‘As someone who went through October 7 at its ugliest, its most difficult, I never would have thought I would be exposed to such powerful cruelty. It haunts me and will continue to haunt me,” Dr. Sabry El Sayed says during an interview in The Shift (Ha Mishmeret).

El Sayed, the deputy head of the ear, nose and throat department at Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba, features in this latest episode of the KAN 11 series, Real Time (Zman Emet), which commemorates the third anniversary of the massacre by Hamas and which can be seen on Kan.org.il, as well as on YouTube.

This moving episode, which is good enough to be a standalone hour-long documentary, details what happened that day at Soroka, the hospital that received the lion’s share of the day’s casualties from all locations.

These included the Nova music festival, the military bases, Sderot, Ofakim, the highways, and the kibbutzim. Soroka Medical Center staff treated a staggering 674 people that day. Some they saved, some they couldn’t. 

At the same time, many of them worried about the fates of family members who were in places that were attacked and about their staff members who could not make it to work. One member of the staff lost her son, a soldier, in the fighting, and came to the hospital to identify his body.

El Sayed talks about his concern for his colleague, Dr. Daniel Levy, an ENT resident who lived in Kibbutz Be’eri. When the attack began, Levy’s family stayed in their safe room, but he went to the dental clinic to treat the wounded and was killed.

He and El Sayed stayed in touch throughout most of the morning. The moment El Sayed realizes he has lost his colleague is especially powerful in a series full of them.

Looking at the day’s events through one hospital is brilliant because Soroka became a kind of microcosm of everything that went on that day, both the chaos and the horrific injuries, and the staff describes it as a battlefield in which they fought for the lives of their patients.

The series’ creators, Keren Galit, Nadav Ben Tzur, and Adi Ben Dor, make it clear from the outset that all the patients and staff shown through hospital security footage gave permission for their names and faces to be shown.

The episode tells a wide variety of true stories. There are dazed, barefoot female border observers holding rifles who were rescued from the Nahal Oz military base, in need of medical treatment, while we learn the majority of their fellow soldiers have been killed. We see Ziv Abud learning that her boyfriend, Eliya Cohen, was kidnapped from the Nova music festival into Gaza.

Worried parents, desperate for information when nothing was coming from official channels, line up to learn whether their children had been admitted, although staff say that in the chaos of the day, many patients have been admitted anonymously because they cannot speak and there is no time to search for ID. Doctors use their own cellphones to call the patients’ families when they can.

The staff also describes being only dimly aware of the bigger picture, and learning about it in waves. First came those wounded from the roads, and later some of the special forces soldiers.

Much later in the day, those wounded at the Nova music festival and in the kibbutzim arrived. One doctor chose not to wear scrubs and to carry his revolver in his jeans pocket, recalling that he expected that the terrorists would likely arrive at the hospital soon.

As if this did not suffice, about a year and a half later, the hospital was hit by an Iranian missile. However, through a combination of foresight (some departments were evacuated) and luck, no one was seriously harmed.

A strange coda to the broadcast of this episode is that after Roni Singer, the host of Real Time, uploaded a promo for it to TikTok, the platform removed the clip, saying it violated policy about spreading false information, though it didn’t specify how. 

It’s a strange world where a meticulously sourced documentary can be flagged as false, while so many ludicrous and libelous rumors go viral.

Israeli TV fans are anxiously awaiting the premiere of the newest series, The Escape, from Keshet International, with the first part airing on N12 in Israel on Saturday night.

Filmed on location in Colombia, Georgia, and Israel and starring two of Israel’s most acclaimed actors, Yehuda Levi (A Body that Works, Yossi & Jagger) and Mark Ivanir (Homeland, Big Mistakes), alongside upcoming star Ido Tako (who just won an Ophir Award for Where To).

The Escape was directed by filmmaking duo The Paz Brothers (JeruZalem, The Golem, Plan A) and written by Ariel Cohen (The Golem).

It is described as an action thriller set in a Colombian jungle, where a fanatical ultra-Orthodox cult rules its followers with an iron fist.

Yoel (Tako), the cult’s heir apparent, dreams of escaping with his family and eventually teams up with an ex-Mossad search-and-rescue operative to break free.

But the cult’s charismatic leader (Ivanir) – and an alliance with a drug cartel – turn the rescue into a deadly war. Clearly, the creators were inspired by news reports about the Lev Tahor cult, which has brought members to Mexico and Guatemala.

Although it quickly fizzled in theaters, if the Practical Magic sequel made you want to see the 1998 original again, you can catch it on Disney+ or Apple TV+. 

It’s still great fun, with Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock playing the descendants of a long line of witches whose lovers and husbands soon end up dead.

They alternate between enjoying their powers and trying to walk away from them, and they often clash with the charming aunts who raised them, played by Stockard Channing and Dianne Wiest.

Mark Feuerstein of Royal Pains and The West Wing, and Goran Visnjic, who spent many seasons portraying Dr. Luka Kovac, the Croatian hunk on ER, play some of the ill-fated men in their lives. But it’s mostly a girl-power movie, and Kidman’s and Bullock’s star power has never been brighter.