INTERVIEW: Israeli Magen David Adom paramedics stood tall rescuing lives on 'a day of pure evil'

When the history of “The Black Sabbath” October 7 is written, special note will be taken of the brave men and women of Magen David Adom who literally risked their own lives to rescue and comfort Israeli citizens in their darkest hours.

MDA – Israel’s emergency medical service and ambulance provider – is composed of about 3,000 team members augmented by 30,000 volunteers. During the height of the crisis, these first responder heroes ran into the fray on Oct. 7 and experienced horrors that no training could possibly have prepared them to see.  

Last week, several of the paramedics and dispatchers were in Washington, D.C. to attend the 300,000-person March For Israel on the National Mall. They sat for an interview with me to share their inspiring – and heartbreaking – stories of the Hamas nightmare attack of Oct. 7.

HADAS ERLICH is a 25-year-old paramedic from Jerusalem who was on duty when hostilities broke out that fateful Saturday morning.

“As a first responder, the No. 1 rule in our protocol is 'if it isn’t safe for you, don’t treat people,'” Erlich said, “but on October 7, we had no choice because if we didn’t attend to people they were going to die.”

So, with rockets exploding overhead, Hadas and her driver were dispatched to the city of Sderot near Gaza. There, this brave young woman (barely one year older than my own daughter) spent the next 13 hours among unimaginable carnage.

“You don’t stop to think how much danger you’re in, you just keep going,” she told me. “I saw an old woman dead on a bench; her dog was next to her waiting for her to wake up. Little kids were scattered dead on a playground. People in their Shabbat clothes on the street…the way they went out to live is how they died.”

RONIT GLASER is a single mother of two girls aged 12 and 9; she works as a dispatcher.

“When I was awakened on October 7 as war was breaking out, I called my supervisor and said I was bringing my daughters with me to the station because there’s no real safe room in our house,” Glaser said. 

“During the 10-minute drive, we stopped three times because of more sirens, meaning more missile attacks. My girls laid down on the ground and I laid on top of them with my hands on their heads. My 9-year-old asked: “But Eema (mother) who’s going to cover your head?”

At her dispatcher post, Ronit dove into work – fielding calls and dispatching paramedics to help. But all the while knowing her young daughters were in the next room, overhearing dispatchers shouting things like, “Say that again? The man’s arms and legs are all blown off?”

Ronit knew her little girls’ hearts must be being torn apart by hearing talk of war, and sure enough, one of her daughters asked: “Eema, is it true that kids are being killed? Is it true there are terrorists all over the country?”

“I do not lie to my kids, so I told her, Everything you heard is true. I’m really sorry to tell you. Crying is good. Let it out, but I want you to remember that no matter what, I will always do everything I can to keep you safe.” 

Glaser worked until 9:30 p.m. that evening, then returned to serve again starting at 4 a.m. on Sunday.

“I’m so proud of my daughters,” Ronit adds. “My 9-year-old opened a lemonade stand with all the money she made going to the children and dogs of the western Negev settlements.” 

Like mother, like daughter…the next generation of servant hearts at work.

ZVI TIBBER is an MDA paramedic who told me his assignments on Oct. 7 included heading to an emergency call at a greenhouse in Israel on the border with Gaza.

Encountering the pure evil of Hamas, Tibber came upon a 5-year-old boy with a gunshot wound to his chest.

An uncle told Zvi that the boy had been helping his father in the greenhouse when Hamas terrorists arrived. The father pleaded with them that he was an Arab, but they responded: “No. You’re worse than the Jews. You collaborate with them,” and they shot him dead in front of the 5-year-old. His uncle picked him up and started to run away but Hamas terrorists fired at them, striking the boy in the chest.

“When a policeman got him to me,” Zvi recounted, “he was in very bad shape. The bullet had passed through him and out of his back. I put him in my ambulance and raced him to the hospital. He was crying for his mother, but there was nobody there…only me so I comforted him.” (Zvi has since learned that the youngster has fully recovered and says when he grows up he wants to become a policeman himself so he can help people.)

While these brave Magen David Adom heroes are alive to recount the events of Oct. 7, sadly some are not. One casualty was Amit Mann, a MDA paramedic serving in Kibbutz Be'eri, which was overrun with terrorists.

She reached out to Ronit Glaser by phone begging for an ambulance…but was told one could not be dispatched due to the fierce combat in the kibbutz. Amit sadly said she understood. It was her last phone call: Terrorists killed her a short time later as she was attempting to save the lives of others.

In the aftermath of the Oct. 7 casualties and death, there nevertheless remains an enduring spirit of hope.

Menachem Blumenthal – an MDA paramedic for the past 20 years in the Negev region – told me last week: “We got hit, but as Israelis we are strong. And we believe that absolutely in the next month or in the future, we will be even better than we were before.”