Shoham ben Harush was wounded on October 7 in an attack by Hamas terrorists on an Israeli base near the border of the Gaza Strip and Kibbutz Kerem Shalom. Military paramedics took him in critical condition to Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem, where, according to The Jerusalem Post, he succumbed to his injuries despite the efforts of doctors.
“When it comes to organ donation, I had to overcome the first emotions that said no one should touch my child,” said the grief-stricken father. “But then my wife, Shoham’s mother, told me that our son wanted to donate his organs after his death. At that moment I realized that he had seen further than I had ever seen and I believed in the correctness of his decision. The knowledge that he continued to save lives gave me some relief in my immense pain,” he confided.
Photo: Ohad Zwigenberg, CTK/AP
Military burial at Herzl’s Mount, a military cemetery in Jerusalem.
Thanks to Shoham’s organs, doctors at the Sheba Hospital in Ramat Gan near Tel Aviv transplanted a 48-year-old man’s heart, a 57-year-old man a kidney, and a 59-year-old man a cornea. A 61-year-old man was successfully transplanted with a liver graft directly at Hadassah Hospital, and another kidney transplant was performed at Beilinson Hospital in Petah Tikva, which was given to a 69-year-old man.
“Shoham was our fifth child out of six. He was a handsome, kind-hearted, cheerful, but at the same time humble young man. He served in the Nachal brigade, in the infantry. I heard from his comrades that he fought bravely at the Kerem Shalom base. It was our gem (šoham means onyx in Czech – editor’s note),” concluded the father.
Shoham ben Harush was buried in the Chispin cemetery in northern Israel, where his family is from.
