Bondi hero Gefen Bitton taking first steps in recovery
In the past week, Bitton had been allowed out of hospital on weekends to be with his family
Gefen Bitton, the Israeli man critically wounded when he confronted one of the gunmen during the Bondi Beach Chanukah massacre, has begun learning to walk again, an Australian Friends of Magen David Adom (AFMDA) event has heard.
AFMDA CEO Craig Boss gave an update on Bitton’s condition on Wednesday evening, telling guests his recovery remained extremely slow but that he was making progress.
Boss said he had seen Bitton on the day he was flown back to Israel, and that Bitton had begun to take his first steps in learning to walk again.
Only in the past week, Boss said, Bitton had been allowed out of hospital on weekends to be with his family, and was receiving “the best care in the world”.
Bitton, 30, had been living and working in Australia as a garage door technician for three years when he came to Bondi Beach to celebrate Chanukah on December 14, after a day hiking in the Blue Mountains.
When the shooting began he escaped, but turned back to confront one of the attackers alongside Ahmed Al Ahmed, who managed to wrestle a weapon from a gunman. Both men were shot. Bitton was hit three times and endured multiple surgeries, spending time in a coma and intensive care before his medical transfer to Israel in January.
Magen David Adom medic Aryeh Myers, who was part of the team that flew Bitton home, told the event it had been “one of the greatest honours of my career” to help bring “a real hero of the Bondi attack” back to Israel to continue his recovery.
Myers recounted a moment on the flight when the medical team held a minyan and began davvening Shacharit. “Our tenth man was Gefen, and as we got to the Shema prayer, despite all the medications he was on, despite the pain he was in, he put his hands on his eyes, and he said Shema with us,” he said.
“That is the essence of the Jewish people. It is the essence of the State of Israel, and it is absolutely the essence of Magen David Adom.”
After arriving in Israel in January, the Bitton family thanked the Sydney Jewish community for its support, saying Gefen was conscious with “a long road of recovery and rehabilitation ahead”. They wrote that they had “truly felt the community by our side every step of the way”.