As Israel marks three years since the Oct. 7, 2023 terrorist attacks, stories of bravery and self-sacrifice continue to emerge from within a nation grappling with recovery and rehabilitation.
For Nil Kirsht-Levi, the three years since the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre have been defined by devastating personal loss, an agonizing wait for her sister who was taken hostage and brought to Gaza and an unwavering commitment to caring for fellow survivors of the cross-border terror attack.
Kirsht-Levi, a nurse with Israel’s largest healthcare provider, Clalit Southern District, who lives in Kibbutz Magen, spent the morning of Oct. 7 treating patients remotely from her safe room while trying to protect her three children as terrorists invaded the community and went from house to house. At the same time, she desperately texted her sister, Rimon Buchshtab-Kirsht, who lived with her husband in nearby Kibbutz Nirim.
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“I lost more than 30 patients that day, more than 200 people I knew, and around 100 people I knew were kidnapped,” Kirsht-Levi told Fox News Digital. “I’m lucky to have a job that saves me, healthy children, a healthy husband. We work every day to recover and rehabilitate ourselves. Every day, we fall and get back up, but we are here — for ourselves, for others and we have won,” she continued.
“We should never forget, but we must move forward, live every moment and keep going. It’s a privilege to be alive,” she added.
On Oct. 7, Kirsht-Levi’s sister sent a message saying she could hear Arabic and that terrorists had entered her home. Weeks of agonizing uncertainty followed before Kirsht-Levi saw her sister alive in a Hamas video. She had campaigned for her release and ultimately welcomed her home 53 days later, emaciated and covered in scars, as part of a ceasefire deal in November 2023.
Her sister’s husband, her brother-in-law, Yagev Buchshtab however, had been murdered by the terrorists.
During the 2023 Palestinian terror assault, launched on the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah, Michaela Koretsky, a midwife with Clalit’s Southern District, improvised lifesaving treatments for wounded members of Kibbutz Alumim.
Like so many others, Koretsky was jolted awake by air raid sirens at 6:29 a.m. that fateful day, as Hamas launched thousands of rockets at Israel, providing cover for terrorists as they crossed the border in the ensuing invasion. She rushed with her husband and children to the shelter, where she received a message from Eran, a member of the kibbutz’s civil defense squad, asking if she was home. Eran then began bringing wounded kibbutz members to her for first aid.
“When they entered the house carrying Amichai, he was covered in blood… I switched into nurse mode,” she said.
Koretsky had Amichai placed on the floor as they continued to hear gunfire outside the kitchen window. She improvised bandages and prepared an IV while staying in contact with an emergency room doctor from Soroka Medical Center who was also in the kibbutz. He confirmed that Amichai was stable.
Then Eyal was brought in. He had been shot, with one of the bullets lodged in his lung. After Koretsky placed him on an IV and administered additional oxygen, it became clear that he needed to be evacuated.
“We needed to save lives, so I switched my brain into action mode and did what needed to be done. The whole time I did not think that the terrorists would enter my house. I knew one of my children was afraid they would figure out where the wounded were being taken and come after us, but I told myself, ‘I am protected. It will not happen,’” she told Fox News Digital.
Her husband, Tzviki, accompanied by members of the kibbutz’s civil defense squad, reached his car and alone he evacuated the wounded under fire to Netivot, where they were transferred to waiting ambulances. From there, both Amichai and Eyal were taken to Soroka Medical Center for further treatment.
Prof. Shlomi Codish, director of the hospital in Beersheba, said he made three lifesaving decisions early on Oct. 7 that shaped the response throughout the day.
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First, he and his team decided not to send the night shift home, allowing the hospital to begin the day with twice its normal staffing level. At 7:45 a.m., they declared a mass-casualty incident, despite not yet knowing how many wounded would arrive and alerted all available staff to report to the hospital. Finally, they ordered additional blood supplies in anticipation of the surge of casualties.
“We usually start the shift with 50 units of blood in our blood bank. By the end of the day, we had given 250 units. If we hadn’t ordered additional blood early that morning, we might have run out and people may have died,” Codish told Fox News Digital.
Codish said the hospital faced several overwhelming challenges throughout the day, beginning with the sheer number of wounded being brought to the hospital.
“In the first 24 hours, we received 674 wounded people. At the peak, we received more than 80 in a single hour, with an average of just 40 seconds between wounded people arriving,” he said.
“This was one of the largest mass-casualty events resulting from terror in human history. The hospital itself was also under fire, with dozens of incoming missile warnings from the Gaza Strip, while attacks were taking place simultaneously at a very large number of sites,” he added.
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The second challenge was the immediate impact of the invasion on hospital staff themselves. “Everyone who came in left a family at home that was potentially under attack. They got into their cars and drove through air-raid sirens in areas that weren’t protected, at significant personal risk, to come in and save lives,” he said.
Another major challenge was maintaining care inside the hospital as the number of casualties surged. The hospital began the day at full capacity, forcing staff to quickly free up intensive care beds and operating rooms for incoming patients. With roads around the hospital unsafe, transferring patients to other facilities was not an option in the first hours of the attack, while sending ambulances into the field risked exposing them to Hamas ambushes.
“When you see babies or children with direct injuries, that is not something you typically see on a battlefield. We saw elderly people with severe wounds inflicted directly, with no protection,” Codish said, reflecting on the brutality he witnessed that day.
“As a medical professional, what we saw was beyond words. Two babies suffering from dehydration after their parents were killed, simply waiting to be rescued — I defy anyone to find a word other than ‘evil’ to describe it,” he added.
