05/08/2026
Shifra, I salute you!
A mother of ten could have stayed home. No one would have blamed her for doing so. But on the morning of October 7, MAGAV Senior Inspector Shifra Buchris got into an ordinary private Kia and drove toward the very place thousands of people were trying to escape at any cost. Because other people's children were dying there.
When officers from the MAGAV Southern District were mobilized following an alert, Shifra quietly left her home so as not to wake her family. En route, she learned what was happening near the Nova festival site by Re'im. She then made a decision that defies conventional logic: together with her team, traveling in two civilian vehicles, she drove straight into the epicenter of the massacre.
The little Kia transformed—now into an ambulance, now into a combat vehicle. Shifra was at the wheel; wounded passengers filled the cabin. An M-16 rifle poked out of one window, a pistol out of the other. The mission: get the people to the evacuation point in Urim, turn around, and head straight back—back to where death was still reaping its grim harvest.
Time and again. Without hesitation. Without a thought for their own safety. That is exactly how around a hundred young people were saved. A hundred families were spared the dreaded phone call every parent fears. Along the way, Shifra and her comrades managed to apprehend another eleven terrorists.
Later, she was asked how a mother of ten could put herself at such risk. She replied with just one sentence: "I was thinking of the other mothers who want their children to come home."
It is likely in people like this that Israel’s true strength lies. Not in loud speeches. Not in catchy slogans. But in people who, at the risk of their own lives, do everything they can to save the lives of others.
A deep salute to Senior Inspector Shifra Buchris and her entire team. As long as our country has women like her, Israel has not only a present—it has a future, too.
Author Yan Stavchansky
Translated by the Admin.
