Throughout its history, Israel’s wartime and peacetime heroes have been feted – in biblical sagas, news stories, films and ceremonies. Many more warriors and first responders were just unsung heroes.

On October 7, 2023, thousands of Hamas terrorists and Gaza civilians invaded Israel to murder, rape, mutilate, torture, loot and kidnap. Parents and grandparents, children and babies, guest workers and pets alike were slaughtered. Terrorist cell phones and GoPros recorded and broadcast their savagery. 

Once again, Israel’s heroes responded. An all-female tank unit raced south to engage terrorists, saving hundreds of lives. Fathers, mothers, soldiers and citizens – Israeli and Bedouin – used personal vehicles to rescue hundreds of relatives, friends and total strangers along roads, in kibbutzim and at the Nova music festival. Warriors at the Sderot police station battled scores of terrorists to the death.

A family turned its courtyard into a field hospital, a nearby ditch into a temporary morgue. From there and other locations, wounded soldiers and civilians went to Soroka Hospital, where doctors and nurses triaged and saved 676 casualties in 16 hours, including a wounded terrorist. Or to Sheba Hospital, where emergency teams treated another never-ending flow of wounded on stretchers. Every patient survived!

Military rabbis, forensic workers and ZAKA volunteers transformed Shura Base into “gates to heaven” for the dead, whom they identified and prepared for burial with immeasurable physical and spiritual reverence. In too many cases, they needed X-rays, MRIs and DNA tests to identify remains.

Civilians were relocated to safer areas from the devastated southern region around Gaza.

A day later, Hezbollah joined Hamas’s genocidal war to eliminate Israelis and other non-Muslims.

Israel’s northern region was largely evacuated because, again, anyone who stayed behind was constantly at risk from sniper, rocket and missile attacks. First responders, however, said goodbye to their families and........

© Townhall