Noa Tishby Visits Soroka Hospital: Amid the Rubble, a Story of Resilience and Coexistence
When Noa Tishby walked through the damaged corridors of Soroka Medical Center in southern Israel, she entered a place built to heal—but found departments reduced to rubble.
The Israeli actress, producer, author and advocate visited Soroka to document the aftermath of the ballistic missile strike that hit the hospital on June 19, 2025. Her report offers a deeply personal look at the physical destruction left behind and the healthcare professionals who continue to serve the communities of the Negev.
“This is insane,” Tishby says as she is shown the remains of hospital departments and an intensive care unit. For the doctors accompanying her, however, the destruction is more than damaged walls and medical facilities. These were the places where they spent their days caring for patients, working long shifts and saving lives.
One physician describes the destroyed department as his “second home”—the place he came to every morning and where he worked some of his longest shifts.
Now, much of it is gone.
A Hospital Built to Save Lives
Walking through the damaged areas, Tishby sees the remains of departments where patients once waited for examinations and received treatment.
“It’s devastating,” she says. “I know how hard people here worked to help people, to heal. It’s horrible.”
The scale of the destruction is particularly striking inside one of the hospital’s intensive care units. Yet amid the devastation is an extraordinary detail: patients had been evacuated from the area before the strike.
Hospital staff had moved patients to safer locations based on their assessment of the escalating situation and information received from Israel’s Ministry of Health. That preparation helped prevent an already devastating attack from becoming an even greater human tragedy.
The images Tishby captures make the consequences tangible. This was not simply damage to a building. It was damage to an institution whose purpose is to care for the sick, treat the injured and save lives.
Remembering a Doctor Who Gave His Life Helping Others
The visit also becomes deeply personal when one of Soroka’s physicians speaks about his friend and colleague, Dr. Daniel Levy.
Dr. Levy was a resident at Soroka and the doctor serving his kibbutz. On October 7, he left his own home to help injured people at the community clinic.
He was killed while trying to save others.
“He was my best friend here,” the physician tells Tishby. “He was one of the best human beings I ever knew.”
His story adds another dimension to what Soroka’s medical community has endured. Behind the damaged departments are doctors, nurses and healthcare professionals who have continued caring for others while experiencing war and loss themselves.
Soroka as a Symbol of Coexistence
One of the most powerful parts of Tishby’s report is not about destruction at all. It is about the people working inside Soroka.
During the visit, Tishby learns that a significant proportion of Soroka’s patients are non-Jewish, including Muslim, Christian and Bedouin Israelis. The hospital’s workforce is similarly diverse, with Jewish and Arab physicians, nurses and other healthcare professionals working together every day.
At one point, Tishby is preparing to speak with Dr. Osama, an Arab-Israeli physician, when he is called away to treat a wounded soldier.
It is a simple moment that captures something much larger about the hospital.
“For us, it doesn’t matter,” one of the physicians explains while discussing the different communities Soroka serves. “This situation is something that we need to deal [with] together.”
The physician challenges perceptions outside Israel that Jews and Arabs inevitably live in constant conflict, pointing instead to what happens every day inside hospitals like Soroka.
People from different religions and backgrounds may hold different opinions, he explains, but they can still work alongside one another toward the same fundamental purpose: saving a human life.
That makes Soroka more than a major medical centre for southern Israel. It makes the hospital a living example of coexistence.
From Destruction to Rebuilding
Tishby’s report does not end with the rubble. What emerges from her visit is a portrait of a medical community determined to continue its work despite everything it has endured.
The destroyed departments can be rebuilt. Medical technology can be replaced. Clinical spaces can reopen. But the spirit visible throughout Tishby’s visit, the commitment of healthcare professionals to their patients and to one another, is already very much alive.
As Tishby says at the conclusion of her report, Soroka and Israel will rebuild from the destruction.
Her final message captures what she witnessed inside the hospital in three words: “Coexistence, unity, and love.”
IMFoC Is Helping Strengthen Soroka for the Future
Israel Magen Fund of Canada is supporting the rebuilding and strengthening of healthcare services at Soroka Medical Center by helping provide new, critical medical equipment.
As Soroka continues to recover from the devastating missile strike, IMFoC is working with the hospital to help restore and strengthen its capacity to provide advanced medical care to the people of southern Israel.
For IMFoC, rebuilding Soroka is about more than replacing what was destroyed. It is about helping physicians and healthcare teams access the medical technology they need to treat critically ill and injured patients, improve care and save lives.
Soroka has continued to stand for healing even in the most difficult circumstances. IMFoC is committed to helping ensure its medical teams have the equipment they need to continue that mission.
