Dear friends,
What I”m about to share is not a legend, not something that happened to someone I read about, it happened in the past weeks to two of the people I respect most in the world.
Almost twenty years ago IDF commander, Dudu Hakimian was in charge of an anti-terrorism mission and choose his most capable and courageous soldier, Guy Prais, to drive the armored jeep into battle. Unknowing, their jeep hit a massive roadside bomb which ripped through the jeep, taking off Guy’s legs, and badly injuring Dudu as well.
The first miracle: they both lived. Guy actually died on the way to hospital and was brought back to life. His mission was not yet complete here. Several years later they both separately joined Brothers For Life. Both immediately became leaders. Guy became the first face every injured soldier saw in the hospital and literally helped build BFL from day one. He is a legend in BFL. Dudu, now a medical student, helped start the BFL Medical Project . Both have helped hundreds of soldiers. This is the second miracle, two soldiers, badly injured, taking their injuries to help newly injured soldiers who are suffering.
As amazing as this story is, there was still something missing. Dudu and Guy had never really talked about what happened the day they almost died. I won’t go into details, but I’m sure you can imagine how difficult it would be to talk about the moment. As with many double amputees, Guy has had great pain and difficulty with his prosthetics over the years. He also is the last person on earth to complain. Here is where the third miracle begins. As I mentioned above, Dudu created, along with Dr. Joel Spitz, the BFL Medical Project. It just so happens that over 12 years after establishing this project, we found one of the best surgeons in the world, now at Ohio State University, to operate last month on Guy’s legs, taking out small pieces of shrapnel that had been there for years and hopefully solving the chronic pain.
Oh, and another “just so happens”- Dudu is now in the US currently doing his post-doctorate at the University of Chicago, and was able to fly to OSU to be with Guy for the surgery. They met in the hospital before the surgery, started to talk and they did not stop. For seven hours they shared everything over the last 20 years. It was a moment of great healing.
Who would have possibly imagined that the officer who asked Guy to be his driver on that fateful mission where they were so badly injured would 20 years later become the doctor who would help finally help Guy get the treatment he needed to walk on his prosthetic without pain? Who would have imagined that Guy would take a critical, life-altering injury and use it to help and inspire hundreds of injured soldiers and thousands of others around the world?
This is the third, fourth, and fifth miracle and if it wasn’t true it would be difficult to believe. Ben Gurion famously said that if you want to be a realist in Israel, you have to believe in miracles. We are Blessed to witness these miracles in BFL day after day.
Shabbat Shalom from Israel,
Yaniv
PS: I want to share two more amazing moments from the last two weeks. Three days ago a BFL brother and the commander of Duvdevan Colonel D, was chosen to light the torch for Israel on Independence Day! We could not be more proud. Secondly, we had simply an amazing delegation in Los Angeles. It was beyond powerful and healing. Special thanks to Amy and Brad Conroy for putting BFL LA on the map!
