Yafit Shteif and Orit Koch, whose sons were wounded in Lebanon during the war, returned on Tuesday to Rambam Medical Center in Haifa, this time to comfort the mothers of other injured soldiers. The visit was part of the aid work of the “Mother Lioness” association. They first entered the sixth-floor plastics ward and met O., an armored corps soldier recently hurt by a drone strike in Lebanon, and told him, “We see you smiling, and that is already a good sign.” They added that their own sons, Niv and Eitan, had been wounded in Lebanon too, and reassured him that the medical team would take care of him. O.’s mother, Yehudit, thanked them and said her 20-year-old son was in moderate condition and that recovery would take time. The two mothers told her that even after discharge, rehabilitation is still a long process, and they would help with anything she needed.
The story then revisited Shteif’s son, Niv Shteif, a 30-year-old football referee who served as a reserve fighter. In December 2023, he was badly wounded by an anti-tank missile at a building near the Lebanon border, suffered a spinal injury, and underwent emergency surgery in which doctors had to amputate his left hand. After many operations and a long rehabilitation process, he managed to return to refereeing and later got married.
It also described Eitan Koch’s injury in April, in Bint Jbeil in Lebanon. Dr. A., a deputy battalion commander in the 101st Battalion of the Paratroopers Brigade medical team, was wounded by a bullet in his left leg but kept issuing orders. Koch, then 21, helped him by applying a tourniquet and preventing the injury from worsening. Hours later, both were evacuated by helicopter to Rambam with help from Unit 669 and ended up in neighboring rooms on the hospital’s seventh floor.
Koch’s mother said she had initially thought her son was calling to say his paratroopers unit had finally left Lebanon. Instead, he told her he had been wounded and was at Rambam. She said the hospital staff had treated him with great humanity, and that she wanted to come support mothers who are now where she was recently. Shteif and Koch, both already discharged and in rehabilitation, later visited more rooms in the ward, meeting additional mothers, hearing their sons’ stories of bravery, and crying with them. Rambam said eight IDF wounded are currently hospitalized there, one seriously, three moderately and the rest lightly.
