“Simchat Torah eve is a very special and meaningful time on Kibbutz Sa’ad,” says Hagiv Hacmon, who has lived on the kibbutz for 12 years. “Every year, guests from throughout the country arrive, and virtually every family on Sa’ad hosts guests.”
That evening, Hacmon had no inkling of the tumultuous events that would take place the following day. The head of kibbutz security had planned to be away for the holiday and asked Hacmon, 44, who heads a kibbutz agricultural products company and is also a volunteer medic for United Hatzalah, to take his place for what was expected to be a routine holiday.
As the acting security director, Hacmon patrolled the kibbutz and was tasked with organizing and leading the kibbutz emergency squad in the event of an emergency. “I woke up at 6:26 a.m. to a burst of rocket fire that continued for 30-40 minutes,” Hacmon recalls. “I jumped out of bed and sent the children to the safe room in our home.”
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Several minutes later, a rocket landed near his house. Hacmon contacted the security director and asked if he had been alerted to any security events from the IDF. The director said he hadn’t received any messages but told him to assemble the kibbutz security team.
“At 6:45 a.m., I assembled the security team. I drove to the kibbutz armory and gave them their weapons,” says Hacmon. The squad separated into smaller groups and went to the kibbutz gates, while Hacmon patrolled throughout the kibbutz with the kibbutz security vehicle.
Shortly thereafter, he received a call reporting that a wounded man had arrived at one of the gates. Hacmon raced to the area, where he found a lieutenant-colonel who had been shot in the back. He began to put pressure on the wound to reduce blood loss and contacted a kibbutz doctor for assistance. Security team members evacuated the wounded soldier to an ambulance pick-up point.
The security squad closed off the road that led from Sa’ad to Sderot, as the wounded soldier had told them there were terrorists on that road.
Moments later, dozens of frantic survivors who had escaped from the slaughter at the Supernova music festival in Re’im began to arrive at the gates of the kibbutz, requesting that they open the road so that they could flee northward.
Hacmon and his team explained that it was not safe to travel there and brought them into the kibbutz, where they triaged and treated the wounded. Shooting in the area was coming from all directions, recalls Hacmon.
At 9:15 a.m., the kibbutz’s permanent security director returned, and Hacmon breathed a sigh of relief, if only momentarily. A squad of Golani soldiers arrived, saw Hacmon, who was wearing his Hatzalah vest, and told him that they needed a medic to accompany them to nearby Kfar Aza.
Saving lives in Kfar Aza
Hacmon and the IDF soldiers entered Kfar Aza and saw residents who had been murdered, with their bodies scattered on the grass. They began entering houses and found a couple dead inside their home.
“We then came to another house and heard a girl crying, ‘Save us!’,” he says.
Hacmon entered the safe room of the house, where a couple in their fifties, together with their daughter, had been hiding from the terrorists. The husband had closed the door to the safe room and held the handle of the door shut to prevent the terrorists from entering. The terrorists set off an explosive device near the door, which severely wounded his hands and fingers, and then ran away. Hacmon remained in the house for five hours with the family, providing the injured man with fluids, speaking to him, and keeping him from losing consciousness.
Hacmon saw another wounded man, who had been shot in the jaw, and brought him into the house, where he treated him as well. Several hours later, they moved the two wounded men to a nearby house which had another medic, and continued treating them there. A wounded soldier was brought in, and they decided to evacuate the three injured men. Hacmon remained to treat the remaining injured in Kfar Aza.
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The three wounded men, together with soldiers, boarded the van that had brought Hacmon to Kfar Aza and headed toward the kibbutz entrance. Tragically, a soldier in the van was shot and killed by snipers, and after leaving the kibbutz, the brakes in the van failed. As they approached a nearby gas station, they asked a bystander to shoot at the tires to bring the van to a stop.
The wounded were moved to an IDF vehicle, which took them to an IDF helicopter on Kibbutz Sa’ad that evacuated them. The Kfar Aza resident who suffered severe wounds in his hand underwent several surgeries and survived, and Hacmon hopes to meet him soon. The man who was shot in the jaw also survived and eventually returned to his tank unit in Gaza.
Hacmon, who had left this home at 9:00 a.m. on Shabbat morning, finally returned to his home at 3 a.m. Monday. It was a Simchat Torah that he will never forget.
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