Exclusive'We were there right in the heart of fighting'

United Hatzalah first responder reveals harrowing experience on Oct. 7 ‘road of death’

‘It was like a terrifying train,’ says an EMT who treated casualties on Route 232, yet he tries to remember the good he and other volunteers did that day

Reporter at The Times of Israel

Aharon Ben Haroush, right, talks to IDF soldiers during the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023. (United Hatzalah)
Aharon Ben Haroush, right, talks to IDF soldiers during the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023. (United Hatzalah)

As an EMT and ambulance dispatcher for the United Hatzalah volunteer-based first responder organization, Aharon Ben Haroush, 28, flew to Ukraine in 2022 to help people who had survived Russian bombardments. Still, the October 7 Hamas massacre was worse than anything he had ever seen.

“I had seen casualties, but I never imagined encountering something of this scale,” Ben Haroush said. “The scale was enormous.”

Even after a year, Ben Haroush is still caught up in his memories, retracing what happened that brutal day when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists stormed into Israel, killing 1,200 and kidnapping 251 people to the Gaza Strip amid widely documented atrocities and systematic targeting of civilians.

Ben Haroush not only works at United Hatzalah, he also married into the organization. His wife, Avigail, is the daughter of Gitty Beer, a United Hatzalah paramedic, and Eli Beer, the founder and president of the organization. Although the family is often in the spotlight, Ben Haroush shared his story publicly for the first time with The Times of Israel via video chat.

Ben Haroush has dark eyes, dark hair, and a dark beard — more like a stubble — on his serious, round face.

He said that the night before the onslaught, his wife and their toddler son had slept in a Jerusalem hotel for the Simchat Torah holiday. Ben Haroush had been up late, dancing and celebrating, and was awakened by an urgent call from Nehorai Darshan, head of the United Hatzalah branch in Sderot.

Aharon Ben Haroush, a United Hatzalah paramedic, talks to other emergency response workers during the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. (United Hatzalah)

Darshan told him that there was an emergency event in his area. Still in his boxer shorts, Ben Haroush started dispatching ambulances. Then, there was a warning siren, signaling incoming rockets in Jerusalem. He quickly got dressed, dispatched 10 more ambulances, and headed south with his mother-in-law, Gitty. They were under heavy rocket fire, passing civilians who were fleeing northward and soldiers who were trying to hitch rides to the south.

“Nobody knew what was happening,” Ben Haroush said. “We understood that something was happening, but nobody understood exactly what.”

A little before 9 a.m., they reached Helets Junction, about 10 kilometers (6 miles) north of Sderot, at the junction of Route 352 and Route 232.

The road of death

Road 232 would soon become known as “the road of death,” and Ben Haroush said he immediately saw “so much fear and chaos.”

The body of a Hamas terrorist lies near Route 232, 4 days after the October 7 Hamas-led massacre, on October 11, 2023 (Lazar Berman/The Times of Israel)

He had already seen the video of a jeep filled with terrorists with M16s in Sderot, firing at the police. He said that neither he, the other rescue workers, nor the police officers could tell if cars headed toward them were driven by innocent civilians or Hamas terrorists.

Moreover, they were in an open area, on a main road, in the middle of an intersection with no shelter, no bus station to hide in, no alerts, and constant missiles shooting overhead.

Ben Haroush set up a command center, coordinating dozens of ambulances with United Hatzalah medics who were armed — “crazy” people who “would risk everything to do good.”

He dispatched ambulances to the nearby communities of Kfar Aza, Sderot, and Be’eri, evacuating casualties.

Each time he dispatched drivers, he was always afraid something would happen to them.

“Let me hug you,” he told them. “Then go.”

Ben Haroush said that he often hugs people to say hello, “But this felt different — it felt like it could be a goodbye hug because there was a chance some of these people wouldn’t come back.”

He even dispatched his mother-in-law and his brother-in-law, Meir Shmuel, knowing that if anything happened to them, he would be “emotionally scarred.” But he hugged them and sent them off.

Members of Israeli security forces inspect vehicles with Gaza registration plates, one with a mounted gun, at Kibbutz Be’eri near the border with Gaza, four days after the infiltration and slaughter by Palestinian terrorists, on October 11, 2023. (JACK GUEZ / AFP)

The living and the dead

Ben Haroush remembered a Kia Sportage speeding toward them with the long barrel of a gun sticking out the window. All the police aimed their weapons at the car until it stopped in front of them.

The soldier who had been driving the car opened the back door, revealing two more troops.

“The driver thought they were injured, but I understood they were dead,” Ben Haroush said. “I tried to explain that he should continue fighting and that there was nothing to be done for them. But to him, they were alive, and he drove them to the hospital, holding his weapon out of the window, ready to shoot anyone who came at him.”

Volunteers were coming back to the junction to report how they saw “13 dead here, 60 dead people there.”

At some point, Ben Haroush said he had to tell people to leave the dead behind. “It’s a tough decision, but the living are the ones who matter,” he said.

IDF soldiers operate in the Gaza Strip in a photo cleared for publication on March 29, 2024. (Israel Defense Forces)

A terrifying train

The ambulances worked “like a terrifying train,” Ben Haroush said. “They were “full of blood and groans, like a conveyor belt running non-stop.”

He said he remembered seeing pregnant women, children, and mothers and suddenly understood that this “wasn’t just an attack on soldiers; it was a massacre, an attack on everyone.”

He saw people running from the Supernova music festival with injuries and gunshot wounds in their arms and legs.

“One girl was running with three friends for 15 kilometers [nine miles] on foot with gunshot wounds in her legs and arms,” Ben Haroush said. “Just running for her life.”

A visitor mourns at a memorial for Israelis who were killed or abducted in the Hamas attack on the Supernova music festival on October 7, at the site of the festival near Kibbutz Reim in southern Israel on May 13, 2024. (JACK GUEZ / AFP)

Then he saw people arriving from synagogue, dressed in holiday attire, “volunteers who came with light on their faces, to help, to lift people up.”

“Nobody cared who was religious and who wasn’t,” he said. “A man in a prayer shawl carried a girl in a bikini who was wounded at the festival.”

Ben Haroush paused for a moment. Even though the air conditioner in his office was on full blast, he said, he was always hot and now he was sweating.

‘They will all break down’

Sometime in the afternoon, Ben Haroush drove in an ambulance to Kibbutz Kfar Aza, where Hamas terrorists were in the middle of brutally murdering 62 people.

Remains of the Hermesh family house at Kibbutz Kfar Aza, close to the Gaza border, on January 2, 2024. (Sue Surkes/Times of Israel)

When they arrived, an army commander asked him to take away some soldiers. Ben Haroush looked and saw three dead soldiers. Then, another dead soldier was brought to the area.

The commander told him to take them.

“I didn’t come here to take dead people,” Ben Haroush said.

“I need you to take them for the morale of my soldiers,” the commander told him. “If my soldiers see the dead, they will all break down.”

So, the emergency response team hid the dead soldiers behind some nearby bushes so the other soldiers could continue fighting.

“We were stationed at the kibbutz entrance, and special units went in, but they couldn’t retrieve the wounded,” Ben Haroush said. “We saw an armored vehicle that had been shot up, its windows shattered, but it couldn’t get the wounded out. Then, a tank approached us, moving quickly. The tank was bringing us the wounded.”

United Hatzalah ambulance stands next to IDF tanks near the Heletz Junction of Route 232 on October 7, 2024. (United Hatzalah)

‘We managed to do a lot of good’

“From that moment, you work like a machine — no eating, no drinking, nothing,” Ben Haroush said.

He requested helicopters to evacuate the wounded, and eventually, they came to Helets Junction.

“Helicopters landed, took the wounded, and took off,” he said.

Close to midnight, he thought again about his grandmother, who lives in Sderot.

“I always was the one to help her,” he said.

He knew there were terrorists on the block where she lived, and he sent an ambulance to get her out “when there are still shooting in the streets.”

When my grandmother saw me at the Helets Junction, she cried and wouldn’t let go of my hand.

“She lost faith in everything else,” Ben Haroush said. “I was the first hope she saw.”

Thoughts and flashbacks

Ben Haroush said it took him a long time to return to “normal life.”

He said he goes over and over what happened. “We were the only ambulances in that area,” he said. “We begged, begged for more help but didn’t get it.”

He said he has thoughts and flashbacks about what happened on that day.

“We were there, right in the heart of the fighting, amid the bombardments, to provide answers and help,” Ben Haroush said. “I know that I did the best that I could, and I am sure of it, and that helps me a lot.”

In addition to psychological treatment, part of Ben Haroush’s healing involves continuing “to do the good work that we do every day. I’m still doing ambulance shifts, going out on calls.”

He said that people often ask him what they can do.

“You can give through charity, volunteering, or simply look at those around you and do good. Ask what you can do for other people, for the people of Israel,” he said. “The greatest message is to be together.”

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