Aryeh Myers, senior paramedic and international relations liaison with Magen David Adom, was celebrating the Shemini Atzeret/Simchat Torah Jewish holiday with family when the unthinkable happened on Oct. 7, 2023.
The holiday is considered one of the most joyous for the Jewish people as it marks the start of the annual Torah reading cycle. Instead, Myers found himself dealing with the media before heading to southern Israel, where most of the action was taking place. Recently, he was gracious enough to take time out of his busy schedule to talk about his experiences as a first responder during the deadly and devastating Hamas attack on Israel.
How Long Had You Been a Paramedic at that Time?
Myers had been a paramedic for 17 years at the time that the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel took place. Hamas is designated by the U.S. as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO) according to Congress.gov.
Magen David Adom (MDA) is the name of Israel’s national Emergency Medical System (EMS). Myers detailed that this includes “2,000 ambulances, [about 100 of which are armored], 700 motorbikes, different specialist vehicles, helicopters, buses, intensive care buses - all sorts of different vehicles to respond to whatever the situation might be. And it can be routine, and it can be, obviously, far more extreme.”
Myers said there are 200 stations across Israel available to serve its 10 million people. About 90 percent of those serving with MDA are volunteers.
What Was It Like Responding to Calls During the Attack?
Myers mentioned he spent the night shift in southern Israel, “which lasted somewhere between 14 and 16 hours dealing with people who had been injured in rocket strikes and people [impacted] by the massive terror attack on the state of Israel.”
“What I tried to do throughout the night shift was about once an hour or so I sent a message home just to say that I was okay, and just to let them know that was the case. It was a frightening time," he said. "There’s no question. We were running from scene to scene, and in between, even when you’re on an ambulance, you’re still very much under threat. The rocket strikes weren’t aimed anywhere in particular. They were aimed at the civilian population. And we were amongst the civilian population that was there.”
Myers stated that this occasionally forced EMS personnel to seek shelter for their own safety.
“We’d have to wait there for about 30 seconds, hear the explosion somewhere nearby, and then continue to go wherever it was that we were heading to. And it really was a scary time,” he added.
“We knew that there were still terrorists in the area and we had to be very much aware of everything that was going on around us. There were parts of the south that we couldn’t enter at the time. The security forces told us that we cannot get into them because they were overrun with Hamas terrorists,” Myers said.
As one can easily surmise, it was an obviously stressful situation for Myers. Not only was he having to tend to those injured as a result of the attacks and seek shelter to keep from being injured himself, but those routine, everyday medical emergency calls did not stop either.
“And that meant that as an organization, what we did was we first of all manned every single emergency vehicle all across the country. Because whilst there was a war happening in the south, there were also still rocket attacks into central Israel, and all the routine was still happening [such as] heart problems, strokes, asthma attacks and everything else was still happening. And the big concern was not only what was going on in the south of Israel and with the Hamas terrorists, but also what might develop along the northern borders with Hezbollah in Lebanon. What would happen across Judah and Samaria? Would there be issues there as well? So we had to be prepared for a massive escalation of ADA [Air Defense Artillery] or a massive incident,” he said.
Ironically, Myers said the first patient they attended to that night had nothing to do with the war. The person was in the war zone, but they were suffering from an epileptic seizure.
How has Oct. 7, 2023 Changed Your Life and Impacted Your Family?
He pointed out that the entire country has been affected in various ways, but that it now has an added element of resilience. In spite of the fact that hundreds of people were murdered and hundreds of people were taken hostage, who have all, thankfully, since been returned.
“And that changes the whole psyche of the country,” he said, adding that you can go to any city and see that the country is still thriving with people going to restaurants, and they are getting back to living life.
However, the memories of that day and how life has changed since that deadly attack three years ago still remain with Israelis.
“But behind that scene, what you’re seeing is a lot of people are struggling. The reality is this: It’s always in the back of our minds. It wasn’t just October 7. It’s the fact we’ve been at war now for about three years. The fact that we’ve had multiple ballistic missile attacks from Iran, again, with this genocidal regime that fired hundreds of ballistic missiles, and we’re not talking about small rockets with a 20-pound payload; we’re talking about rockets or missiles with thousand-pound warheads causing massive amounts of damage."
Despite everything that has happened and everything still happening, Myers mentioned that he and his coworkers have not been deterred. They understand they have a job, a duty to fulfill, and they intend to continue doing it.
"And the reality is that as the national medical emergency services and the national blood services organization, we are expected to continue doing what we do. And we want to continue doing what we do. We want to be there for the people when they need us the most….”
Photo Credit: ©Getty Images/Paul Souders
