Alisa Krant, a Magen David Adom (MDA) paramedic who saved dozens on October 7, 2023, stated that the past 600 days since the start of the Israel-Hamas War have been the most challenging professionally and mentally.
Despite challenges, the 23-year-old returned to the field to continue her work with determination and resilience, she explained.
“People ask me all the time, ‘How did you do it?’ But how could I not do it?” Krant said, reflecting on the horrors of October 7 and the stress of the past 600 days as a paramedic.
For Krant, the day of the massacre began at 6:30 a.m. with sirens in Ashkelon, her hometown. Within the hour, she and her team were dispatched in a mobile intensive care unit to treat casualties from the initial wave of rocket attacks.
They drove through active combat zones, risking their lives to evacuate the wounded from communities near the Gaza border, including Kibbutz Zikim and Yad Mordechai.
After transferring several patients to Barzilai Medical Center under fire, they moved to the field hospital at Kochav Michael, where many of the injured had been directed.
Saving a police officer injured in Sderot
Among the patients Krant treated that day was Rami Cohen, a police officer who had been shot near the Sderot police station—overrun by terrorists—after rescuing two young girls whose parents, Dolev and Odaya Swisa, had been murdered in front of them.
Cohen arrived in a bulletproof ambulance. During the 20-minute ride to the hospital, Krant worked to keep him alive as he drifted in and out of consciousness, performing a thoracentesis to open his chest airways.
When he came to, he gripped her hand and said: “You saved me, like I saved them [the girls].”
Later in the day, Krant helped convert a civilian evacuation bus in Netivot into a mobile medical unit. She finished her shift around 10 p.m., having treated dozens of wounded under extreme pressure.
“There was no time to rest, no time to feel anything,” she said. “It hit me only when I got home later that night.”
'This was what I'd trained for, and I’d do it again.”
Krant, who had been with MDA for a decade, said her actions on October 7 were instinctive.“It was just obvious that this was what I'd trained for, and I’d do it again.”
In the weeks that followed, she was reunited with Cohen during his rehabilitation. They’ve stayed in touch ever since, speaking every Friday and often spending time together with his family.
Krant explained that since the massacre, her guiding principle, which she shares with other survivors and former hostages, is: “When you have a why, you can bear any how.”
Returning to duty and carrying an emotional burden
Now back at her regular MDA post, where she oversees the responders training program, Krant is also completing a bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering.
Reflecting on the emotional toll of the war, she credits her family, friends, and MDA’s mental health support system with helping her cope.
“For me, returning to work wasn’t hard,” she says. “Going back to the sites of the attacks was.”
She says many colleagues share the same emotional burden, bound by their work and shared trauma.
“We’re still on high alert. Without MDA in the field on October 7 — and every day since — the Israeli medical system wouldn’t have functioned.”
Despite the loss of more than three dozen MDA personnel since the war began, Krant remains committed.
“I survived. I’m proud of what we did. And I’ll keep showing up.” 