Treating an injured colleague in the living room

One incident that will remain etched into the memories of all the Sderot MDA caregivers from that day was treating their friend and colleague Hananel Jerfi, a volunteer EMT and ambulance driver. Early that morning, he and his colleague Eliasaf Bar Haim responded to an emergency call.

While driving through Sderot, they encountered a terrorist squad in a truck. Although the terrorists were clearly able to see that this was an ambulance, they opened fire nonetheless. Hananel, the driver, was shot in the back and was seriously injured. Despite his injury, he continued driving an additional few hundred meters, and only then did his colleague Eliasaf replace him in the driver’s seat. Everyone heard the hair-raising report of Hananel’s injury over the MDA radio system. Eliasaf understood that he could not evacuate his friend to the hospital due to the number of terrorists in the city and made an on-the-spot decision to take him to the home of paramedic Aviv Shneor, who had taught the EMT course in which they had received their certification.

Aviv recalls: “When the sirens sounded that morning, I understood that today I would be putting on my uniform rather than my festive Shabbat clothes, and that I’d be going to the MDA station rather than the synagogue. I was preparing to leave the house when suddenly I received a phone call from the MDA Lachish control room with unimaginable news: ‘An ambulance is on its way to your house with a gunshot victim. They shot at the ambulance; they shot at the station. They’re shooting everywhere!’ At first, I couldn’t make sense of what I was hearing. They explained to me what was going on, but there was no time to think. I went into auto-pilot mode. The ambulance immediately arrived on my street; I went downstairs to meet them. We brought Hananel up to my living room and started treating him. At the same time, my wife, Bat El, and my three daughters were taking cover in the bomb shelter. Hananel was in a serious condition. We treated him, spoke to him, and all the while, I was thinking what I should be doing in order to get him to the hospital as soon as possible.”

Just as Aviv was considering going to the MDA station to pick up the bullet-proof ambulance, it turned up outside his house, driven by his colleague Elor Tawil. Hananel was quickly driven to a meeting point where another MDA team was able to transfer him to the hospital. His life was saved, and he was later able to return home.

One of Aviv’s neighbors later told him that while they were downstairs transferring Hananel from the ambulance into the building, she noticed a terrorist truck arriving on their street. She didn’t know whether to call out to the medics and warn them – if she called out, there was a greater chance of drawing attention to themselves, yet if she remained quiet, the medics wouldn’t know they were in danger. She decided not to shout to them; in retrospect, they were horrified at the thought of what a close call they had.