Saar Asked His Doctors for One Thing

July 12, 2024

Saar Hurvitz is a 22-year-old from a close-knit family from Kochav Michael.

In the IDF his job is Merkava tank gunner, and his base, Tapuzina, next to Kibbutz Hanita, is literally a few dozen feet from Israel’s border with Lebanon.

On October 15th, Saar was on alert inside his tank, prepared to repel a possible attack from Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Suddenly an explosion shook the massive tank. Saar was blown out of his seat as he watched the Merkava’s fire extinguisher system engage. After two years in a tank he understood they were hit by a Kornet – a Russian-made portable anti-tank missile fired by Hezbollah.

He saw he was on the floor of the tank and there was blood on his chair but didn’t feel any pain so he thought that it was his loader Arthur who got injured and needed to be treated.

Then he heard his commander shout: “Arthur, Saar is bleeding and needs a tourniquet immediately!” Only then, Saar understood that he was the injured one and losing a lot of blood.

Arthur started to put the tourniquet on Saar’s leg and then tried to move him to the tank’s “hall”, a place inside the tank in front of the big back door where they put injured soldiers. At that point Saar was more conscious so he began to put a tourniquet on his own arm.

The commander was trying to get in touch with the evacuation team at Kibbutz Hanita, right below the base. Saar was calmed by the fact that few days prior he had taught the team how to rescue a soldier from inside a tank.

The team arrived but couldn’t get the tank door open from the outside. His commander Hudis used a hammer to hit the jammed. emergency exit mechanism, but in the tight confines of the tank he accidentally hit Saar in the face and broke his nose.

The only way out would be nine feet up and through the top hatch. But Saar was unable to move on his own. After a lot of pushing and pulling they got him out through the top but knew in that moment they were exposed to more Hezbollah fire. So they decided to drop Saar off the side and onto the ground.

They counted 3..2..1.. and rolled Saar off the top, and one of the reserve soldiers below caught him and ran with him on his back for about 1000 feet. All Saar could think about was the terrible pain and how he just wanted someone to take a weapon, end his suffering and get him to a better place.

When they got to the kibbutz, there was an ambulance waiting to treat him and take him to a hospital in the north. After being loaded into the ambulance, Saar finally “allowed” himself to pass out.

Saar was put into an induced coma for two days. When they brought him out he was very confused and it took a while, until the doctors managed to make eye contact with him and gave him a whiteboard so he could communicate.

Saar wrote: “Why aren’t you smiling?”

Immediately they were all grinning, and the doctors asked what he wanted most at that moment. Saar wrote “a hug”. One of the nurses fell on him crying and gave him the most loving hug.

After a few days, Saar was in better condition and requested a transfer to Sheba.

When asked, Saar says how glad he is for being able to fight for Am Israel and he regrets nothing. He is happy about what he has done, thankful for getting a second chance in life and thankful to his friends and medical teams for saving his life.

Saar says it best: “The environment in the Sheba Rehab Department is very very special. A whole department full of young people going through the same scary experiences and somehow managing to switch it to great energies.”

Saar continues: “We live together in the best conditions we could get, playing video games in our common places with TVs and PlayStations, and the most important – laughing about each other’s injuries. Sheba makes the whole thing into a positive experience.”

Am Yisrael Chai

Brian