Kibbutz Be’eri medic’s final words to her sisters: ‘Please be strong if something happens to me’

Amit Man, murdered by Hamas in Kibbutz Be’eri, was the youngest of five daughters. A worker for MDA (Magen David Adom), she is thought to have been its youngest instructor, at 22.

Her sisters and mother, Rachel, from the southern Israeli city of Netivot, this week shared with Jewish News messages from the family WhatsApp chat in which Amit tells them about the attack as it unfolds on 7 October – and, from their phone screens, they throw their arms around her, desperate to try to help her survive.

When rocket sirens sounded on the kibbutz at 6.30am, Amit left her apartment and, rather than go to the safe room she went to the community clinic, in the hope of helping the injured. In messages to her sisters she describes hearing the sounds of the gunmen shooting residents and burning houses.

At 7.51am, she writes in distress to Haviva, Liora and Mary: “I have here a lot of injured and dead. There is no way I can help.” Her three sisters tried to find out where the army was and kept in touch with her over the following six hours; their other sister, Ron, does not use her phone on Shabbat.

Expecting IDF soldiers to arrive soon, Haviva writes: “Amit, did help arrive?” Amit replies: “No. The MDA said to me it’s complete chaos in the whole Gaza area. And there aren’t any forces that can help.”

Amit then writes: “What do I tell the injured? The shooting continues. I do not know what to think.” More than 120 men, women and children of the kibbutz were being slaughtered by Hamas.

In her final text messages, Amit writes (at 1.54pm): “How can we speak to the army? To let them know to come to us.” And then, “They [the terrorists] are here. I can hear them outside.”

At 2.02pm: “They’re here. I do not think that I will come out of here. Please be strong if something happens to me.”

Her sisters tell her to pretend she is dead, adding: “Smear some blood on you.” A final audio message is sent from Amit’s phone in which she says she has been shot; she is heard screaming.

“The mind struggles to understand how one sunny day, one Saturday morning, she was taken away from us, plus 1,400 other Israelis and hundreds taken hostage,” said her cousin, Iftach Ophir.

He recalls that she watched her father die from lung cancer eight years ago, at which point “something clicked for Amit”, he said.

“Seeing the people who took care of him day in, day out, when he needed it, became what she wanted to do. That became her passion.” She volunteered with MDA from the age of 14, and when she was 18 was offered a job as a first responder, and worked in the kibbutz.

Jewish people are supposed to know how much hate has been visited upon them, Ophir added, incredulous that the attacks had not been prevented. “I don’t know how to pick myself up and go on.”

Ophir, an actor living in Israel who was brought up in the UK, paid tribute to his radiant cousin, who loved singing and loved animals, and who had a chance to leave the kibbutz but stayed with the wounded, the people she hoped to save, and in doing so gave her life.