World
Man donates kidney to brother of man who saved his life in 2002 terror attack
At the height of the Second Intifada, a Hamas terrorist infiltrated a pre-military academy in the Israeli community of Atzmona in the Gaza Strip, killing five students and wounding 21, four of them critically.
When a teacher from the academy, Yonatan Rom, drove to the scene, the terrorist opened fire on his car. Minutes later, the local emergency response team commander, Eyal Tam, neutralized the terrorist and ended the massacre, saving the lives of many people, including Rom.
Twenty-four years later, Rom decided to become an altruistic kidney donor, giving a kidney to a recipient he’d never met, through Matnat Chaim, an Israeli nonprofit dedicated to finding donors for kidney patients.
Shortly before the transplant at Clalit-Beilinson Hospital on July 14, Rom met his intended recipient, Reuven Tam, and discovered that Reuven’s brother was Eyal Tam.
“Yonatan looked at Reuven and said, ‘Your brother saved my life 24 years ago, and I am saving yours today with my kidney,’” Anat Briger, transplant coordinator at Clalit-Beilinson Hospital, said in a statement.
“Everyone who hears this story gets chills,” she said. “We perform many kidney transplants, and Yonatan could have been matched with many other recipients. What are the chances? Out of all the donors and recipients, these two people were brought together, the recipient whose brother had once saved the donor’s life during a terrorist attack?”
According to Matnat Chaim, Israel leads the world in living kidney donations per capita. To date, 2,030 living kidney transplants have been carried out in Israel through the organization.
In January 2026, Guinness World Records lifted its ban on submissions from Israel and the Palestinian territories, accepting an Israeli record for the largest gathering of organ transplant donors ever, according to Israeli officials. The event brought together 965 living kidney donors at Jerusalem’s International Convention Center.
“Altruistic kidney donors make an extraordinary decision to save the life of someone they have never met,” Dr. Eviatar Nesher, director of the transplant department at Clalit-Beilinson Hospital, said in a statement.
About half of all kidney transplants performed in Israel take place at Beilinson Hospital, Nesher said, adding that every donation has its own moving story.
“Among all the donors and all the patients waiting for a kidney, these were the two people who ended up being connected,” Nesher said. “The story of Reuven and Yonatan is exceptionally rare. It is an almost unbelievable full circle.”
“I want to thank Yonatan for giving me a new chance at life,” Reuven said in an emotional interview on Israeli Channel 12 after the operation. “We hope to remain friends for the rest of our lives.”
