Lord Stuart Polak, CBE, a prominent member of the UK Parliament’s upper chamber, the House of Lords, began the third anniversary of the October 7 attack visiting the Gandel Rehabilitation Center at Hadassah’s Mt. Scopus hospital.

The UK House of Lords Delegation visit to the Gandel Rehabilitation Center at Hadassah Mt. Scopus, Jerusalem. October 7, 2026

The British peer was there leading a delegation of his colleagues on a visit to Israel. “When we were planning our trip, I knew this was where we had to be on the morning of October 7^,” he said.

Rushed into operation within weeks of the war’s onset, the Gandel Rehabilitation Center was ready to provide advanced, integrated rehabilitation to the surging numbers of those wounded in the long conflict. Along with other patients admitted after accidents and with various diseases, the Center has since been critical in enabling hundreds of Israelis to reclaim their independence.

“I visited here just after October 7, 2023” Lord Polak recalled.  “But to be here again on October 7, 2026 and to see this work, where people are being looked after and being brought back to health, is quite amazing.”

Guided by Hadassah Medical Organization Director General, Prof. Yoram Weiss, the high-level delegation were deeply engaged as they were introduced to the Center and its sophisticated approach to helping patients live full lives again. Then they met Yitzchak and Nechama Peret.

The group listened in rapt silence as the young couple took turns telling their story. Born and raised in the United States, Israel had beckoned from an early age. “It was obvious to me from when I was a young boy that I needed to be here” Yitzchak explained. “So, when I was 18, I came here after finishing high school.”

And it was in Israel that he and Nechama met, dated and began planning a life together. But the events that intervened cast their entire future into doubt.

“Two years ago, I was mortally wounded in my legs,” Yitzchak relates. “I also had a head injury,” he adds, with a simplicity that belies a trauma that left him unconscious for two months.

So severe were his injuries that the hospital in Tzfat where he was first taken didn’t have the resources to treat him. Hadassah had sent reinforcements, including Dr. Ron Carmeli, then Head of Vascular Surgery at Hadassah-Ein Kerem, who conducted the emergency surgery to save Yitzchak’s life and his legs.

“He got there on his motorcycle and raced to the hospital.” Nechama says of Dr. Carmeli, who stayed close to Yitzchak throughout the critical early hours and days. “Prof. Meir Liebergal (then Chairman of the Department of Orthopedics) arrived the next day to do a very important surgery. Dr. Carmeli then decided that Yitzchak really needed Hadassah facilities, so they airlifted him in a helicopter to Jerusalem.

“That’s when the real work began,” she adds. For weeks, Hadassah-Ein Kerem’s surgeons and Intensive Care doctor’s fought for Yitzchak’s life, while he remained on life-support, in a medically induced coma. Throughout, Nechama fought too, battling worry and strain to make life-and-death medical decisions for her incapacitated partner.

Yitzchak and Nechama were full of praise for the care and support they received – first in ensuring his initial survival and then in rehabilitation – from the doctors and social workers to the psychologists, physiotherapists and OT specialists. “In fact, from the entire Hadassah organization that saved my life,” says Yitzchak. “I wouldn’t be alive today if it I hadn’t been lucky enough to have such amazing care, such amazing staff to help me keep surviving. They helped me get back on my feet and to regain what I was, what was of me.”

That included getting ready for their wedding. As the big day approached, Yitzchak’s occupational therapists worked with him intensively so that by the time they stood together under the Chuppah, he was able to wrap himself a new Tallit and to break the glass at the ceremony’s conclusion.

The lords and baronesses erupted in spontaneous applause as the couple finished sharing their story of drama, commitment and emotion. Lord Polak thanked Yitzchak and Nechama for their bravery, not least in retelling the story to the delegation.

“This visit today, on the 7 of October, has been extremely meaningful to us,” he said. “At the end, we had the privilege to meet a young man who had life-threatening injuries, and yet he was able to stand and talk and explain to us what all the doctors and nurses and great therapists have done for him.

“It’s one story among many and we’re deeply grateful to Hadassah for the work that you do.”