As Israel reflects on the third anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks, accounts of courage and sacrifice continue to surface amid the country’s long and difficult recovery.
For Nil Kirsht-Levi, the years since the Hamas-led massacre have brought unbearable grief, a desperate campaign to free her sister from captivity in Gaza and a determined effort to support others who survived the cross-border attack.
Kirsht-Levi, a nurse with Clalit’s Southern District, Israel’s largest healthcare provider, lives in Kibbutz Magen. On the morning of Oct. 7, she treated patients remotely from her safe room while shielding her three children as terrorists moved through the community, entering homes one after another. At the same time, she sent frantic messages to her sister, Rimon Buchshtab-Kirsht, who lived with her husband at nearby Kibbutz Nirim.
IDF forces outside Nil Kirscht’s home on the morning of Oct 8, 2023. Credit: Courtesy of the family. (Kirscht family)
“That day, I lost more than 30 patients and more than 200 people I knew. About 100 people I knew were kidnapped,” Kirsht-Levi told News Media. She said her work, along with the health of her husband and children, has helped sustain her. “We work every day to recover and rehabilitate ourselves. Every day we fall and stand up again, but we are here — for ourselves and for others. We have won,” she said.
She said the memory of the attack must never fade, but survivors also have to continue living. “We must remember, move forward, live every moment and keep going. Being alive is a privilege,” she added.
Nil reunites with her sister Rimon upon her return from captivity, December 4, 2023. (Nil Kirsht-Levi)
On Oct. 7, Rimon sent her sister a message saying she could hear Arabic and that terrorists had entered her home. Kirsht-Levi endured weeks of uncertainty before seeing proof that Rimon was alive in a Hamas video. After campaigning tirelessly for her release, she embraced her sister 53 days later, when Rimon returned from captivity during a November 2023 ceasefire agreement. She was severely malnourished and covered in scars.
Rimon’s husband, Kirsht-Levi’s brother-in-law Yagev Buchshtab, was murdered by the terrorists.
That same Palestinian terror assault, which began on the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah, also placed Michaela Koretsky, a midwife with Clalit’s Southern District, in the middle of a desperate medical emergency at Kibbutz Alumim. With no hospital equipment available, she improvised care for wounded residents.
Koretsky was awakened at 6:29 a.m. by air raid sirens as Hamas fired thousands of rockets, creating cover for terrorists crossing into Israel. She hurried with her husband and children to the shelter. There, she received a message from Eran, a member of the kibbutz’s civilian security team, asking whether she was home. He soon began bringing injured residents to her for treatment.
Michaela and her daughter hide in the safe room for hours on the morning of October 7, while she was tending to the wounded in her living room—and even saving one who was in critical condition. (Courtesy of the Koretsky family)
“When they carried Amichai into the house, he was covered in blood. I immediately went into nurse mode,” Koretsky recalled.
She had Amichai placed on the floor while gunfire continued outside the kitchen window. Using what was available, Koretsky fashioned bandages and prepared an IV as she consulted by phone with a Soroka Medical Center emergency-room doctor who was also inside the kibbutz. The physician determined that Amichai was stable.
Soon afterward, Eyal arrived with a gunshot wound and a bullet lodged in his lung. Koretsky gave him oxygen and connected him to an IV, but his condition made clear that he needed to be evacuated immediately.
Palestinian Hamas terrorists stand guard on the day of the handover of hostages held in Gaza since the deadly Oct. 7, 2023, attack, as part of a ceasefire and a hostages-prisoners swap deal between Hamas and Israel, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, Feb. 22, 2025. (Hatem Khaled/File Photo/Reuters)
“We had to save lives, so I put my mind into action and did what was necessary,” Koretsky told News Media. She said she pushed aside the fear that terrorists might discover the wounded were being treated in her home. Although one of her children worried they would be found, she kept reassuring herself that they were protected and that the danger would not reach them.
Koretsky’s husband, Tzviki, joined members of the kibbutz security team in reaching their vehicle. He then drove the wounded alone through gunfire to Netivot, where ambulances were waiting. Amichai and Eyal were later transported to Soroka Medical Center for additional care.
Prof. Shlomi Codish, director of the Beersheba hospital, said three critical decisions he made early on Oct. 7 helped shape Soroka’s response throughout the unprecedented day.
Prof. Shlomi Codish, the Director of Clalit-Soroka Medical Center on the day of the Iranian missile strike, June 2025. (Clalit-Soroka Medical Center)
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 News Media.
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.
A woman reacts as the community of Kibbutz Kfar Aza commemorates their members who were killed, taken hostage and who died in captivity, following the deadly Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas terrorists, in Kibbutz Kfar Aza, southern Israel, Oct. 16, 2025. (Hannah McKay/Reuters)
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.