Daniel Aghion was at synagogue last Saturday with his wife and children when they saw the soldiers get called up, one by one, for reserve duty.
The 42-year-old neurosurgeon from Boca Raton had taken his family to Israel for vacation the week before. Now, two weeks later, he is on the front lines of a war, helping pull bodies from the rubble and treat shrapnel wounds.
Aghion’s wife and family returned to Florida on one of the few planes out, but he doesn’t know when he’s coming back.
“I plan on being here for however long my services are needed,” the doctor, who works at Memorial Hospital, told the South Florida Sun Sentinel Saturday afternoon from the Sderot area, where he is volunteering with United Hatzalah. “Of course I thought about coming home.”
Last Saturday, Hamas terrorists broke through the border with Gaza, killing and kidnapping hundreds of civilians in what some have described as the deadliest 24 hours for Jewish people since the Holocaust. In Sderot, where Aghion is now located, dozens were murdered. Over 1,300 Israelis have died, while over 1,900 Palestinians have been killed in retaliatory strikes, many of them civilians as well.
As Aghion sat in the synagogue that morning in Nofei Nechemia, an Israeli city in the West Bank, rumors began to fly of terrorists breaking through the border with Gaza. At first it was chaos, he said; misinformation spread rampantly. Then the reality of the situation began to set in.
By early afternoon, close to three-quarters of the synagogue was called for reserve duty, Aghion said.
He spent the next hours with his family, trying to figure out what to do. The airport was shut down at first; when it reopened, flights were canceled or delayed. But by Sunday night into Monday, Aghion was able to find a flight for his wife and four children, ages 10-15.
He wouldn’t be getting on the plane himself, but his family understood.
As Aghion had spoken with his wife, trying to figure out their plan, she told him, “Go for it, I know who I’m married to.”
“For me that was the most special moment and something I will never forget,” Aghion said. “The credit goes to her, for whatever lives I was able to save. The credit goes to her.”
The neurosurgeon began to drive south towards the kibbutzes near the border where most of the massacres occurred.
“I work in a Level 1 trauma center,” Aghion said. “However, nothing prepared me for the brutality we saw on the ground.”
Hamas terrorists who had infiltrated were still in some of those villages Sunday. Aghion said he found a Toyota pick-up truck loaded with suitcases. Inside were RPGs and grenades, as well as papers strewn about with Islamic teachings.
Over the past week, citizens across the U.S and in South Florida have joined pro-Palestine protests in addition to pro-Israel ones. Some activist groups have defended the Hamas attacks, arguing that Israel’s occupation of Palestine provoked them.
Others have pointed to a deepening humanitarian crisis in Gaza as Israel shut off access to food, water, and power and continues to bomb the region. Half of the population has been displaced after the Israel Defense Forces ordered the northern half to evacuate south.
But for Aghion, who was helping to pull Jewish bodies from rubble during what was supposed to be a celebratory trip with his family, the situation is “black and white.”
“These terrorists do not think like you and I do,” he said of Hamas. “These people would rather die and kill Jews than protect their own family and live out what you and I think is a normal life.”
Over the course of the next week, Aghion spent entire days on ambulances treating patients, sleeping in chairs in the mobile command center or on mattresses he found, other times not sleeping at all.
His family vacation was supposed to last 10 days; already, he has been in Israel for over two weeks, a stay that could stretch indefinitely into future. Though he says Israel currently has enough medical assistance to help treat patients injured in the terrorist attacks, Aghion is anticipating more help might be needed should Hezbollah attack from Lebanon, or if there are Israeli casualties in an expected ground invasion of Gaza.
He turned 42 on October 11, four days after the attacks.
Asked if he celebrated his birthday, Aghion said, “I saved some lives.”
