Captain Kayam Buqra, 23, from Kibbutz Harel, commander of the engineering company in the IDF, was mortally injured in the Gaza war.
In an interview with Kan Reshet Bet, Buqra recounted the incident in which two of his friends were killed and was injured. "We were a route company. We entered Gaza. When we got there, we had to capture several checkpoints; in one of them, we found a Hamas officer. We realized that if this was a Hamas headquarters, then there were other things in the area. I went into a large house, and my sergeant, Ben Zussman, of blessed memory, entered a smaller house. The terrorists were actually in that house, and we lost two soldiers in the fighting – Zussman and Binyamin Nidam, two heroes who took action with great courage."
As a commander, he immediately ran to investigate what had happened. "I entered the house and tried to see what was happening. As soon as I understood what was going on, we began to remove the bodies, killed the terrorists who were inside the house, and brought a tank to destroy the whole house. From there, we returned to the Hamas headquarters. We started destroying it and laying mines. But during the encounter, other terrorists in the area boobytrapped one of the doors. I opened the door, and the trap exploded. I got shrapnel in my lungs, shoulders, and neck, and my main artery was damaged.
"I realized that I was about to faint," said Captain Buqra. "I gave a list of orders to my communications officer, which he had to do as soon as I passed out. I began to evacuate myself to the military vehicle, I told the liaison that I needed to get out of there urgently, and I fainted on the way. The soldiers took me to the vehicle, where I was treated because I was bleeding from all sorts of places. I had already been without air for a good few minutes, and I literally saw that white light that everyone talks about in the movies."
"I've been in this situation twice. The thoughts that go through your head are crazy. I understood very quickly, because it's quiet and calm at first, nothing hurts you anymore. But very quickly, you realize that the white light is not good. I tried to listen to the voices that spoke to me. The soldiers didn't stop calling out, 'Buqra, stay with us, stay with us.' I said to myself, 'Go back to the pain, do something, fight; you have soldiers in the field; you can't abandon them'. That's what went through my mind," he added.
"The evacuation was very quick. That's what saved my life. I was taken by helicopter to Tel Hashomer Hospital. There I underwent an eight-hour operation; they removed fragments from my lungs and sewed back the tendons and nerves in my finger and thumb. I underwent a two-week rehabilitation which was not easy at first. I was confined to bed with drains in my lungs. Thank God they took out most of the fragments. What's left – I'll live with, and it won't hurt me. Now I am working on exercising my hand so that it will be fully functional," he concluded.