Call Me Back - with Dan Senor - Bonus Episode: The People's Army - with Dr. Tuvia Book

Episode Date: October 21, 2024

LIVE EVENT ALERT – PITTSBURGH: On Monday October 28th at 6:00 PM, Dan will be speaking at a live event in conversation with Dave McCormick, combat veteran, former CEO of Bridgewater Associates, and candidate for U.S. Senate. A West Point graduate, Dave was deployed to the Middle East during the first Gulf War with the 82nd Airborne Division. He later served as the Under Secretary of Treasury and Deputy National Security Advisor. Dave has distinguished himself as an outspoken ally of the Jewish community and of the U.S.-Israel relationship. In Pittsburg, Dan and Dave will have a conversation before a live audience and take questions. To register: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/dan-senor-and-dave-mccormick-live-in-pittsburgh-tickets-1042361389977?aff=oddtdtcreator TODAY’S EPISODE: As Israelis continue to welcome the news of the elimination of Yahya Sinwar by IDF soldiers – and the implications – we are reminded that we have been spending a lot of time on this podcast over the past several months hearing about the impressive feats of Israel’s elite commandos, special forces and intelligence units. But the soldiers who successfully took down Sinwar, were none of those…they were, simply, regular armored forces. Boots on the ground and tanks, with no early intelligence.  Behind the events that shape some of the most dazzling headlines these past couple months, are the soldiers and reservists you rarely hear about. They are, in short, the people who make up…the People’s Army. We want to put a spotlight on these regular soldiers and reservists who - day in, day out - do extraordinary things.  Tonight we are releasing a conversation we taped in July with Dr. Tuvia Book. Tuvia was born in London, and raised in both the UK and South Africa. After making Aliyah at the age of 17, and studying in Yeshiva, he volunteered for the IDF where he served in a combat unit.   Tuvia has been working in the field of Jewish Education, both formal and informal, for many years. He is the author (and illustrator) of the internationally acclaimed Israel education curriculum; For the Sake of Zion; A Curriculum of Israel Studies (https://tinyurl.com/3anhrhw9) and Moral Dilemmas of the Modern Israeli Soldier (Rama, 2011) and Jewish Journeys (https://tinyurl.com/bmkj4wa2) 

The first question any wounded soldier says really sums up what's happening right now in the military and still in Israel, even now, nine months after the start of the war. Whenever we evacuate a wounded soldier, their first question is never, how am I? What's going to happen to me? It's always, Matai anichol l'agzo. When can I go back to my brothers? It's 9.30 p.m. on Saturday, October 19th here in New York City. It's 4.30 a.m. on Sunday, October 20th in Israel. Before we get on to today's conversation, one housekeeping note. It's a live event alert on Monday, October 28th. I'll be speaking in Pittsburgh,

Pennsylvania at six o'clock p.m. I will be doing a live event with my friend Dave McCormick, who is a combat veteran, former CEO of Bridgewater Associates, and a candidate for the U.S. Senate from Pennsylvania. He's a West Point grad and was deployed to the Middle East during the first Gulf War with the 82nd Airborne Division. Dave later served in the George W. Bush administration as Undersecretary of Treasury and Deputy National Security Advisor. Dave and I have spent hours and hours and hours over the years discussing the Middle East, discussing Israel. I helped him plan his trip post-October 7th to Israel. And he and I will be discussing the U.S.-Israel relationship and the 2024 election. If you would like to attend the event, please go to dananddave.eventbrite.com.

We'll include a link in the show notes to the event where you can register. That'll be in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Now on to today's conversation. As Israelis continue to welcome the news of the elimination of Yechia Sinwar by IDF soldiers and continue to consider the implications of Sinwar being permanently removed from the battlefield, we are reminded that on this podcast over the last number of months, we've been spending a lot of time discussing the impressive feats of Israel's elite commandos, its special forces, its intelligence units, its air force. But the soldiers who took down Sinwar were none of those. They were simply regular armored forces,

boots on the ground and tanks with no real early intelligence. Behind the events that shaped some of the most dazzling headlines these past few months are the soldiers and reservists that you rarely hear about. They are, in short, the people who make up Israel's People's Army. In this episode, we wanted to put a spotlight on these regular soldiers, or in this case, a reservist, who day in, day out, do extraordinary things that we rarely hear about. Tonight, we are releasing a conversation we taped earlier this summer with Dr. Tuvia Book, who was born in London, raised in both the UK and South Africa, and after making Aliyah at the age of 17

and studying in a yeshiva, he volunteered for the IDF, where he served in a combat unit. Tuvia has since been working in the field of Jewish education, both formal and informal, for many years. He's also a licensed tour guide in Israel. But what makes his story so interesting is after October 7th, he went back to serve in reserves, except he wasn't called up. In fact, he had aged out. He wasn't able to serve, but he insisted and insisted and successfully persisted. And there are stories and stories and stories like Tuvia's of regular people in Israeli society who insisted on serving. And Tuvia's story in particular is quite dramatic, which we will discuss in this conversation. He's also the author and illustrator of the internationally acclaimed Israel education curriculum called For the Sake of Zion,

a curriculum of Israel studies and also Moral Dilemmas of the Modern Israeli Soldier. He's also published several other books and monographs. We will post these titles in the show notes. Tuvia Book on The People's Army. This is Call Me Back. And I am pleased to welcome to this podcast for the first time, Tuvia Book, who joins us from Modiin in Israel. Tuvia, thanks for being here. It's a pleasure, Don. I don't need to tell you that the mood in Israel right now, we're recording this late July, has become more gloomy.

It's been gloomy for some period of time. I can't pinpoint exactly when it changed. It is easy to look back and recall the earlier days of the war when it seemed that there, for at least some period of time, no divisions in Israeli society. Israel went through this incredible, almost immediate transformation from October 6th to October 7th in terms of a deeply divided society to a society that just screamed of solidarity. And Israelis didn't only show, demonstrate unity and resilience, but they also stepped up in many ways. And in a volunteer initiative-oriented way, they stepped up into the vacuum where the government institutions

weren't functioning or totally failed. And I don't think anyone ever doubted, any Israeli ever doubted whether the war was just, but they do have, at least now, serious questions about the decision-making of some players in the government and exactly how Israel will win this war, how one defines victory. And that's at the center of a lot of the debates inside Israel now. But I want to use the conversation with you to just go back to those early days, weeks, months, because I think your story is emblematic of something that I would want to bottle up about Israel in those immediate weeks, and hopefully we can have some return to it. So let's just begin with what I often ask our first-time guests with the morning of October 7th. And while the trauma, the shattering was

being experienced in real time by every Israeli and every Jew I know around the world, I often hear different things in terms of what people were thinking and experiencing as those events were unfolding. So do you actually recall what you were thinking and what you were experiencing as you began to get your head around what you were seeing that morning? So of course, initially, the feeling was, oh, it's just a the usual couple of missiles being lobbed in from Hamas controlled Gaza. And of course, it was a lot more serious than that. Because even though I'm observant, people were going around. I heard radios going on. People were listening. Meaning you're an observant Jew.

So normally on the morning of Shabbat, Simchat Torah, you're not using electronic devices, and no one you know in your community is using electronic devices. And suddenly you see that all over the place. Yes, correct. But modern is very, very mixed. So there was definitely a sense of unease, as there was nobody in the place. Yes, correct. But modern is very, very mixed. So there was definitely a sense of unease as there was nobody in the street. It was almost like Yom Kippur. So people were really glued to their radios and trying to figure out what was happening, what was going on.

And I popped over to the neighbor's house who are less observant and I was listening in with shock and incredulity and many emotions washed over me. Anger, disbelief, as the numbers just kept piling up. It would seem almost some type of surreal event. 10 kidnapped, 20 kidnapped. These numbers kept filtering in. And after the emotional waves subsided, my first thought was, what can I do? Okay.

So now tell us a little bit about your background, which I'm sure many in our audience in the US and Canada, the UK, Australia will not only relate to, but I think some of your own background will feel familiar to them. It'll sound like their own. So can you tell me your pre-October 7th life story? I mean, condensed, obviously, for purposes of a podcast. Obviously, as one doesn't have the entire year. So I grew up as a wandering Jew. I didn't even have a family name, a real name. My name was just the rabbi's son. My father's a rabbi.

I'm a PK, which is a preacher's kid. We have a support group. We also have a song about me called The Son of a Preacher Man. So I had a very nomadic childhood. I was actually born in London in the UK. But before the age of one, we moved over to a different continent to South Africa where I spent five years. My accent's a bit mongrel. And then five years later, we're back in the UK for another

five years and back to South Africa for another four years like a yo-yo. And then finally back to the UK where I finished high school in Wales. And at the age of 17, I took a gap year in Israel, as many of my peers did, which changed the direction of my life. And I ended up taking very much the path less traveled. And before I explained the decision, why I decided to stay in Israel and enlist as a lone soldier in a combat unit. So just a lone soldier for our listeners, that's a term that's used widely in Israel to describe Israelis like yourself, who were not raised in Israel, do not have family in Israel, who'd made the decision to move to Israel to make Aliyah, as it's called. And one of the first

things they have to do when they move to Israel is join the army. And so suddenly they're in Israel without the normal family support that the overwhelming majority of Israeli soldiers have. And so that's what we mean when we say a lone soldier. Of course. When I grew up, two things very much influenced me. That's very strange or unusual, maybe a usual decision. A is my own family background. My mother's parents were the sole survivors of this Shoah from her family.

Her mother came from Hungary. Her father came from Poland. Every other family member was murdered in the Shoah simply because the state of Israel came around 10 years too late. If you would have had Israel in 1938 and not 1948, my mother would have grown up with a massive family, as would one out of three Jews on the planet Earth would not have been murdered. As is, she grew up with a mother and a father and a brother and a sister and a spinster aunt, and that was her entire family on the planet Earth. So growing up in the shadow of a family that was almost totally wiped out by the Shoah, in addition to being raised in a very Zionist youth movement, I grew up in a youth movement called B'nai Akiva, both in South

Africa and in the UK. So we received weekly injections of Zionism in our veins. So both of those together, the Zionism from the youth movement and all the stories of Israel and the pioneers and the heroic Israelis who built up our state, together with the shadow of the Holocaust, really, when I spent my gap year in Israel back in 1986, I was thinking about it anyway, but what really changed my decision was meeting Israeli peers. That's what changed the direction of my life. Many people came with me on the gap year with the youth movement. We spent time in Kippur, in Yeshiva, traveling around Israel, getting to know our country. And everyone went back. The reason I didn't go back to the UK to a university spot in London that was waiting for me, because I'd met Israeli peers and around the Shabbat table, rather than talking about what we talked

about, which of course is all the normal teen talk, plus where we're going to university, their big focus on where they were going to serve their country. And it really impacted and influenced my way of thinking. I thought, you know what, the ivory tower of academia will always be there. And no one ever went to their deathbed thinking, well, I should spend another day in the office. People do say I should have done something more meaningful and important in my life. And this was the time to do it. No mortgage, no wife, no children, just after high school. This is the time. And I just made a very unusual decision to stay on in Israel. I was a Chael Bordet, a lone soldier. I drafted a unit called

Givati, which is the equivalent of the Israeli Infantry Marine Unit, a combat unit, frontline combat unit. And I was adopted on a kibbutz, which was also impacted many years later by October the 7th, Kibbutz Saad, over the road from Kibbutz Kva'aza in the Gaza periphery. And adopted, meaning when you moved to Israel, you joined this kibbutz Kva'aza in the Gaza periphery. And adopted meaning when you moved to Israel, you joined this kibbutz. So you became a member of this kibbutz. I'm not a member. I became a lone soldier on the kibbutz.

I had no family at all in Israel. And it was quite normal for lone soldiers then to have an adopted family on the kibbutz. And they had a separate area for lone soldiers. It was there I met somebody who you have heard about and you know his brother very well. In my unit of Gibati, the commanding officer of my particular unit was a young lone soldier from the United States called Alex Singer, who's the brother of Saul Singer. So meeting him very much impacted my thought process as well and led me eventually to not just to volunteer volunteer for the idea but to stay in israel and make a life in israel so for context for our listeners saul singers many of you know is the

co-author of both books i have co-authored startup nation and are most recently the genius of israel he lives in israel alex singer who's saul's that you two of you are referring to, served in the IDF. He was a lone soldier and he was killed in southern Lebanon in 1987. He fell in battle. There's a book that's published of his writings and his work as he confronted a number of decisions about his own life and the path he chose, which is a similar set of, I think, decisions you faced and many Jews in the diaspora navigate and consider that lands many of them in situations like yours and Alex's, which is choosing a life in Israel. And that book is published. We'll link to it in the show notes. Tuvia, so Miloim, or reserve duty,

taps out at, in normal times, 45 years old, roughly. That is, once you hit 45, you age out, and you will not be called back into reserves. But take me back to early October. So there were thousands of Israelis and Jews around the world who couldn't be called up for reserves. They were too old, but they wanted to be activated. They were looking for ways to help Israel and help the national effort. And there are a number of people of our generation, people who are in their 50s or their 60s, who don't have this option anymore to serve in the military. They're out of the IDF. But you were thinking, no, that's not okay. I'm going to figure out a way to serve. So walk me through those first days and what you did to get enlisted

into Miloim, into reserves, even though you are well past the age. Okay. So after I finished my regular service, there's an expression in Hebrew, which I'll translate to English, which is the army begins after you finish the army. Meaning once you finish the regular army, your original mandatory three years of service, then you get on with life. You have married, you have kids, you get a job, you go to university. And whenever you get the call up for reserve duty, which I did until the age of 40, that's usually the mandatory age is 40, although they're trying to make it up by a couple of years now. We went for at least a month a year to the reserve duty. It was never convenient. It's always the wrong time, just when your wife is in the ninth month of pregnancy or

just when you have the final exam in university. But until the age of 40, I did it. The last time I served in reserve, I did it happily with honor and with pride. And the last time I'd served in reserve duty was in 2006 in the second Lebanon war. The conclusion of that war, which I was also called up for an emergency, I happened to be in Australia at the time lecturing.

And I, like many Israelis, returned back to serve in my unit at the age of 40. After that, I was discharged. I received an honorable discharge from the IDF. On the morning of October 7th, I had not actually served in reserves for 15 years. However, unlike most people who are of our age, I did have something I could offer to the army, which was my profession. One of the things that really, really was important for me in my service, everyone has a specialization.

I wanted to be a, what's called in Hebrew, a combat medic, for many reasons. One, of course, gives one a sense of self-confidence through life as well. It's not just a military occupation. Being a combat medic means, even as a parent, as a member of society, it gives a sense of being able to respond when something happens in a medical way. And it's a very prestigious course. And of course, it gives you a profession after the military as well. So I was a combat medic. I'd served in Gaza, I'd served in Lebanon, I'd also served on the ambulance at Mankintafet Adam. So I had a profession. Many people our age who are, quote unquote, just combat soldiers, the army didn't really have a use for a 55 year old

former combat soldier, but someone like myself who has a profession of a combat medic who can help save lives. Plus, thank God as my profession as a tour guide, I still run up and run around a lot up and down hills. I'm still pretty fit physically. So what I did is a very Israeli thing. I literally went down to the basement that afternoon, found my old IDF uniform, which I hadn't worn for 15 years. Did it still fit you? I was about to say that. Thank God it still fitted. That's the advantage of running up and down all those mountains. Tuvia, I'm ending this podcast conversation right now. I'm offended. I'm outraged. It still fit you? I can't handle that.

Not only did it still fit, I'm not even going to tell you that I have a suit from 25 years ago that still fits me. All right. I wasn't asking you to pile on. We won't even go there. I'm not going to brag about that. So I popped it on, dusted it off, obviously. And I'd heard a rumor.

This is the way Israel works. I'd heard a rumor from my cousin, Tamar, whose brother was serving as the Semeh Manpei, as a deputy commander in a combat unit, that there was a base down in the Negev where they were actively looking for medical personnel, combat medical personnel, doctors, paramedics, combat medics. They knew they were going to have to respond with a ground invasion, and they needed medical personnel to sign up. So I, based on this rumor, got into my car and drove for two and a half hours down to the Negev. And I knew that it was Bashir, or meant to be, when I saw that the base was right next to my basic training base of Givati, down in the Negev. And I got to the main gate, and the first question

the soldier asked me is, where are your papers? Do you have call-up papers? Did you receive the emergency call-up for war? Are you on widow-in? And the answer, of course, was no. I received no papers of any description. And then they said, well, you can't go in. So, of course, being Israel, no never means no, as you're about to hear later on in the story.

And let's put it subtly and delicately. A few minutes later, I was inside the base. And then I started for the next two hours looking for combat units, about to go in combat medical units, and trying to literally sell myself to them. I went from unit to unit. And eventually, after only two hours, I got to the unit I eventually ended up joining called Palmar Asaf. Palmar is a Hebrew abbreviation for Plugat L'Chema Mirchavit Vufuit, which basically means a fighting combat medical unit. So, Tuvia, what did you say to actually convince them? These sound like incredible powers of persuasion here.

Well, when one isn't in this all long enough, we understand that when someone says no, it means start negotiating. No, no, that actually means no. So I spoke to the deputy commander, who was also a medical doctor himself as well. I said, listen, it's like riding a bicycle. I'm a combat medic. I've trained, have years of experience both in the military field in Gaza and in Lebanon. I also worked for Magin David Adom, the Israeli Red Magin David, as an ambulance medic. I'm keeping up with the skills and I'm also extremely physically fit as well.

I'm very enthusiastic. I know I can contribute. I know I have a lot to offer. I'm here to help no matter how long it takes. And he was literally, again, one doesn't like to blow one's own trumpet, but he was blown away. He said, wow, you have a lot of passion, a lot of enthusiasm. And most importantly, you have a lot of experience as well. We'll take you. And that's when the battle really began. The battle is called, and anyone who's spent any time in Israel, especially you immigrants, the battle's called Israeli bureaucracy. He said,

we'll take you into the unit. Go and speak to the Shalishut, which are the Israeli army bureaucrats, and tell them to put you back in the system. So there's a joke that a very famous Israeli comedian and singer Danny Sanderson said, which goes, I fought and I fought and I fought, but the army drafted me anyway. So this is what happened. I went up to the bureaucrats and said, hey, that particular unit, Palma Asaf, said they will take me as a combat medic. Put me back in the system. So being bureaucrats, the first thing they said was, absolutely not. It cannot happen. You are 55 years old. You are not even in the system. You're not on the computer. You have not served.

You were discharged one and a half decades ago. It's not happening. Go home and maybe we'll call you. So clearly they didn't know who I was because I said, actually, I happen to have a sleeping bag in my backpack and I'm not going anywhere. I'm going to sleep in front of your office. I'm going to stay in front of your office and enter your veins. I'm going to drive you so crazy that you will put me back in the army,

especially because the unit actually wants me and I'm ready to go and have all the skills that they need. They didn't think I was serious until two days later they capitulated and just said, okay, sign these papers, you're in, get out of our faces. And that's when I took my weapon and joined the unit on October the 9th. So you get enlisted into the unit and you discover that you're not the only Meshugana who's fought his way through to become a fighter, even though you

didn't have to. Tell me about the others you were finding. Who are the other Tuvias that were around you? Specifically, I know some of the names we've discussed offline, Dr. Ariel Jaffe, Gabi the paramedic, Ezekiel Zomer, Ariel Lavi. Tell me just about a handful of these folks. Okay, so basically, again, I thought I was, as you mentioned, the only Meshuggah now who's going to force his way back into the army. It turns out there's a tremendous spirit of volunteerism. As you mentioned, many people and her friends wanted to do something. They just didn't know how to. So I got into the unit and I

found out that everyone has a story, the younger people and the older people in the unit. Let's start off with the name you mentioned, Dr. Ariel Jaffrey. So Dr. Jaffrey, he was in the UK at the time doing a subspecialty in in utero surgery. There are four of those surgeons. So he's going to be the fifth. He was in the UK doing a two year subspecialty with his wife and three daughters, all below the age of 10. And he literally jumped on a plane and came over. Now, we only found out before he returned to the UK after many months of helping save lives, because in addition to being a medical doctor, he's also a psychologist as well. So he

was helping with some of the other types of wounds we don't often hear about, which are wounds affecting the mind. After months of conscientious service and absolute energy and passion saving lives, I had a private conversation with him before he returned. And he told me that not only did he have three daughters under the age of 10, but his wife, and this is the stuff that you can't make up and gives you goosebumps. His wife gave him her blessing to come out to be a doctor in this particular unit, because she was in this process of having chemotherapy, having been diagnosed with stage four breast cancer. And she said to her husband, listen, what's going to happen to me is going to happen to me. We can pray, we can hope, but you have a skill to save lives, go and save lives. And it was just

incredible. We never heard a peep from him about his home situation the entire time he was with us. Wow. So the next person was, everyone has a, we, our unit, we move in with our armored ambulances and our armored cars into the extraction field. And the paramedic on my particular ambulance, his name was Gabby. And he, I found out from chatting with him over the months, not only is a father of six,

including having two children who serve in Gaza, and he was above the age of reserve Judy, Gabby the paramedic. He'd also donated a kidney literally a month before October the 7th. So for many reasons, he did not have to serve. Yet there he was as a paramedic, father of six with two kids inside with one kidney, sitting in the ambulance, giving his maximum. So that was Gabby the paramedic. It's not just the older people as well. It's also the younger people. So many people in their 20s who are literally the age of my children, I don't think until they hear this podcast that they realize I could be their father biologically

because I have a lot of energy in youth. I'm sitting in the ambulance with kids who are literally my kids' ages and they all dropped whatever they were doing. We have people in our unit who are on their post-military trek through the world. One poor guy was two weeks into his year-long India trek, and he just stopped and got the next plane back. We have people who stopped their studies, including medical studies, just froze it to jump back into the military again. We have people who literally left the army a week before and came straight back again. And one of the interesting stories was a guy in our unit called Yechezky Lezomer, who is an Argentinian, and he was a combat medic. He was in Buenos Aires when October the 7th happened,

and it took him five different plane rides to get back to Israel. And he came back and just said, okay, I'm back, take me in. So from the old to the young, the tremendous selflessness and the spirit of volunteerism absolutely blew me away. Okay. So now I want to talk about the unit that you were serving in, which is not only unique for the IDF, but I think relative to other militaries around the world, it's pretty unique. And you described it earlier as a combat medical unit, as a medical combat unit, meaning people are medics and they're fighters. This is not the image I have when I think of a medical unit in the Army. The image I have is what I experienced working with the U.S. military in Iraq, which I worked with a lot of the

medical units, which they were medical units, or what many in the West who are, I'm aging myself here, but who know popular culture, are familiar with MASH. We have a certain image when we think of doctors and nurses in the field, in the theater of operations, which is not like the unit you served in the IDF. So how would you describe it? Why it's so different compared to other military medical units? Okay. So I also grew up with MASH. I'm dating myself as well.

Yeah. But you, two of you, you still fit into your suits and uniform. So from decades before, so I only have so much sympathy. Okay. And we definitely did not have hot lips in our unit. And MASH, for those of you who don't know, for the youngsters here, stands for Mobile Army Surgical Hospital. And that was very appropriate for America at that particular time in history. But because Israel is such a small country, we don't need to set up a separate mobile army surgical hospital. The aim of our unit, to sum it up in one word, is speed. We are the medical cavalry. And it is unique, by the way. It's so unique and so successful

that we've had military medical personnel coming in from NATO, from the United States, from the UK armies, coming to observe how we work. And I'll just give you, I'll tell you basically what we do and how we do it. So we are a medical cavalry unit, as I mentioned. We consist of both combat troops and medical personnel. We're affiliated also with the Air Force Search and Rescue Unit called 669 as well, which is a highly specialized medical evacuation unit. The aim of what we do is when a soldier is injured in Gaza, we are waiting on the board in tents where we've been for months as well. They are treated by their embedded medical staff, usually the combat

medic who's inside, who will halt any life-threatening injuries such as a planget, a tourniquet, or whatever he has to do. We are notified. From that moment, like the cavalry, we swoop in, whether armored cars or armored ambulances. We go to the area. Sometimes it's one soldier. Sometimes there's a mass casualty event.

We have combat troops in our unit who seal the perimeter so the medical crew can get to work, where we have doctors, paramedics, combat medics, all highly trained, and we come in. And the first thing we need to do is we have doctors, paramedics, combat medics, all highly trained. And we come in and the first thing we need to do is we need to triage the wounded soldiers. But when they see us coming, the unit, they know that they can get back to fighting because the door to the hospital has just been opened. Our unit has arrived on the scene.

The Palmar Unit was founded about 10 years ago after the Suk-Etan. I don't know what that's called in English. It's called Protective Edge. So after 2014, Protective Edge was a major military operation in Gaza by the IDF, lasted some 50 days. And it was the last major deployment of IDF troops in Gaza until October 7th. Right. That was a catalyst to form our particular unit. I interviewed Lieutenant Colonel who's in charge of all of these medical units, who can only be referred to as Dalit.

That just means for our listeners, the understanding of the Israeli press is with certain officials in certain military roles and intelligence roles in Israel are never referred to by their names publicly, their full names, because they are a security risk in terms of being targeted. So they're just referred to in the press by an initial, usually the first initial of the first name. But that's what Tuvia means when he says Dalet. Dalet is a letter in Hebrew. Okay, so Lieutenant Colonel Dalet, he told me that what makes this unit unique is that we provide our own security, and we're also affiliated with the Air Force for speedy evacuations. So he basically said that once the other soldiers

see us coming on the battlefield, they know that they can release their wounded to us and they will be taken care of. And the speed is the essence here in lessening the fatality rate. As of now, when we're making this recording, as we know, 325 soldiers have been lost in battle since the beginning of the ground invasion. However, what we don't know,

what you don't hear about too much is the other statistics, where we've had about 3,000 wounded soldiers. And of those, about 350 evacuations were carried out by air, by chopper, by helicopter. So what our unit does is we come in, we assess the wounded, and the ones who are critically wounded or seriously wounded, we call in the 669 Air Rescue Unit, and they come in, and they're always around. The helicopters are always in the air. So within about three or four minutes, they're on the ground. They're on the ground for about 30 seconds, and immediately they take off again.

Ones who are moderately or lightly wounded, which you can go into details later if you want, they're put in the ambulances and taken to the nearest hospital, either in Be'er Sheva or in Ashkelon. What all this means, Dan, is that the evacuation time from the moment the soldiers wounded till they're in the OR has reached an unprecedented 57 minutes. Within an hour of being wounded, they're already being operated on in the hospital in the OR. That kind of speed and efficiency is unprecedented anywhere in the world. It's one of the four things that helps keep the casualty rates down so low. I mean, if you had to compare it to what was going on in Crimea, where half a million soldiers were killed,

and 40% of them was by disease only. In the Crimean War, about 100 years ago, 40% of those soldiers died by disease and the lack of ability to evacuate them to hospitals. That's a famous story of Florence Nightingale. However, today, we have the ratio of injured who survive, critically injured who survive, to die is 6.7, which is the lowest in the world. And that's half of the ratio of the last conflict 10 years ago in Gaza. And the reason that happens is because of four different things. One is the speed of the evacuation, the incredibly trained medical staff, the professionalism, and of course, the technological innovation as well,

the startup technology, which enables us to the technological innovation as well, the startup technology, which enables us to save these lives. Because don't forget, they're being treated from the moment they're wounded until they enter the OR and the hospital. There's treatment all the way along, either in the ambulance or in the helicopter. So what makes the work we do so incredibly effective at saving lives? Again, thousands have been wounded, even though every dead soldier is a tragedy. And we have people in our unit called the Yassar, who volunteer, who bring back those fallen soldiers

and give them the respect they deserve, bring them back to Israel to identify them, to make sure they get their burial. The reason why there's not vastly more casualties is because we are the only military in the world who has embedded physicians and doctors. We also take in real blood, which no other army does. Wounded soldiers use tremendous amounts of blood. We have climate-controlled O negative, which is universal

donor blood, with us as well. So we're not just giving plasma substitute, we're giving actual blood, which helps the healing. We have hematologists who work with us. We have surgeons who work with us who are in the field. And of course, if necessary, they will perform surgery in the field, life-saving surgery in the field. We have our portable ultrasound scanners, which come with us, so we can actually detect internal bleeding in the field itself. And most remarkably, everything we do is digital. That means no pen, there's no paper. From the moment the soldier is wounded, there is a digital recording device.

Kind of looks like an iPad, but the moment all the statistics are going in there, those same statistics are also being broadcast to the hospital, eventually the soldier will arrive to, to the helicopter that's coming in. So everyone knows exactly what treatment has been provided for the soldier will arrive to, to the helicopter that's coming in. So everyone knows exactly what treatment has been provided for the soldier. There's continuous treatment the

whole time. And the doctors who are with us sometimes need to perform surgery in the field because despite having a helicopter landing, the life needs to be saved before the soldier can even get on the helicopter. And one of the better known cases we had was in January, where we were called in after a combat engineering battalion fell into some difficulties and had a tremendous amount of wounded soldiers. One of the better known soldiers was Idan Amedi. That was a mass casualty day, right? And a number of Israeli soldiers were killed in one horrendous incident. One of them, who you mentioned, he wasn't killed, thank God. Idan Amedi, is a very well-known musician in Israel and a very well-known actor. He's one of the stars of Fauda. And he was severely wounded. Absolutely. I mean, like many Israelis,

he dropped everything despite being a famous actor and musician and also a father of two and married. He dropped everything to sign up on October the 7th. And he was so severely wounded when the evacuation helicopter came in, we couldn't actually load him onto the helicopter because he needed treatment in the field. So the helicopter took off without him, with other wounded soldiers. And before the next helicopter came, the doctors in the field of our unit had to perform life-saving surgery on him,

both to drain his lungs from internal bleeding and to unobstruct his airway, or he wouldn't have made it even to the helicopter, which took him eventually to the hospital. Thank God he's okay now. So that's what it means, having surgeons in the field who can literally do surgery whilst under fire. And that's why in our unit, we also have fighters who are providing as much as perimeter as they can to perform the surgery. And even though we have actually treated our patients under fire at times. 2VI friends who know Idan and Mehdi well, including those who work on FAUDA with him. And some of them had seen him soon after he was wounded and they cannot believe his recovery.

They were praying for him, but I think many of them were not necessarily hopeful for what his recovery would look like. And it's been quite extraordinary. Right. Not just him, but the many soldiers who would have died without our expert medical treatment. He was literally a death storm. We arrived to him. And again, some of it comes from his own personal resilience, and some of it comes from his own personal resilience and some of it comes from the excellent medical treatment he received. I mean, there's another case of a soldier we evacuated also under fire a couple of weeks later, who had 60% second and third degree burns on his body. And in many other armies and other places in the world, he probably would have died.

And the treatment which we gave him whilst being fired on ultimately allowed his life to be saved. It was a very moving story, actually, because he was in such pain. Not only did he have the regular pain-killing drugs of morphine, we also put ketamine in and everything. He was in excruciating pain there. Helicopter had to land in Gaza, which is quite rare. Usually we try and meet them closer to the border, but it had to land in the field of battle, or else he would not have made it. And just before he passed out, he would not have made it. And just before

he passed out, he wanted to, he's trying to say something. So I leaned over to hear what he was trying to, and he whispered to me, he said, I'm 30 years old. I just got married and I really want to be an Abba. I really want to be a dad. And I said to him, where'd you live? And he told me it was a town very close to Mordin where I live. I said, don't worry. I said, you will be a father and I'll be at the Brit or the Britai if you have a boy or a girl in Yebiseda. That's what Israelis like to say. It's going to be okay. And he was many backed out straight to the burns unit.

And I'm happy to say that, thank God, despite having horrific burns, literally from his thighs to his chest, he is going to make it. And it's just incredible to see that the speed, professionalism, the innovation, the short evacuation times that literally help save lives on a daily basis. And it's an honor to be part of that unit. What type of medical professionals are enlisted to this unit? My understanding is something like a quarter of those enlisted are women. Absolutely. Yes. It's a very different army. When I first went into the army back in the late 1980s, women were not serving in any combat roles at all. The only women we ever saw were clerks or infantry instructors. And obviously, there was women in intelligence.

Right now, it's a fully integrated army. Again, one out of four soldiers in our unit are women. And that includes doctors, paramedics, combat soldiers, and combat medics as well. So we don't say, you know, are you a guy or are you a girl? The question is, are you the best at what you can do? One of the combat doctors in our unit who's also served in Gaza as a paramedic and is now a surgeon, she's a famous Groucho Marx liner, well over four foot, a very diminutive little woman,

but with a tremendous fighting spirit and super, super specialized, and she is in there in the thicker things all the time with everyone else. Can you just briefly tell me the Kine or cats unit you recently attracted? All right. So again, this was about three weeks ago. There is a unit called Orchids or canine, a dog unit. It is one of the most difficult units to get into in the idea. There's a lot more demand than supply.

Again, it's a co-ed unit as well. Meaning it's not only hard for the dogs to get into the unit, it's hard for the... Hard for everyone to get into the unit. The dogs and their masters or the mistresses. Yes, absolutely. It's a unit that is at the forefront of all the action, especially we had a pause before we went into Rafah for two or three months. And during that enforced pause, the Hamas were absolutely booby-trapping the heck out of Rafiach. Every building, every stone, there's a potential to be booby-traps

because they had that time to recoup and to recover and to mine and booby-trap everything. So before the units move in, the Al-Quds unit goes in first, even before the combat engineers, to check out houses and to check things out for booby traps. And we were called in about three weeks ago, a horrific incident where an entire building was booby trapped and it blew up on the Orchids unit who was inside. There happened to be soldiers and four of the dogs who were inside the building when it was triggered.

And we came in, it was a mass casualty event. Some of the soldiers had to be airlifted out by helicopter, by aerial ambulance, some by the ambulances we had. So we had one of the dogs that was, unfortunately, didn't make it. And one of the other dogs was wounded. We had a guy in our ambulance, one of the officers who came in

and his dog came in with him, obviously, into the ambulance all the way to the hospital. And he was what's called moderately wounded. Now, moderately wounded means he still had a, he still had shrapnel all the way down his back and legs and was pretty much out of it. But his dog was within the hallway, the entire way to the hospital. And of course, one of the crazy things, we got to the hospital and the first thing the person said is, we don't allow dogs in the hospital so of course we just looked at him in disbelief and

we all walked in with the patient and the dog and when we got to the room where they were initially about to perform all the tests on him he said I'm not going to this bed until I can give water to my dog so he gave water to the dog who'd been within the whole time in combat and we actually saw on the dog's back, they have flak jackets as well. The video camera that was

recorded the actual moment of the explosions, we saw actually what happened. And once the dog had been fed and had water, then he only then he went into bed and the dog stayed within the entire time until one of the vets came from the unit to bring the dog out again. I just want to wrap by asking you about what I referred to at the beginning of the conversations, which is about the divisions we're all hearing about and reading about in Israeli society these days. And just generally, what is your experience about the spirit of Israeli society in general and the IDF leads and the IDF soldiers and the leadership of the IDF. What's your big takeaway that you would want us to have as well?

What would you want to impart us with? Very recently, I have to admit, in my very little free time, I'm quite addicted to your podcast. And recently, I heard of my good friend, Dr. Michal Gutmann. It's a couple of weeks ago being interviewed. He speaks a lot to the groups that I talk at. I've been in a lot of groups in the United States. He's one of my favorite speakers because he's also ridiculously bilingual. He

speaks just as well in English and in Hebrew. And his philosophy on life, he basically said, which is what we feel very much, he said the army, and also another one of your frequent contributors, Javier Vertigo, said the same thing. The army is still just as strong and united and focused. And the people of Israel are amazing. If you look at it from a parallel point of view, the problem is when you start going vertical and going up, that's when the depression and the lack of confidence sets in, especially with yesterday's released report on what happened on Kibbutz Be'eri on the first day of the war, which we were actually at on October the 7th in the evening. Our unit was already there at the kibbutz. So the confidence

and the depression, as you call it, comes from the upper echelons. In other words, the decision makers both in the government and in the military. However, I just wanted to let you know that the first question any wounded soldier says really sums up what's happening right now in the military and still in Israel, even now, nine months after the start of the war. Whenever we evacuate a wounded soldier, their first question is never, how am I? What's going to happen to me? It's always, when can I go back to my brothers. So the fighting spirit is still there. And we always ask them to call their parents because we don't want their parents to get the call from the military to say that they're wounded. And we say, can you just call your mom and say you're okay? And they always say, it's okay, I'll call dad instead. And they always say, tell mom that. And the main thing is that we are still incredibly, as October the 7th, the spirit is still strong. So we have people in our unit who

are religious and people who are secular, people with piercings and tattoos, people who would vote for Shas, people who would vote for Merit from the left to the right wing of the spectrum, religious and secular, veteran Israelis. For our listeners, when Tuvia says Shas, he's referring to one of the Haredi ultra-Orthodox parties. When he's referring to Merit, he's referring to radically secular, very progressive political party. You're just saying everybody's serving. And nobody asks questions because no one actually cares what your religious and political views are when you're there. Because we know we're there for one purpose of one purpose alone. And that has not changed the last nine months. That is to rid Israel of the scourge of the evil of Hamas.

So the never again, well, October the 7th become even a reality. Never again really means never again. We're fighting for the future of the people of Israel. A, that those who evacuated will return to their border communities. And B, that we're not going to grow up in this cycle that every few years there's another round and another round. So nobody asked. We have plenty of discussions in the military about people's personal backgrounds, but no one actually cares.

And one beautiful example of this is a month after October the 7th, we were on Kibbutz Beri. We were actually at the cemetery, which is our jumping off point to go into the strip whenever we're called in. And we noticed a Ministry of Defense vehicle pull up to the cemetery and put a tombstone on the grave of one of the soldiers from the kibbutz who had fallen on October the 7th. This was a month later. In Hebrew, it's called the shloshim, or 30 days after the death. And we spontaneously decide, you know what? No one's allowed here. It's a closed military zone.

There's no friends. There's no family. But he's one of our brothers. We're going to go to the grave and say a few words about the soldier, and we're going to say Kaddish. So we went over with all our combat gear on. We're wearing about 40 pounds of combat and medical gear on. We walked over to the grave. Men, women, secular, religious, stood around. We looked up his name on the Ministry of Defense site, said a few words about our fallen brother, and we recited the Kaddish down. And when I say we recited, I'm talking about

the secular, the religious, the men and the women. We all stood around the grave. You would never, ever see that in the outside civilian world. Everyone together, without any kind of differentiation of religious or political or background, standing united as one, saying Kaddish for our brother. And that is still the spirit of the army today. We are there for one purpose and one purpose alone, forward to victory, no matter how long it takes, no matter what it costs. We are there to make sure that the future of the Jewish people in our land is there for everyone. So the unity is still there. The depression only sets in when I get a break from the military and I listen to the actual news, what's going on outside.

Or you listen to my podcast. Well, outside, the spirit is still swung. Whenever I listen to your podcast, I notice you always try and end with a positive note. I've noticed the theme over here. So positive note is we are still united as the military and also the people. We're still, even now, nine months later, having wonderful civilians coming in and giving us food. We have Anglos coming in from Modena, Manana civilians coming in and giving us food. We have Anglos

coming in from the Inmanana, making us amazing barbecues. We have people volunteering still to come in and do haircuts and back massages and all sorts of things. So that spirit is still there. It was very strong on the 7th of October and is still strong now. We're going to try and keep this apolitical or else the conversation will take a rapid downturn. And we'll just keep it to the level of the people in the military. The spirit is still there. The unity is still there. The tremendous sense of family, of mishpachah, is very much still strong and the heart is still beating.

Tuvia, thank you for this. It's badly needed. And I feel that there are so many stories like yours that just get lost in the rubble of the internal political debates in Israel. And it's important to remember that what has kept Israel strong and so resilient is these stories and what they represent about you and your fellow citizens and about this extraordinary society. And I just want to thank you for everything you've done, everything you continue to do, and for taking the time to be with us today. Absolute pleasure. Have a Shabbat Shalom. Shabbat Shalom. That's our show for today. Again, if you live in the Pittsburgh area, remember to register for my

event with Dave McCormick on October 28th. It should be a very good discussion. We'll have the link in the show notes. Call Me Back is produced and edited by Ilan Benatar. Our media manager is Rebecca Strom. Additional editing by Martin Huergo. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.