Blood-Red Star of David

Menachem Handelsman, Area Coordinator for Tzevet Hatzolah – Magen David Adom (MDA) in Yerushalayim’s Ramot neighborhood, describes a Simchas Torah he will never forget.

As told to Reuvain Borchardt

My alarm first went off Simchas Torah morning, after a rocket attack at about 5:45 a.m. While, unfortunately, we are used to this happening, I jumped out of bed when I saw that rockets were hitting Tel Aviv. That’s typically not where they go. But I figured that, as usual, the alarms would end in a few minutes.

I didn’t look at my phone anymore, because they were not in my area anyway, so there was no reason for me to look at my phone on Shabbos and Yom Tov. 

I volunteer for Tzevet Hatzolah, the religious unit of Magen David Adom. We have a phone app that sends us messages on Shabbos in our area, depending on the level of emergency. We also have a radio system that’s divided into neighborhoods, so that we’ll only get the messages we need on Shabbos and not anything unnecessary.

For greater emergencies, they expand the area for which we’ll receive messages.

And on this day, the beeps just kept coming, though the rockets were not in our area. And the alerts kept coming to my phone for more than an hour. So I knew something was very wrong.

Once I was up, a little after 7:30 a.m., I decided to go to shul and get things ready for the expected Simchas Torah festivities. And as I’m walking up the hill to shul, we hear the air raid sirens. It was the first time we’ve heard sirens in Ramot in maybe five years. Everyone was confused. I’ve lived here for 20 years already, but many of the Americans here just moved a year or two ago and had never heard this before. They were reluctant to follow instructions, to lie down on the ground near a car or building, to ruin their Yom Tov clothing. But I managed to get them to comply.

I thought about knocking on people’s doors and asking if I could use their shelter, but it was early in the morning and I didn’t know who was home and who wasn’t. So I decided it was best to run the two or three minutes to shul where I knew there was a shelter.

We all ran to shul, where we found adults and children crying and scared, with no idea what was going on.

I got to shul close to 8 a.m., and then my radio and phone app start going off nonstop. This is unusual, because most rockets are shot down by Iron Dome so we never even hear about it. But now we start hearing reports of rockets hitting population centers.

Close to 8:45 a.m., the dispatcher tells us all to move to Channel 1, which is meant for emergencies. And we were getting constant alerts about things not just in our immediate area as we usually would on Shabbos, but in the wider area of Yerushalayim, Beit Shemesh, and Beitar. But we didn’t know about a war happening all around the country or about the infiltrations.

It was around 10 or 10:30 a.m. that a dispatcher from the main dispatch center in Tel Aviv got on the radio and said, “Everybody off Shabbos protocol because it appears that war has broken out in the South and center of the country. Get to your vehicles and make sure you are ready to go. Anyone who has flak jackets or bulletproof vests or helmets, make sure you have it and are ready to go.”

We had five or six air-raid warnings that morning. And the radio was going off throughout davening. I am the only MDA guy in my minyan. Another minyan in the same shul building has a United Hatzalah volunteer; I went there to check with him if he had heard anything I hadn’t, but he had not.

Each time the air raid sirens went off, everyone in both minyanim, around 200 or 250 people (men, women and children) had to run down into the shul’s safe room. The room is maybe 10 meters by 8 meters, not nearly big enough for everyone. Many people were in the hall or backed up into the shul.

We tried doing hakafos as best we could in this cramped room. After a  while, we went back to the shul — until the next siren, when we ran back to the shelter again.

Meanwhile, I wasn’t touching my phone app on Shabbos because if there were any emergencies in my area I’d hear it over the radio. So I was still not aware of the full extent of the war. But each time I got an emergency phone call, I could view the app without touching the phone until the phone went to sleep after a few minutes. So I started seeing messages trickling in on the app and getting the picture, that what’s happening now is something none of us has ever seen before.

It was around 11 a.m. that we began finding out that terrorists had infiltrated Eretz Yisrael, and were on the ground in villages near the Gaza border. I started seeing messages on my MDA app first, and then news apps that are generally quiet on Shabbos started broadcasting. And I saw these each time I had to take a call and my phone would light up.

At around 2:00 pm, one of my drivers got on the radio and said he needed drivers to join him “on a mission,” without explaining further.

At this point, I suspected that it was pikuach nefesh and I called him. He explained that they had ambulances just donated from the U.S. and sitting in Tel Aviv but without medical equipment, and they needed them driven to Jerusalem to be properly outfitted. Today. Now.

Then he told me about the infiltrations. And it was around this time that the rate of calls started going through the roof.

And then we got calls that any MDA volunteers who are trained to take blood donations were needed immediately. And that we should announce that anyone who can donate blood, who hasn’t had alcohol on Simchas Torah, should please head to the MDA station.

By this point, some of the MDA drivers from the Jerusalem area who had gone down south had begun returning, and that’s when we start hearing the reports of what they called a “mashchitah” — a slaughter.

It turns out one of the earliest victims of the attack was a frum MDA driver, who had sped to the scene in Ofakim right when attacks began, not realizing there were terrorists on the ground. He was shot and killed as soon as he stepped out of his ambulance, Hy”d.

He was one of many, many heroic volunteers for MDA, and many other first-responder groups. Some were killed, some were injured, and others will live with the trauma. They’re all heroes.

We start hearing from these returning drivers that there are 250 dead Israelis, and the number is climbing.

That sort of number never enters your brain. That never happens here. When we lost 44 people on one night in Meron, the country almost lost its collective mind. We respond to terror attacks all the time; if there are five people dead, that’s a lot. But 250? It seemed impossible. We were hoping that maybe it was a mistake, that on Shabbos there was incomplete information, and we would find out later it wasn’t so bad. But eventually we realized the truth.

Soon, messages started gong out from the Health Ministry that there could be 70 dead people. They only report after they absolutely confirm. But I knew it was much, much worse than 70.

It was a very tough time, emotionally. We knew what was going on. But it was Shabbos. And it was Simchas Torah. And we were supposed to be b’simchah. And then we started hearing the death toll climb. First it was 300, then 350. And close to a thousand injured. And we were thinking, “How could this happen?” We’ve had infiltrations before. Of maybe five terrorists. But we started hearing that it could be over 400 terrorists. Later they said it was closer to a thousand. A thousand terrorists.

Meanwhile, my drivers were returning from trips down south. Typically it’s a drive of around 90 minutes, but on Shabbos Simchas Torah, with empty roads and sirens, they can do it in 45 minutes or an hour. Some were on their third trip already. The hospitals were so overwhelmed down south that they had to send the patients to Yerushalayim and other cities. There were also helicopters flying south picking up patients and dropping them at hospitals everywhere.

My drivers were coming back with absolutely horrific stories. There were body parts everywhere, lying in the streets of these peaceful agricultural villages. They had to ignore the bodies of the dead, and just do what they could to save the living.

One first responder came back to me dripping in blood. It wasn’t his own blood. As soon as he arrived in a southern village, some first responders threw three bodies into his ambulance and shouted, “Go!” He didn’t know if they were alive or dead, so he tried to treat these three patients in the back while the driver sped to Yerushalayim. Another responder who arrived on an army base had a similar story. He opened the door of his ambulance, three soldiers were thrown into the back and he was told to take them to Yerushalayim at top speed.

I don’t even remember now which towns these stories happened in. A lot of it was in Ofakim. Look at a map. People don’t realize how deep into Eretz Yisrael Ofakim is. The terrorists infiltrated deep into Eretz Yisrael.

Some MDA volunteers came under fire from the terrorists. There was a rocket attack in Beitar, and one of my first responders from Beitar was running to the scene, with no helmet, no vest, no nothing, and he was injured. We’re hoping and praying that he’ll survive and get better soon, b’soch shaar cholei Yisrael.

Here is something a lot of people don’t realize: We don’t all have proper protective equipment. That would cost a lot of money that we don’t have. And nobody really thinks we’ll be in an active war zone. We started a campaign  now to try to raise the money; we’ve raised some but not enough. We need bulletproof vests, helmets, etc. Even when we are trying to buy now with whatever money we’ve raised, we can’t get the stuff shipped here because there are very few flights. I’m desperately trying to bring stuff in from America and other places.

Anyway, by now it was around 3:00 p.m. or so. I had driven to shul before Yom Tov and left my car at shul. So now, even though hakafos were over, I didn’t want to leave shul and not be near my car. I sent my wife and kid home — but first I grabbed a fistful of my kid’s Simchas Torah candies. It would be the only thing I’d eat until late that night.

Around 3:30 p.m. I got a call from an elderly man in Jerusalem who had tried running down the steps of his apartment toward a shelter. He’d fallen down and been knocked out for a while. I responded, along with another driver. It turns out that that driver had been down south and had heard all the news. And that’s when I start hearing everything. About all the deaths. The infiltrations. The bodies and the blood running in the streets. That reports were of 400 deaths, but the first responders knew there were in fact a lot more.

Once I was done with that call, I was able to drive home. I spoke to my wife and told her the truth — that we were now a country at war.

I told her to take away my kid’s phone as soon as Shabbos was over, and to tell him herself what is going on. As I was talking to her, with barely a moment to catch my breath, I got another call. And from that point on it has been nonstop calls.

After the war started in Gaza, it seems the Arabs in Jerusalem — I’m not sure whether they are East Jerusalem Palestinians or Israeli Arabs — must have gotten excited, because we started getting calls of a bunch of attacks. If these attacks had happened on any other day, it would be the news of the day, But now, these are not even being reported.

There was an attempted stabbing at Ammunition Hill on Motzoei Shabbos. At the gates of the Old City, there was one attempted stabbing after another on soldiers. There was an attempted car ramming on Chaim Bar Lev Street. An Arab got into his bulldozer and tried ramming into a security checkpoint; he was trying to kill a bunch of soldiers. That’s just a  few of them. We got one call after another. The events being reported don’t even make the news now.

On a call that normally might get 10 to 15 first responders, now they cancel the call as soon as two people respond because there are not enough responders to go around. Also, not enough ambulances.

By Motzoei Yom Tov, immediately after Yom Tov ended, all the MDA guys were out of Yom Tov clothes and ready to go.

Many of them are reservists who have gotten called up to the army, so we’re very short on responders now. Many of our medics, nurses, and doctors have gone to the army. They’re needed now for the war.

As I speak to you now from my office outside Kiryat Yearim/Telz Stone, a bunch of rockets flew over my head. One landed on the next hill over, on a mosque in an Arab village called Abu Ghosh. I just felt my building rock like I’ve never known a building could rock and still be left standing.

Abu Ghosh is a generally peaceful Arab village with lots of Christian Arabs; there are rarely any issues with them and they’re pretty much loyal to Israel, or so they say.

Last night there was an infiltration in Har Shmuel, a three-minute drive from me, reportedly from a Palestinian village called Beit Iksa. We headed over right away, because when there is an infiltration there will often be an attack very soon after. Baruch Hashem they arrested three infiltrators; I’m not sure if there are any more, but there haven’t been any attacks at Har Shmuel.

And of course, through it all, there have been heartwarming stories.

ZAKA put out a request for volunteers to dig graves — and within 14 minutes they said they had enough responses. Within an hour after Yom Tov, we brought seven cars and trucks of food to the nearest IDF base, which is the main logistics area. Cars are lined up along the highway from Ramot to that base for three or four kilometers. Many soldiers jumped into their cars, drove to the base, parked on the highway and walked to the base — some are driving their cars back, others have to stay there and, eventually, they hope their cars will be driven back home somehow.

We are still hoping to raise the money to get 400 vests and 400 helmets out to our volunteers.

The Tzevet Hatzolah guys who have not been called up are taking shifts of 16 or 18 hours. We’ve made major blood drives and gotten huge responses. We’ve been transporting the injured from hospitals in the south to other areas of the country, to clear space in those hospitals.

We’re doing protection of any gathering, whether a Tehillim gathering or a wedding or whatever.

Some of us are not working now; we just feel like our head’s not working and we can’t focus properly. Many of us feel like, how can we work now, how can we eat now? I see people walking around like zombies.

I’m no military prognosticator but I can say from everything we hear, this is no short haul. The country is in this for the long haul.

So while it’s great to see all the help that’s coming right now, as things go on for weeks, we hope people won’t get bored of helping us do our work.

People around the country will need help. There will be families whose sukkos won’t come down for months because the father was called up to the army suddenly on the last day of Yom Tov.

Simchas Torah was a day we’ll never forget. And the next few weeks or months will probably also be a time we’ll never forget. It’s all in Hashem’s Hands. Let’s hope it’ll be a memorable time for good reasons.

—

rborchardt@hamodia.com