Four days after the October 7 attacks in southern Israel, Dr Yoram Klein was at work at Tel Aviv’s Tel Ha-Shomer hospital. During the Hamas-led incursion, armed militants killed nearly 1,200 Israelis and took around 240 hostage. Many of the injured survivors were being treated at Tel HaShomer, where Klein leads the hospital’s trauma department. That afternoon, a mob appeared.

They were soccer fans. They support Beitar Jerusalem, one of Israel’s most popular football clubs. They arrived at the hospital on motorcycles. “Young people, dressed in black, on motorcycles,” Klein says. “People might confuse them for Hamas!”

The supporters had heard a rumor that an injured Hamas operative was being treated at Tel HaShomer. That wasn’t true. It didn’t matter. The group, which calls itself La Familia, “invaded the hospital,” Klein says, and began stomping through Tel HaShomer, floor by floor, demanding the illusory patient be turned over.