselves toward Ofakim, where we stopped and waved our hands at a Magen David Adom mobile intensive care unit that passed by and stopped next to us. Nissim the paramedic ran to us, immediately treated us, and brought us into the unit.”
Magen David Adom paramedic Nissim Sassi shared what he remembers about the moment they met Or and Yoni on October 7: “As we began treating you, we put you in the mobile intensive care unit and simultaneously reported your condition to the Magen David Adom dispatch. I knew your medical condition required getting to the hospital as quickly as possible, so I requested
to rendezvous with a Magen David Adom helicopter at the Beit Kama Junction. During the evacuation to the helicopter, Yoni told me he was going to die. I held his hand and answered him, ‘You’re not going to die here, not on my watch.’ Seeing you here today walking on your feet only illustrates to me how important the fight for you inside the ambulance was.”
I feared for your lives, and I am moved to meet you again.”
“We landed with the helicopter in the Beit Kama area and immediately after landing, we met the mobile intensive care unit. We quickly moved you into the helicopter, understanding that every second counts and we needed to fly you to the hospital as fast as possible,” said Magen David Adom Chief Paramedic, Dr. Shafir Botner.
“Those were critical moments of fighting for your lives.”
Magen David Adom flight paramedic and Director of the Medical Division, Rami Miller, concluded: “We fight and struggle for every patient. Any thought of who will survive or, God forbid, will not survive, we leave out of our considerations. This is a real war for the life of every patient, and today, more than two and a half months after the Black Saturday in which we fought for the lives of Yoni and Or, it moves me deeply to be here with them—brave police officers who were seriously injured and are now standing on their feet and smiling. It is very moving; I never stopped thinking about you for a second.”
