An Israeli volunteer medic who treated people wounded in the Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, said on Monday that he was “stunned” to discover that one of them had been appointed director of the Mossad, Israel’s famous intelligence agency.
Moshe Weizman, 35, a volunteer medic with the United Hatzalah rescue service for the past 17 years, helped evacuate IDF Maj. Gen. Roman Gofman, who had been shot by Hamas terrorists and wounded in his leg during a firefight that raged near the Israeli border town of Sderot.
Weizman said he applied a tourniquet to stop the bleeding and helped evacuate the injured commander to a local hospital without knowing who he was, other than a wounded officer.
Only after the rescue did responders learn the identity of the wounded officer, the highest-ranking IDF officer wounded that day.
Gofman, who had driven down to the south that fateful morning from central Israel, went on to treat dozens of others wounded over the next several days until he himself was injured in a rocket attack and hospitalized and underwent a year-long recovery, including four operations.
A year after the incident, Weizman learned that Gofman had been appointed military secretary to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Last week, he learned that he had been chosen to be the new director of the Mossad.
“I’m really stunned,” he told JNS. “I have an enormous sense of satisfaction that I helped such a man.”
“Our volunteers did what they always do,” said United Hatzalah’s president and founder Eli Beer. “They ran toward those in need and acted with professionalism and courage in the most dangerous conditions. Their lifesaving work under fire ensured that a severely wounded soldier survived and was later reunited with his family and a grateful country.”
