At the height of the Second Intifada, a Hamas terrorist infiltrated a pre-military academy in the Israeli community of Atzmona in the Gaza Strip, killing five students and wounding 21, four of them critically.

When a teacher from the academy, Yonatan Rom, drove to the scene, the terrorist opened fire on his car. Minutes later, the local emergency response team commander, Eyal Tam, neutralized the terrorist and ended the massacre, saving the lives of many people, including Rom.

Twenty-four years later, Rom decided to become an altruistic kidney donor, giving a kidney to a recipient he’d never met, through Matnat Chaim, an Israeli nonprofit dedicated to finding donors for kidney patients.

Shortly before the transplant at Clalit-Beilinson Hospital on July 14, Rom met his intended recipient, Reuven Tam, and discovered that Reuven’s brother was Eyal Tam.

“Yonatan looked at Reuven and said, ‘Your brother saved my life 24 years ago, and I am saving yours today with my kidney,’” Anat Briger, transplant coordinator at Clalit-Beilinson Hospital, said in a statement.

“Everyone who hears this story gets chills,” she said. “We perform many kidney transplants, and Yonatan could have been matched with many other recipients. What are the chances? Out of all the donors and recipients,........

© The Times of Israel