Call Me Back - with Dan Senor - The Gazan Battlefield — with Avi Issacharoff

Episode Date: October 15, 2023

Today, we consider to what to expect when the IDF enters Gaza. Avi Issacharoff has been an analyst and journalist for The Times of Israel, Walla, and Haaretz. In these roles, he reported extensively on the inner workings and leaders of Hamas and other Palestinian factions in Gaza and the West Bank — Avi has extensive networks in the Israeli security services and the Palestinian Territories. He is also the co-creator and writer of the Netflix original series “Fauda”, and other television series for Netflix and Showtime. A fluent Arabic speaker, Avi was also the Middle East Affairs correspondent for Israeli Public Radio, covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the war in Iraq, and the Arab world between the years 2003-2006. In 2004, together with Haaretz’s Amos Harel, he authored the book "The Seventh War - How we won and why we lost the war with the Palestinians." In 2008, they co-wrote "34 Days - The Story of the Second Lebanon War”. Born in Jerusalem, he graduated cum laude from Ben Gurion University with a B.A. in Middle Eastern studies. He then earned his M.A. from Tel Aviv University on the same subject, also cum laude.

The biggest achievement in the history of the movement of Hamas since its foundation in December 1987, meaning almost 36 years, the biggest military achievement is the biggest failure ever of Hamas' movement. You see now the pictures that are coming out of Gaza. You see the flood of hundreds of thousands leaving their houses in the north Gaza Strip in Gaza City. You see the numbers and you see what happened to Gaza Strip, and this is only the beginning. This is before we started even with the ground invasion. And at the end of the day,

if there's one organization that under its name will be written two things, our biggest attack ever against the Israelis is under us, Hamas. But the biggest Nakba, catastrophe ever, is under us us, Hamas. But the biggest Nakba, catastrophe ever, is under us also, Hamas. It is Saturday, October 14th at 7.45 p.m. here in New York City. Shabbat ended here a little over an hour ago.

In my home, like many Jewish homes in Israel and the United States and around the world, Shabbat, the Sabbath, Saturday, is a sacred oasis in time, a palace in time, as Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel described it. It's a time to slow down and disconnect and reflect on the week that has transpired. It's done with family and friends and community. And like many Jews, we've all been feeling that after being inundated with the most horrific images imaginable and many unimaginable coming to us from Israel that even here, 6,000 miles away from ground zero of the October massacre, we're still in a state of shock. And though seven days have already passed, it feels like for everyone this is only just beginning.

Here's an update on the current state of affairs in Israel on the eighth day of the war. Since Hamas terrorists invaded southern Israel on October 7th, at least 1,300 Israelis have been killed. 3,200 more were wounded, some in severe condition and some in critical condition. And at least 150 Israelis were kidnapped and are now held hostage in the Gaza Strip, including women, children, and babies. And that 150 number is a conservative estimate. A second aircraft carrier, the USS Eisenhower, is on its way to the region to join the USS Ford off the shores of Israel. The northern border is heating up with heavy mortar fire from Hezbollah and a failed attempt of four terrorists to cross the border and attack Israeli civilians. In an attempt to pressure and isolate Hamas leadership,

especially the armies of terrorists preparing to continue the fight in Gaza, Israel has enacted a full blockade of the Gaza Strip, not allowing any food, water, gas, or electricity into the region. Following a warning by the IDF to evacuate the northern Gaza Strip, more than 500,000 Palestinians have fled to the south, and there are images that have surfaced of Hamas preventing further Palestinians from getting to the south. The IDF announced today that special forces have successfully killed two Hamas commanders who were behind the deadly attacks on October 7th. The Israeli city of Sderot on the southwest border with Gaza is still being evacuated. 70% of the population has already left. After calling up 300,000 Israelis for reserve duty, the IDF has completed its preparation for a ground invasion of the Gaza Strip.

With a ground invasion all but imminent, we wanted to get a tactical perspective on what the IDF should expect from the Gazan battlefield. The last time Israeli forces invaded the Gaza Strip was almost a decade ago, in 2014. There's no doubt that Hamas has long been preparing for this invasion, and that the battle will be fierce and costly. Our guest today knows a thing or two about fighting battles in Palestinian cities. His name is Avi Asakaroff. He's a longtime war and national security and homeland security journalist in Israel. He has a master's degree in Middle Eastern studies from Tel Aviv University. He's a fluent Arabic speaker, and he served in Duvdevan when he was in his army service. Duvdevan is the undercover unit that operates in Palestinian cities and towns, and his

experience in Duv Devan was the inspiration for a television show that he created along with Lior Raz called Fauda. He's been following events very closely, both as a journalist and an analyst, and he's been tapping into his wide and deep network of contacts in Israel and in Gaza to better understand what is going on and what is likely to happen in the days ahead. Avi Asikarov on the Gazan battlefield. This is Call Me Back. And I welcome to today's conversation my longtime friend, Avi Asikaroff, longtime journalist and television creative talent co-creator of Fauda, who joins us today from Tel Aviv. Avi, thanks for being here. Hey, Dan. Avi, we'll talk about where this finds you personally a little later in the conversation, but I just want to start with your battlefield analysis as things seem to be getting underway in Gaza. I know you're talking to a lot of people on all sides of the conflict and have

deep sources, and you've also been traveling around to some degree. So you're seeing a lot too. So can you just give us an overview, just to start, just give us an overview of what the IDF should expect from the Gazan battlefield? What kind of forces, ammunition, defenses, traps? Like what will the IDF find there? Probably more or less the same stuff that he was facing

in 2014, only way way worse, meaning we'll have way more booby trap, we'll have more tunnels, RPGs, everything that can damage, kill, injure Israeli soldiers

that are coming on armed vehicles or tanks. The mission that Hamas has right now is to make all of Gaza kind of a huge ambush, preparing itself for the ground invasion. Meaning they know that it's about to come. They don't know exactly when. And their mission is to create as much damage as possible, especially when we're talking about casualties among the IDF. And what are the, you know, we talked about, we mentioned 2014.

So 2014 was the last time there was a major ground invasion in Gaza by the IDF. So what are the lessons the IDF should draw from that experience in Gaza in 2014? I think that, first of all, we know that Gaza is kind of a whole underground city that has been digged in the last nine years underneath Gaza without any kind of an attempt by the Israeli side to stop it, except for 2021 when Israel bombed the tunnels, but not enough, of course. Now, I'm not talking about the tunnels that Hamas was using in 2014 to go and attack Israel, but I'm talking about what they call defensive tunnels, meaning underneath Gaza, and all their mission is to be prepared for a ground invasion to kill Israeli soldiers and probably also trying to kidnap or to abduct a few of them. So this is what they're trying to do. This is what they are doing already, meaning

if you see that there are many, many casualties in Gaza from the Israeli bombing, many of them civilians. Why? Because the main reason is that Hamas' leadership, the military and the political leadership, are hiding deep, deep underneath Gaza in those tunnels. Okay, so I want to stay on that for a moment because we hear, you're right, I'm glad you're drawing the distinction, we hear all the time about the tunnels. And I think most people over here think of the tunnels as a vessel, if you will, or a conduit to attacking Israel. It's a way of getting underground. You dig a tunnel so you can get from Gaza underground and then pop up on the Israeli side to attack. And what you're saying is there's this whole underground city that Gazan military leaders and political leaders base themselves to plot, to plan, to store critical infrastructure

for their war. It's a whole maze underneath Gaza. Yeah, yeah. Just imagine the network of the subway under New York. That is what we're talking about. It's a huge, huge infrastructure. It's not a kind of a small tunnel that someone needs to, I don't know, to crawl in the dark. It's not like that at all. They have some transportation inside. They have electricity, water, food, everything. And of course, they can hide hostages over there. But more than anything else, what's important for them is to keep the leaders alive. And that's the big joke about Gaza. And sorry if I'm jumping too fast forward. Go ahead, go ahead. While Israel is trying to defend its citizens, Hamas is sacrificing its citizens,

allowing them to stay on the ground, of course, in order that the Israelis will kill them, while the leadership itself is hiding underground and saying to the whole world, look at what the Israelis are doing. And how deep underground is this? I remember you told me in the past, this underground city is like, I forget, and how deep underground is this i remember you told me in the past these underground

these underground this underground city is is like i forget like a 10-story building or something underground i mean it goes very deep right yeah it goes deep i don't know if it's a 10 or 9 or 7 sorry for you know i'm not into the numbers but i i guess it it's not going to be too crazy to say that around in between 20 and 30 meters underground. And again, it's quite fascinating to understand that underneath almost every neighborhood and main streets in Gaza, you will find a big tunnel today that allows Hamas to transfer their military, militants, their supply, everything. And basically, I believe that because the Israelis had warned the residents of the north part of Gaza Strip, around 1 million people to evacuate

and to leave their houses, I believe that most of the militants and the leaders of Hamas are already in the south hiding over there, making sure that, again, the Israelis won't kill them. And you often hear military experts say, well, you know, the IDF has to, you know, smoke out the tunnels or this underground city or flood them. I think what you're saying is it's not so simple. It's pretty complex. It may be hard to penetrate. And that the IDF is actually going to have to go into this underground city to fight the soldiers, the ground troops. In some of them, it is possible probably to smoke people out of them. In some of the places, it's going to be also possible to flood them with water. In the south of the places, there will be no other way

but to go and to fight and to handle a battle face-to-face with Hamas terrorists inside those tunnels. And do you have any, what is your level of confidence that the IDF has visibility right now into those underground tunnels?

Like, do they understand the maze? We thought that the Israeli intel has some very good knowledge about those tunnels, about this, what you call the maze. But honestly, after what happened last Saturday, I'm not that self-confident anymore that this is the case. You know, the Israeli intelligence knows everything. We know that we don't know what we don't know,

if you understand what I mean. You know, we are sure about the existence of some of those tunnels underneath Gaza, but I'm sure that there's many others that we're not aware of. Yeah. And how does the reality of 150 hostages, probably more, being in this underground maze, this underground subway system,

affect what the IDF does? I assume you think most of the hostages will be underground i so so especially the ones that are in the hands of the military wing of hamas which is more kind of you know not an army but almost like a organized guerrilla army okay so and there's a difference because some of the hostages are being held by citizens by people that just went to loot uh the villages and the kibbutz around the gaza in the gaza periphery and came back not only with uh charles bikes but also with the hostage or hostages so there's a difference between you know the hostages being held by Hamas and the ones that are being held by other groups.

This is A. The challenge itself, B, is huge. And I don't doubt that for a second. Right now, the Israeli decision is to go for a war as if there are no hostages and trying to reach a deal about the hostages as if there's no war. By the way, right now as we speak, I know that there are some sirens in Tel Aviv,

not in my neighborhood, but the sirens are going on right now. Okay. Obviously, if you have to take shelter, you'll let us know. All right. I want to talk about last Saturday, the fighting that occurred last Shabbat, the day of the invasion. And I want to talk about the civilians that were fighting, because there's these incredible stories of which I basically can categorize into three areas. There were the armed civilians who were just fighting in self-defense, and then there were armed civilians who drove into the war

zone to rescue civilians, to rescue other civilians. And then there were the Ketut Kunanut, which are the security teams that each kibbutz has on call. So what can you tell us about those three categories of civilian fighters? So mainly, you know, the people that drove to the south after they've heard what happened with guns, most of them, I would say, many of them at least, are people that had relatives in the south, in Gaza's periphery, in those kibbutzim and small towns.

And they decided that if they're not going to help their children or their grandchildren, and there's a very famous story of a grandfather, the kid that managed to find his way to Niloz and saved his family. And he's a former general. He's a former special forces guy and he's the father of a very famous correspondent here in israel how are these correspondents amir tibon's father right right right and his father is a general in reserves no tibon so for our uh listeners uh amir tibon

is a correspondent for haaretz, a very influential newspaper in Israel. I actually knew him when he was in the U.S. covering Washington. And he lives on a kibbutz with his two young children. And Hamas came to his kibbutz. And then describe what happened, Avi. One of the most crazy stories, it's his story. It's a very long story, but the bottom line is that the grandfather saved his son. So the grandfather meaning his father, Amir's father. He called for help.

He texted his father, the terrorist in the kibbutz. His father tried to call him so that he cannot really connect. So the grandfather, Noam Tibon, the former general, decided to go all the way to the south, managed to pass all the checkpoints that the IDF had to prevent more Israelis from getting into the war zone.

And he managed to pass those checkpoints and to fight against the terrorists, to kill many of the terrorists and to save his son and their grandchildren. So this is, you know, type A, let's call it. People that ran over there in order to save their relatives, families, friends, etc. The other ones were the ones that, you know, were there by accident. Some of them had guns, some of them took guns from people around them and started to fight and started to go against

those 1,200 Hamas militants that went into Gaza. And the third is, of course, Kitet Kolenut, or the security groups that each and every kibbutz or village had in order to fight, in order to deal with a security threat. And over there, you've heard some crazy stories about the heroism of those people and the way that they managed to stop with their body, more killings, more atrocities, and probably the fall of someously avoided getting into this topic on the podcast conversations I've had since October 7th, because I just, I don't think it's the, it should be the focus right now. There will be a commission of inquiry after this war, much like there was after the 2006 Lebanon War, after the Yom Kippur War, after many of these wars, especially the ones that go sideways,

about what went wrong. But I have you on this podcast, and because of your expertise, I feel like I'd be remiss if I didn't ask you. What happened last Saturday, from your perspective? I know it's still the fog of war, so we don't know entirely what happened, but, you know, these kibbutzim in the south are not located in some remote place in the Australian outback or something. They're a 50-minute drive from IDF bases, Air Force bases. Where was the IDF for 10 hours? That's a great question. I don't think that any one of us has a good answer right now, because we don't quite understand what happened over there. I know from my unit in the service from Dut Devan, they got there around two hours after the whole thing started.

And also two hours is a lot of time, by the way. And they started the battle in Kfar Aza, for example, but the battle was with hundreds of militants. It was like the first teams of Dut Devan, for example, got to Kfar Hazar after two hours, but it's small teams. And now they were facing tens and tens and tens of Hamas's people. They killed many of them. And let's keep that in mind. We have around, you know, this is the Israeli army estimation. We have around 1500 bodies of Hamas's militants in Israeli territory that have left there since last week.

Meaning 1,500 militants were killed in the invasion in Israeli territory. So it's not that it was for 8 or 10 hours. Still, it was a lot of time, and there were so many different places that the battle took place. And the terrorists were, and you know, I hate saying that, but they were very, very smart and very good in what

they did. Meaning, they attacked, first of all, the operational, the main operational of the region, where they knew that it was located in. And that was at a base. That was at a base in the south. Exactly. A base in the south that is called Reim. So they attacked it with suicidal drones at the beginning,

right at the beginning, and then they stormed this compound and started to try to occupy, to take over. And they almost managed to take over. But just imagine to yourself that the eyes and the ears of this major compound or the main base of the Gaza area is under attack, and the terrorists are coming from all sides in order to take over, killing the women soldiers that were there that were in charge of looking at the different cameras and giving the warning and also coordinating and collaborating with other forces like the Air Force.

The Air Force was trying to talk to them, but they couldn't succeed. Other forces were trying to talk to each other, but they couldn't succeed because there's no communication. So they were very, very smart about where to go and attack first. At some point, they understood that there's no army. And adding to all this mess, this is Saturday. This is holiday of Sin Khatua, meaning the number of the soldiers that were there located on the outposts vis-a-vis the Gaza Strip, vis-a-vis the border was around one-third, maybe even less than an average day. Many of those soldiers were on vacation. Most of them were asleep at 6 a.m. in the morning when the attack started.

So everything, you know, it's like the Murphy Law, but the worst nightmare of Murphy Law. Everything that could have gone wrong went wrong. You said 1,500 Hamas operatives approximately dead, which means there were many more than 1,500 who conducted the operation. Right. According to the IDF, and again, this is only in general estimation, they had around 2,500 people into the israeli territories some of them many of them were hamas people some of them were just a mob but that came on you know the second and the third wave to loot to kill to rape to behead people hostages and these are the very terrible clips that we have seen over and over again that, you know, one cannot really imagine what happened over there.

You know, every time that you hear this slogan that Hamas is ISIS, this is because of those clips. This is because of the videos that were showing the atrocities that they committed. So I know that there's some kind of myth that some pro-Hamas people are spreading that this is a fake. It's not a fake. When people saw what happened over there, when people saw all those hundreds of bodies that were looted by the mob and by Hamas,

like look, Dan, what they did in this party, in this huge festival party that had 3,000 people over there, after killing hundreds of them, there were 260 people that were killed in this party. They came with cars and they

picked up all the bodies together and they burned them. So people that got there from Magen David, from the So people that got there from Magen David, from the medical teams that got there, are completely shocked, scarred, traumatized

by what they had seen because they said, listen, we've seen bodies, we've seen bodies even after suicide attacks, but we've never seen the atrocities that were made there

by some of the Hamas terrorists. And this is something that, you know, we need to keep in mind and to remember. This is not just an enemy. This is the devil. This is the most terrible version of a terrorist organization. And there's no other way but to go on a war and to win those people. Avi, I want to stay on this because I too have been struck, horrified, horrified by these videos. And all I keep thinking is, what was the plan? It's clearly, they clearly intended to do what you're describing. And they oddly intended to document it all.

You know, during the Holocaust, the Nazis went to extraordinary lengths to hide its atrocities from public view. Here, it appears that they were not only doing it in plain sight, but they were documenting it all on video and broadcasting it. I would have thought they would have anticipated the horrified reaction that the world would have to these images. But that clearly wasn't a consideration. What were they thinking? Like, broadcasting these images, the ones you're describing, one would think would strengthen the Israeli will and strengthen Israel's spine in its response. And it would completely change how the world views the Palestinian cause. Honestly, I think that their success, so-called, was their failure, meaning the biggest achievement for Hamas's military wing in the history of the movement of Hamas since its foundation in December 1987, meaning almost 36 years, the biggest military achievement, I think, is the biggest failure ever of Hamas's movement. When people tag you as ISIS

all over the Western world, that is not the aim of Hamas. They wanted to release prisoners. They want to deter Israel. But at the end of the day, they became like ISIS in the eyes of many people in the West. I'm not saying that everyone look at them like ISIS, but many people do. And I think that, you know, the day of the victory is the day of the catastrophe. And at the end of the day, if there's one organization that under his name will be written two things, our biggest attack ever, terrorist attack against the Israelis is under us, Hamas. But the biggest Nakba, catastrophe ever, is under us also, Hamas. You see now the pictures that are coming out of Gaza.

You see the flood of hundreds of thousands leaving their houses in the North Gaza Strip in Gaza City. You see the numbers and you see what happened to Gaza Strip. And this is only the beginning. This is before we started even with the ground invasion. And Hamas government will not go back. There will be no Hamas's government, there will be no Hamas's regime in Gaza. And this is something that they didn't think thoroughly enough when they started this war. And the so-called victory, it's the biggest failure of this organization.

Just on the size of the operation and how elaborate it was, and I take your point that there are the numbers that seem to be professionally trained, smartly, as you said, and then there was the mob that followed. Let's just take the 1,500. I will start with that number. So for every, when a big operation is planned, military, terrorist, whatever you want, terrorist operation is planned, you take that 1,500 people. There's a lot of people in supporting roles. There's some ratio, three to one, four to one, five to one of people that you don't see on the front lines who do the initial invasion, who are doing infrastructure and armaments building and logistics.

And so I look at this thing and I think there were probably thousands of people who were involved. How is it possible that thousands of people have some level of knowledge about this and Israeli intelligence didn't know about it? Was it all done? Was it all planned analog? I get that Israel doesn't have, I mean, you know, through your work in Duvdevon, and obviously through your work in journalism, and also through your work on FAUDA, you know, you know all about human sources, human intelligence sources in these territories. Does Israel not have reliable human intelligence sources in Gaza? So they have to rely on signal intelligence?

I guess, you know, I don't know, but I guess that this is what happened over there, that we didn't have enough reliable sources in Gaza since the Israeli unilateral withdrawal since 2005. And this is a fact. We know that while you're not there on the ground, your capability to recruit human sources is going down and down and down.

Now, I don't know what was the story. At the end of the day, I don't have good answers for that because I don't know exactly what happened. I do know that probably I can only imagine that some of them were told only a few hours before some of them were told that this is only another training and i think that it was the cnn that reported about the way that they trained a few times in conquering taking over a kibbutz or a village and it's probably this is what happened someone called someone and said like look we have another

training you should come and they did okay let's talk about the home front in israel unlike in the u.s or at least unlike the u.s since world war ii i guess in it and vietnam to some degree every household in israel has a soldier at least a soldier or more, perhaps even, you know, two generations of soldiers who are preparing to enter Gaza. What's the mood like? What's going through people's minds on the Israeli home front as things get underway? You know, I would say that there are two trends. One of people are terrified, people are worried for the kids, for the brothers, for the cousins, for whomever that you know that is a soldier, that is especially the combat

soldiers. And what's going to happen here in Israel, especially with the existence of the northern threat, meaning Hezbollah, and especially with the lack of belief in the current leadership in Netanyahu that this is something that we cannot ignore. And at the same time, the other trend is the opposite, but it's not the opposite. Because of what happened, because the enemy was so cruel, so brutal, the number of the dead people, the number of the kidnapped, each and every one of us knows someone that lost someone or that his son or daughter were kidnapped, etc. And this is why you see a very clear trend among everyone that I talked, that there's no other way but to go into Gaza and to bring Hamas down.

There's no argument. There's no kind of, you know, people arguing about this. People are arguing about Netanyahu's leadership still. But no one doubts even for one second that we should go to Gaza and, you know, eliminate Hamas's regime. I'm not saying to eliminate Hamas as a political movement, but Hamas's regime, I think that there's a huge consensus here in Israel supporting the approach that we should do everything possible,

even with the price of more soldiers getting killed or kidnapped. Staying on the home front, in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, when most of the men were drafted into the IDF, or most male reserves were called up, it was the women who really managed the home front. There were stories about the images that there were hardly any men to be, which is probably close to most of the war reserves. It's a lot of people. What is it like now in the streets of Tel Aviv where you are right now? Does it feel empty? Yeah, streets are empty. There are no traffic jams,

so this is one good thing about what's going on. You can drive pretty fast to south, to Jerusalem, to wherever. But yeah, the feeling is of the evening of a war, the evening of a big war, that you don't know who's going to come back and who's not. And it's a very tough feeling, I must say. You know, I cannot really say that people here are so happy and, you know, that Tel Aviv is business as usual.

It's not. It's not as business as usual. It's not like the former rounds of escalation that some rockets were shot and still people were having fun in the coffee shops and restaurants. It's not the case. Israel is in war, and Israel is even heading to a bigger war than the one that we were facing the last week. Okay, before I talk about your personal experience of the past week,

I do want to just ask you one other question about the hostages. I know I asked you about it. And this is brand new terrain for Israel. And I interviewed you and Lior for the book I have coming out in a few weeks. And we talked a lot about your experience in the West Bank with Duvdevan, and we talked about Lior's experience with his girlfriend being killed, Iris Azoulay, by a Palestinian terrorist who was ultimately imprisoned. He went on a killing spree in Jerusalem where he killed Lior's girlfriend. And for his murders, he was locked

up for, I don't know what, multiple life sentences. And then in 2011, with the prisoner exchange to get back Elad Shalit, Israel released, I have the exact number in our book, I don't have it right in front of me, but it was over 1,100 Palestinian prisoners. Exactly. 1,027 prisoners. Ah, okay. 1,027 prisoners in Israeli jails for one soldier. And that was the last major prisoner exchange, at least that we know of. And so it seems to me that Hamas calculated, well, if we get 150 or whatever the number is going to turn out to be, and we spread them out all over Gaza, Israel puts so much value on human life. Look at what they were willing to give for this one person. We will inoculate ourselves against a

major response from Israel because we'll have, you know, 150, 200, whatever the number may be. Has this, do you think, changed the psychology, at has this do you think changed the psychology at least your psychology and change the psychology of the israeli public about i know you said they'll fight they'll fight the war like there's no hostages but is it just changed the psychology because it was controversial i mean i've heard leor i mean i talked it was very controversial yeah yeah these big prisoner exchanges were really controversial what because, you know, Lior would say, what precedent are we setting? You know, we're creating incentives for more. Of course.

And again, you know, I've been writing it in the last week a couple of times. I think that Gilad Shalit's deal was the mother of all mistakes that were done vis-a-vis Hamas. I think that that is the biggest crucial mistake that made Hamas so strong, so popular, and allowed them to have more very capable terrorist leaders like Yahya Senwar, like the commander of even the raid to Israel, Laas Ad-Dak,

that was also a former prisoner that was released in the Shalit deal. So it's all coming to the understanding that, yes, we were wrong. Now, what does he do now with 115 in I don't know where? I think that, again, it's a kind of a catch, even for Hamas, because, you know, if you have one soldier of five, the Israeli public knows their their name knows their identity what they used to have for breakfast and where which high school they went to so you you feel very connected and

it's very personal with 150 the state or the people of israel are saying, we need to, first of all, eliminate the threat. Then we will get to deal with, okay, how do we release them? But first of all, there's a sword on our neck, so we don't start to talk about other stuff. First of all, let's remove the sword. And this sword is Hamas right now. You have incredible sources in the West Bank.

You've been deeply embedded there. Do you worry about another front opening up in the West Bank? It's not a front. It's not going to be a front. We're probably going to see some escalation. There is already

some escalation going on. Like yesterday, we had lots of demonstrations in different areas of the West Bank, but it's not a kind of a large scale intifada. And then again, the PA doesn't want to play to the hands of Hamas. I think that the PA wants to let Hamas pay the price right now. And maybe someone over there in the Palestinian Authority knows already, if Hamas would be gone from the Gaza Strip, Israel will need

someone to deal with, to negotiate with. And that's a kind of the big dream or maybe the fantasy that some people in the Palestinian Authority has, that Israel will do the very dirty job of removing Hamas' regime from Gaza and maybe that will allow the PA to go back. Now, that's not, maybe I exaggerated because it's not such a... And just to be clear, prior to 2007, the PA, the's not, maybe I exaggerated because it's not such a... Just to be clear, prior to 2007, the PA, the Palestinian Authority, led by Mahmoud Abbas, was running

Gaza. They got driven out by Hamas. Gaza, but then came the coup, the Hamas' coup, killing 160 members of Fatah and taking over Gaza. So since then, there's no one... And we've talked about this in previous conversations on this podcast, that Gaza was literally slaughtering Hamas.

I mean, Hamas was slaughtering Palestinian Authority officials, throwing them from the tops of buildings, killing them as they staged this coup. And the PA has never been able to be back in charge. And you're saying now they may say, OK, this is our shot. Israel is going to go in and get rid of Hamas and we can retake control. And again, it's not going to be that easy because it's not such a big dream. It is a dream, but it's not such a good dream, you know, to go and manage Gaza. Good luck with that. It's a very poor area.

It's a very radical area. And probably some people in Gaza will do some very tough life for the Palestinian Authority if it will go back and control Gaza Strip. All right, Avi, I know you have to go, and we're grateful for your time. Before you do, can you just, with the remaining minute or two we have, tell us about your past week, the week that was for you, for Avi, like starting with the news breaking last Saturday. Last Saturday, it wasn't even the news breaking.

It was 6.30 a.m. in the morning. My daughter knocked on my door and woke me up and said, Dad, Dad, there's a siren going on. And I was shocked, like, what's going on? And I heard the siren, so immediately we ran to the mamad, the shelter in our house. We waited a few minutes till it was gone. And then we opened up the TV and we understood that there's a kind of a big strike from Gaza,

meaning that Hamas is shooting rockets like crazy. And I started to watch the TV reports. And then I moved to Al-Tazira in Arabic. I speak fluent Arabic. And then slowly, slowly, I learned about what Hamas was doing there from his own perspective and the declaration of the leader

of the military wing of Hamas, Mohammed Def, who planned all this. And then we understood that we were at war. But then came the terrible reports about what's going on in the kibbutzim and the villages and the tales. And the day was such a long day because every minute

that passed by was even worse than the minute before it every hour the same just more and more bad news and the numbers that are going up and up and up and you see all those clips of people that are being held and being taken to gaza and people that are getting killed over there in those villages and towns and you cannot believe that this is the catastrophe that is taking place now in front of you on TV. I mean, people learned through the TV, through live broadcasting of Hamas and others about the catastrophe that was taking place in Gaza's periphery.

At the end, you know, after 24 hours, I found myself on Sunday with my partner, Merav. We went to bring some food, kosher food, to some soldiers in the south. The day after, Monday, I went to Sderot town, and then my friend, my partner from Fauda, joined me, and we took some effort with, we joined a group of a civilian organization called Brothers in Arms that had been founded 10 months ago

as a kind of a protest organization against Netanyahu. And this organization- And Sderot is on the Gaza border. Yes. I mean, it's right there, yeah. Yes, and the mission, the new mission that Achim Laneshek, the Brothers in Arms, had is not going to organize any kind of demonstrations, but the opposite.

Now we're at war. We need to help people. We need to help especially the people in the periphery of Gaza, especially the ones that don't have vehicles. They are very poor or they're afraid to leave their houses. But we needed to bring them out to a more safe zone. So this is what we did. We went into Sderot, which is very close to the border, under rocket shelling with a shooting incident that took place right behind me. But at the end, we got there safely. Tuesday, again, I went to Mefalsim Kibbutz. I saw all the horrors over there.

Wednesday, I went to the towns of Ofakim, Sderot, and Ashkelon, which has been targeted in a very intensive way by Hamas. It's a town. It's not a village. And on Thursday, I was all over the TV studios and then trying to help the families

that their relatives were abducted or missing, I was all over the TV studios and then trying to help the families that were there, relatives who were abducted or missing, just trying to think together, you know, how can they raise their voice, how can their voice be heard in a more good way all over the world, but also in Israel. Avi, thank you. I will stay in close touch with you. Hopefully we'll have you back on. But most importantly, thank you for everything you're doing. Thank you. I miss you. Stay safe. Me too. Thank you, Dan. Thank you. Bye-bye. That's our episode for today. To keep up with Avi Isikarov, you can find him on the website formerly known as Twitter,

at Isikarov. We'll be back with a new episode on Monday. Call Me Back is produced by Ilan Benatar. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.