As summer was coming to an end, in the quiet dawn of an early September Friday morning, Yair Wizner woke his 8-year-old son, Ziv Ami, in their temporary home in the Negev community of Ashalim and prepared to take to the skies.

These precious moments were close to a miracle for Wizner, 37, who was in a drug-induced coma for three days after being injured on Oct. 7 as part of Kibbutz Kerem Shalom’s eight-man civilian defense team fighting Hamas terrorists along with an initial group of four soldiers. Two members of the defense team and 12 soldiers were killed in the daylong battle that ultimately repelled the Hamas onslaught with only one civilian injury.

Undergoing physical rehabilitation treatments for almost a year at the Kaylie Rehabilitation Medical Center at ADI Negev-Nahalat Eran, where he is still a patient, Wizner and his son joined more than a dozen other war-wounded soldiers and civilians on private flights through southern Israeli skies with some 30 volunteer light airplane pilots from partner organization Ananim: Flight for the Community, giving personal aerial tours of the Negev.

“It was like a burst of fresh air: a break from all the hard rehab work, something just for fun,” said Wizner, who is married and the father of three children. “Life has a lot of challenges for us now: physically and mentally returning to our regular lives, to our home, to our family, to our community. Everything is a challenge. It was really special to go up in a light plane with my son early in the morning and be able to look at Israel from above. It was special to be able to be there just for fun, to breathe. It was very important for us to be able to recharge and be strengthened so we can continue [facing the challenges.]”

Wizner originally received treatment at Sheba Medical Center in Ramat Gan — far from his family who had been relocated to Eilat. Once they relocated to the community of Ashalim in the Negev with the other Kerem Shalom kibbutz members, he was able to join them due to the location of ADI Negev-Nahalat Eran — the only rehabilitation center in southern Israel — which allowed him to make the drive to his three weekly rehab treatments in under an hour.

“It is amazing to have a rehabilitation center in the south, near our families, near our community. We have gone through so much, being near them is important for our rehabilitation process,” he said.

Since its opening in June 2022 the hospital has had 578 inpatients, said Elie Klein, ADI-Negev director of advancement for North America and a liaison to Jewish National Fund-USA. Post-Oct.7 the majority of patients have been war-wounded from the south, including more than two dozen soldiers and four dozen civilians, he added.

“You have to reinvigorate their spirit,” said Klein, noting that they have also partnered with the Etgarim organization to teach scuba diving in their hydrotherapy pool. “When you add the ‘wow factor,’ it makes their rehabilitation exciting, and it gets [patients] involved that much more. It gives them additional desire to push forward. It also allows them to have fun — actual fun — with their fellow soldiers and with the therapists and the medical professionals.”

The partnership with Ananim was “perfect,” Klein said, because it also embraced the metaphor of “freedom.” Many of the wounded only recently have begun to see improvement with their movement, he said.

“So that feeling of touching the sky, of nothing is out of bounds or beyond your limits…reinvigorated the soldiers in the way they needed to be reinvigorated,” he said. “There are many of the soldiers who are still in the middle of their process of rehabilitation. They’re still using walkers, they’re still using wheelchairs. But when they are able to get in that plane and help pilot a mission, when there’s still so much for them to do in their rehabilitative process, it reminds them that if they put in the hard work, they’re going to be able to get it done. They could enjoy this experience of copiloting these flights so that it gives them a lot of hope for what they’re going to be able to accomplish.”

All of the soldiers at ADI-Negev are residents of the south and being able to fly over their home region of the Negev with the Ananim pilots provided them with another important message, said Klein.  

“The area they’re flying over is their home. And it’s a very, very powerful thing for them to see the southern region as it is slowly being rebuilt,” he said. “So it was a powerful thing for them to see the rebirth and renewal of the Negev while also embracing their own charge, the charge towards their own potential and their own rebirth and renewal.”