Call Me Back - with Dan Senor - The Tragic End of the Bibas Story - with Matti Friedman

Episode Date: February 20, 2025

This morning in Gaza, in a ceremony that was even more twisted than those that came before it, Hamas paraded four coffins, containing the dead bodies of four hostages who were killed in captivity, before handing them over to the Red Cross. Israel then received the remains of Oded Lifshitz, an 83-year-old peace activist abducted from his home in Kibbutz Nir Oz; and the bodies of the iconic young mother Shiri Bibas, and her boys, Kfir and Ariel, who were respectively 9 months old and 4 years old at the time of their abduction, also from Nir Oz, which lost a quarter of its residents on October 7, 2023. Shiri, Kfir and Ariel came to symbolize Hamas’s brutality and the helplessness of the victims of October 7. Oded was also a symbol of the many men and women who had dedicated their lives to seeking peace with the Palestinians, and whose lives were brutally ended by Palestinians on that darkest of days. In a year of somber days, today is one of the more difficult ones we have experienced - here at Call Me Back, and as a nation. We are joined today to process this wrenching moment by a Call Me Back favorite: Matti Friedman, to help us understand what this day means for Israel, and how it will change us and the stories we tell ourselves about Israel and our hopes for peace. Matt Friedman is an award-winning journalist and author of four books. He is based in Jerusalem, and writes a column for The Free Press. Read his latest, “The Family That Never Came Home,” here: https://www.thefp.com/p/matti-friedman-the-bibas-shiri-kfir-ariel-yardenMatti’s books: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Matti-Friedman/author/B0073YU31CLink to Seth Mandel’s article in Commentary Magazine, mentioned by Dan in this episode: https://www.commentary.org/seth-mandel/the-meaning-of-kfir-bibas/We would like to take this opportunity to thank Rebecca Strom, who has been running Ark Media’s operations almost since the beginning of the war, and is now moving on to the next chapter in her career. Rebecca was our first hire, and in hindsight, having her run our operations allowed Ilan and Dan to develop a larger vision. More on that in the near future. In the meantime, on behalf of the Ark Media team, we want to share our gratitude for all the hard work, long hours, holidays and weekends that Rebecca poured into this venture.Consequently, Ark Media is now looking for a hard working, mission-aligned, highly motivated Chief Operating Officer. If you want to throw your hat into the ring,  please follow this link CREDITS:ILAN BENATAR - Producer & EditorMARTIN HUERGO - EditorSTAV SLAMA - Director of OperationsGABE SILVERSTEIN - Research Intern YUVAL SEMO - Music Composer

there was always this possibility that this was a trick of some kind. But I think more than anything else, it was an unwillingness to accept that this family had been killed because we were intimately familiar with their faces. We felt that we knew them and we knew those two kids. And basically the decision was that we would not accept that they were dead until we were forced to accept that it was true. And that moment arrived this morning. ["The New York Times"] It's nine o'clock a.m. on Thursday, February 20th here in New York City. It is four o'clock p.m. on Thursday, February 20th here in New York City

It is 4 o'clock p.m. on Thursday, February 20th in Israel as the nation grieves following the return of the bodies of Oded Lifshitz Shiri Bebas and her two sons Ariel Bebas and Kfir Bebas Ariel Bibas and Kfir Bibas. Oded Lifshitz was 83 years old when he was taken hostage on October 7th, 2023. Shiri Bibas was 32 at the time. Her son Ariel Bibas was four years old

and her younger son Kfir Bibas was nine months old when taken hostage. Their father Yarden Bibas, also taken hostage on October 7th, returned to Israel earlier this month. For Israelis and for many people around the world, the story of the Bebas family has become a symbol of the brutality and barbarism of Hamas and that face of nine-month-old Kfir Bebas served as a harsh reminder of the helplessness that the victims of October 7th were faced with that day and beyond. With us to discuss the events of this awful day and what it means for Israeli society,

Call Me Back regular Mati Friedman joins us from Jerusalem. Mati, welcome back to the podcast, albeit under some pretty dreadful circumstances. Thanks for having me on. Mati, before you describe the tragic events of the day, which you have been experiencing your seven hours ahead of us, so most of your days happened this horrendous day, can you just tell us a little bit about who Oded Lifshitz and Shiri Bebas and her two sons, Ariel and Kfir, were? Who were these people?

So, we're very quick to ascribe political meaning to the hostages and to their story and to kind of draw different conclusions about what we need to do. But I think that's the right question to start with, because these are primarily people who didn't ask to be symbols of anything. Oded Livsheits, as you said, was 83.

He's grandfather among the founders of Kibbutz Niel Oz. He's a former journalist. He's a longtime left-wing activist. He spent years writing for left-wing newspapers like Alam Ishmael. And he organized a conference in 1972, which was actually called the Nir Oz Conference, which was organized to oppose the building of settlements

in territories that Israel had captured a few years before in the Six Day War. So as his wife, Yocheved, was also a hostage, she was released early on in the war. As she said of him, recently she said, he spent much of his life fighting for the rights of Palestinians. And that's one of the terrible ironies of how his life ended.

Shili Bivas, as you described her, was a young mother, lived on the same kibbutz, Neel Oz, which was among the hardest hit kibbutz in October 7th. About a quarter of the people on the kibbutz were murdered or taken captive. She was a young mother with two little kids, and they woke up on Saturday morning, Shabbat morning, and thought they were safe, and were dragged into Gaza,

and came back today in coffins. Matti, over the past few weeks, during this first phase of the hostage deal, we've been witnessing these scenes of hostages being released. In each of these scenes, there's a despicable parade and humiliating ceremony in Gaza, and then that's followed by the arrival of the hostages

in each one of those releases in Israeli hospitals, and finally scenes of the hostages in each one of those releases in Israeli hospitals and finally scenes where usually hostages are reunited with their families. So even when hostages return in a horrible state as they did a couple of weeks ago, physically horrible that the scenes of these hostages reuniting with their families is, you can't help but feel some joy,

even if the hostages looked quite unhealthy. Contrast that with today's scenes. So those of us who've seen the Hamas ceremonies are forced to sit through this kind of sick show of masked armed terrorists standing and bringing in live hostages and forcing them to speak and giving them certificates. And, you know, we've kind of become used to this really. And gift bags. And gift bags.

And gift bags. This twisted kind of drama that just is awful. It really turns your stomach. But you know if you're watching it that within an hour or two or three, we'll see images of these people reunited with their families. And that makes it worth it not just to experience the terrible images, of course, but to pay the horrific price that Israel's paying to get these people back.

We're releasing some of the worst people in our prisons. We're paying with the lives of people in the future for people in the present, and Israelis are aware of it. But it's worth it to get live Israeli citizens back. And today, we experienced the same kind of twisted ceremony, but we got coffins back and the convoy that came out of Gaza, so the coffins are carried by these Hamas guys and turned over to the Red Cross.

The Red Cross brings them to the Israeli army, and then they come in in a convoy past the gate between Gaza and Israel, past saluting soldiers and people waving Israeli flags. And they drove not to be reunited with families, and they didn't drive to hospitals. They drove to the morgue. They drove to the forensic center at Abu Kabir where the bodies will be examined to ensure that these are indeed the four people who we think they are and to try to determine

the cause of death. So it's a very different kind of return. It's the first time that Hamas has returned bodies. Israel's managed to retrieve several dead hostages from Gaza, but it's the first time we're getting bodies back as part of a hostage exchange. So it's a new kind of image and it's a very dark day here in Israel.

At those ceremonies over the last several weeks, you see people turn out, you see people bring out their children to watch the ceremonies, Palestinians as though this is a moment of pride for the quote unquote resistance. Today, I saw images of Hamas carrying the coffins and you'd see the same scene where people turn out. You saw Palestinians bring

out their children and babies to watch the handover of these coffins with other children, Jewish children in the coffins. I don't know why I'm surprised by that. I mean, really, given everything we've known and seen, I shouldn't be surprised by it. And yet, whenever I question what can be done about Palestinian society, non-Hamas Palestinian society, and then I see that image, and I think all this talk of de-radicalization, and it just, I don't know, that image just made me think,

are we completely kidding ourselves? Are we just deluding ourselves? And hundreds of millions of people across the Middle East and across the world support Hamas. And there are states that are close to the United States that support Hamas. In fact, one of America's major non-NATO allies houses the Hamas leadership and has funded Hamas for years.

And a NATO member, Turkey, also supports Hamas. So it's not just a certain part of Palestinian society we're talking about phenomenon that that should be giving us all pause and of course it's an ideological movement that has representatives in the West and not just people who are actively involved in violence in the West and of course we've seen that since 9-11 before 9-11 in London in London, and then Madrid, and Nice, and Paris, and in New Orleans, and elsewhere. But there are a lot of people on American university campuses

who seem to think that this is a legitimate way to resist oppressive power structures of the West. So I think that it's a moment where we all have to look very closely at these images and not delude ourselves. This isn't a small minority. I think there's been a lot of confusion caused by the use of the word Hamas in coverage of all of this. And I've been speaking to a lot of people in the West,

primarily Americans, and some Canadians who really haven't understood that Hamas is the Palestinians. And they think it might be a group like ISIS, which is kind of some outside group that grabs territory and doesn't have much popular support or some kind of group of aliens that landed from the moon and attacked Israel. So you'll hear about the Hamas attack on Israel. And then it's not clear why Palestinians are paying the price for a Hamas attack on Israel. And I've just realized that a lot of people don't understand the connection between Hamas

and the Palestinians. Hamas is an acronym. It just means Islamic resistance movement, Harakat al Mukawam al Iskhamiyya. It represents a huge part of Palestinian society. I don't know if it's a majority today or not. You can't really know from the polls. They tell you all kinds of different things, but certainly the last time the Palestinians had an election, which was in 2006, Hamas won the

election. So it's not some fringe group. And when they carry out this kind of attack and it's celebrated across Gaza and when they hold a ceremony and thousands of people come with their kids, we're talking about a group whose ideology and tactics have broad popular support across much of the Middle East and increasingly elsewhere in the world. It's also worth pointing out that the Bibi S family were not initially taken by Hamas. They were taken by basically by armed Palestinians who followed the Hamas fighters into Israel. They identified themselves later as a faction in Gaza that no one had ever heard of. So like other hostages who are still being held,

and some have been released, they were taken by people who aren't part of Hamas, but who use the same tactics and saw this as a completely legitimate action to take. They took a mother, a four-year-old, and a nine-month-old at gunpoint, and thought that was an action worth celebrating, just as they thought that today's ceremony was something that you could take your kids to.

So I think we have to look at this very carefully and draw conclusions. One thing that we learned from October 7th, and I'm saying this primarily to myself as someone who's always been person of liberal sentiments and who's always hoped for peace with Palestinians and with the broader Arab world, I think that we now know that you can pay

an unbearable price for your delusions. You have to look reality right in the face. Because if you don't, we've seen what can happen. And I think today we got a very painful illustration of that. Mati, Shiri and Kfir and Ariel, in particular, have become a symbol for many of us, for Israelis and for Jews in the diaspora, in many respects, I think, for different reasons, meaning that between those two communities, let's start

with Israelis. Why do you think Shiri Kfir and Ariel have become such a symbol for Israelis? And what did they symbolize? I think when you have an event of the scale of October 7th and the number of casualties, we're talking about 1,200 fatalities, Israeli fatalities on October 7th, and 250 hostages, which are numbers that are just unthinkable to Israelis before October 7th, and it's almost too much to imagine. You can't really wrap your head around that scale.

So you zoom in on one face, two faces. And I think for many people, the face or faces that they zoomed in on or that they focused on or that they tried to hold in their head were the faces of these kind of beautiful redheaded kids, Ariel and Kfir Bibas. And you saw them on postage posters in the United States. You saw them being ripped down in the United States.

And I think one reason that people who sympathize with Israel tried to put the faces of those kids up was that it just makes a point that is almost too obvious to deny, which is that anyone who would kidnap and cause the death of those two kids, however they died, that's just sheer barbarism. So that's a point that Israel supporters wanted to make. And I think that's one reason that you saw the Bebus kids become almost the symbols of what happened on October 7th. Otherwise, it's just a

number and those faces really, they're hard to forget. And I think many of us probably won't forget them. I think for Jews in the diaspora, they kind of became a symbol of anti-Semitism or of hostility to Jews. How could you rip down these posters? And we saw these videos of people ripping down posters, specifically of Ariel and Kfir.

And it just seemed so obviously an act of hostility against innocent people. For Israelis, it's a bit more complicated. People see it, I think, in two ways. It's a symbol, clearly, of the barbarism of the Palestinian terrorists who committed this act. Again, no matter how they died, and Hamas claims that they were killed

in an Israeli airstrike, and that is false. The responsibility for their deaths lies with the people who seized them from their beds at gunpoint and took them into Gaza. At the same time, it's also, I think for Israelis, a sign of Israeli weakness. It's a symbol of Israeli weakness, because pictures like a picture of a young mother

being herded at gunpoint out of her home, these were images that we were never supposed to see after 1948 when the state of Israel was founded. This is an image from a pogrom in Kishinev in 1903. It's an image from Poland in 1943. It's not an image that you were supposed to see in the state of Israel in 2023. We believe that the foundation of the state,

the creation of the state, revolutionized the situation of Jews in the world. In fact, Jews were not gonna be Jews anymore. They were going to be Israelis, which was supposed to be something completely different. And when you see an image like that and the other images that came from October 7th, your sense of safety is completely shattered.

And I think for Israelis, it's also that image of Sheree Bibas and her two kids being taken from their homes is not just an image of October 7th, it's really almost an illustration of the shattering of everything that Israelis believed to be true on October 6th. I agree with everything you're saying. I think for Jews in the diaspora, speaking as a Jew in the diaspora, it's not entirely different from what you're describing, but there's one added element to this family's tragedy that I think has touched a nerve for diaspora Jews

that I have not been able to articulate. And then, you know, sometimes you read something and you're like, that's kind of what I've been feeling, but I haven't been able to articulate it. Seth Mandel from Commentary Magazine wrote a piece about what the Bebas family represents. I'm not going to read the entire piece. We'll link to it in the show notes. This is his perspective of how we in the US, for instance, but it's not just as Jews throughout the West. He writes, as the pro-Palestinian mobs filled the streets of

every major city to celebrate Hamas's slaughter. Jews around the world looked at them dumbfounded. They kidnapped a baby. How much does one have to hate Jews to side with the monsters who kidnap babies? A lot is the answer. An unpleasant realization Jews came to over the past 16 months. It is impossible for the rest of us to pretend that we didn't see a chunk of society, whether in person or online, rushed across that line and cheer the people who kidnapped a baby.

Kfir became a symbol because he's the answer to every relevant question about this conflict. His case is the war boiled down to its essence Fear is the dividing line in a better world. There would be no one standing on the wrong side of it and Monte I just that's how I feel I feel like I get into these are you and I were talking before we started recording where we get into these debates about the conflict and the origins of the conflict and the nuance and the You know Debates about the conflict and the origins of the conflict and the nuance and the you know How much aid is getting into Gaza while the war is being fought and measuring how many trucks and get into all this stuff And then you're like I'm arguing with people who won't condemn the kidnapping of a baby. Why am I even arguing?

What am I debating here as though the people I'm arguing with are operating in good faith And I just think you know you Monty live in Israel So you're surrounded by Israelis who on these core issues, which are really the essence of life You know questions. They're all with you even if they disagree with you more or less Ideologically on this matter that matter generally speaking I think I am not speaking for every Israeli, but most Israelis have the same reaction and what's scary I think for so many Jews is we go through our lives outside of our Jewish life

and we're largely assimilated into Western American life and we're interacting with people every day who don't see the same thing you and I see when we see that poster of fear and it scares the hell out of us. Because you can't, as Seth Mandel said, you can't unsee that reality. You can't ever look at many of those people

who you deal with day to day and you thought you had to share the same values. You can't ever really look at them the same way. Yeah, I think that's why October 7th is such a tectonic shift. It's a civilizational moment, not only for people here in Israel who've had to reassess how we view the state of Israel and how we view our neighbors, but for many people abroad and not only

Jews who've had to see something that maybe many of us didn't want to see, which is a liberal strain of thought and acceptance of things that should not be accepted. And I agree, we have to resist the urge to look away. And I think that many of us were looking away before October 7th. I'm saying this as an Israeli who lives in Jerusalem, but guess, an hour and a half or two hours away from the Kibbutz, from which these people were taken. So I wasn't looking at certain things and neither were the people at near Oz and they paid a terrible price. We all paid a terrible price for it. And it's worth maybe thinking about the people on this Kibbutz who are secular Israelis. The Kibbutz comes from that beautiful old Israel

of farming the land and seeing Zionism as part of a global movement toward justice and equality. That would of course include the Palestinians and the entire Arab world. And Odad Lifshitz was very much part of that world. And the people who bore the brunt of the attack were part of that world I was at near Oz not long ago. And you walk around the kibbutz

and it's this beautiful place with modest homes, and you're walking by the homes, and suddenly one of the little cottages is completely burned out because a family was burned to death inside. And more than anything else, before we talk about the political symbolism of these people, or the place that they were from, or what it means for the future of Israel,

and the Kibbutz idea, and hopes for peace, I think that we all have to remember that these are primarily individuals, and this is a tragedy for the people who love them, for Jochebed Levshevitz, who lost her husband, and for Oded's kids and grandchildren, and for Yarden Bibas, who we haven't spoken about. But Yarden was the father of Ariel and Kfir,

and the husband of Shir. And he was taken separately. And there's terrible video of him being taken into Gaza on a motorcycle covered in blood and being beaten by dozens of people who are around him. And he survived somehow 15 months in captivity and was released a few weeks ago in a hostage swap and now has to face life without his family.

So before Kfir Bibas is a symbol of anything, he was a nine month old kid who, you kid who should have grown up and won't. We've known Mati for some time through Israeli officials that the Bebas were in fact killed in captivity, but there was this sense of disbelief and people who care desperately held out hope that in the end we would see Shiri and Kfeir and Ariel make it out of Gaza alive.

And even though, you know, I am sure you had heard from people we talked to in the Israeli government that even though they had not officially confirmed their deaths, they said they're dead. And when I would say this to people, they were surprised. Like I was struck by how many people actually thought we would see the Be-Boss family again, united, even though everyone, I just felt like everyone kind of knew that wasn't gonna happen, especially after in this phase of the deal, week after week, the B-Bosses were not coming out,

even though the first release of hostages were supposed to be those in the quote unquote, humanitarian category, women and children. Back in November of 23, all the women and children, or a lot of them were supposed to be released, the B-Bosses were never included in November of 23 all the women and children or a lot of them were Supposed to be released the b-bosses were never included in any of those rounds So it was to me obvious even if you hadn't spoken to officials in the government that they were killed What explains that everybody's known this and yet? No one has wanted to stare at it I was just thinking about that this morning as I wrote a piece about this for the free press

Which is this strange psychological space that this family occupied for Israelis since very early on in the war when Hamas announced that they'd been killed in an Israeli airstrike. And that was never officially confirmed. But as you said, there was a release of mothers and children in November of 2023, and Shiri and Ariel and and clear were not included in the release, which voted ill for their fate. And I think many of us understood that they were that they were not alive. And yet there was this unwillingness to accept that that was true. So there are two things going on. One is that there always was the possibility that this was psychological warfare by Hamas. And we know that there have been false reports about

the state of hostages. The example that stands out for me is Daniela Gilboa, a young woman who was just released. Hamas produced a video that made it seem that she'd been killed in an Israeli airstrike and we just saw her walk out of Gaza. So there was always this possibility that this was a trick of some kind, but I think more than anything else, it was an unwillingness to accept that this family had been killed because we were intimately familiar with their faces. We felt that we knew them and we knew those two kids. And basically the decision was that we would not accept

that they were dead until we were forced to accept that it was true. And that moment arrived this morning. On that point, I think another element here that has made this so difficult to come to terms with the reality of the deaths of Shiri and her two children has been that there's been real speculation that the way they were actually killed was as a result of the war of the IDF prosecution of this defensive war, which obviously involves a lot of military action, a lot of bombing in Gaza, and maybe that was how the Sherri B. Buss and Kfir and Ariel were killed.

I think it's important though, if that is true, and we don't know if it's true for sure, it hasn't been confirmed, but Nadav Ariel posted something on X yesterday that I just want to read here. I think he was anticipating this claim. Well, the IDF is responsible for this. He wrote, and I'm quoting here, stating the obvious because in today's world it isn't obvious anymore. A terror regime that kidnaps a mother and her babies is responsible for their fate. If they die, it is cold blooded murder.

But Mati, we have been talking about this war now for more than 16 months. And we've mostly been looking at it through the lens of terms like strategy and geopolitics and the implications for society and all of these big grownup words. But these big grownup words are not how children are processing today's events

and how today's events are being explained to them. I mean, you're in a community with a lot of children, you're in a family with a lot of children. All of Israel has lots of children. Just generally speaking, how do you think Israeli children are experiencing what we've all been watching today? Yeah, such a great question. I have four children and today the education ministry

sent around suggestions for how parents and teachers should speak to kids about this. One of the things you learn as a parent here is that there's no way to protect your children from it because even if you don't tell your kids what happened to children like the B-Bus children and 38 children were murdered on October 7th, the whole landscape is telling them this story. You walk them to school and there's pictures up at the bus stop, there's pictures in the storefronts, there's graffiti all over the place. And that tells you something, even if you're lucky enough not to know someone

who was killed in the war or taken hostage. And in the case of my kids, they knew Hirsch Goldberg-Polin, who's a name that will be familiar to many of your listeners, an American Israeli who was taken hostage at the Nova Music Festival and murdered in August, 2024. So my kids knew him personally. We had lunch on Shabbat at the Nova Music Festival and murdered in August, 2024. So my kids knew him personally. We had lunch on Shabbat at the house of his family a few weeks before October 7th.

They knew Yuval Shoham was a soldier, was just killed in his tank about six weeks ago. And others, those are just two examples. So there's just no way to protect them from it. And then they talk about it and either their teacher is talking with them about it in the classroom or they're having discussions with their friends about it in the playground. So I just asked one of my 17 year olds, I have 17 year old twins, boys, I just asked him what they were talking

about today in school and he said the teachers didn't directly address it but they were sitting outside with friends and it was very much on their minds and he said a lot of his friends were posting things about it on Instagram and some people thought it was, you know, terribly sad. He seemed to think that it was more girls who were saying that it was sad and tragic and other kids, maybe the boys were trying to, you know, kind of put a tougher face on it and say that, of course, it's a tragedy, but is it necessarily more tragic than other things? That's the way he put it to me. And I remember that this kid knows about a half dozen people who've been killed since October 7th, including his former principal. So this tragedy isn't coming out of

blue. It's hitting kids who've already been rocked by tragedy after tragedy for the past 16 months. So being a kid in Israel is complicated, and I'm not sure it's very different than the way I grew up in Toronto in the 80s and 90s. And I'm not sure how all of it will play out, but it's certainly something that all of our kids are navigating. It's going into the hard disk. It'll come out in some unpredictable way later on. And as a parent, you can try to tell the story

in a way that you think is constructive and you can try to help them if they seem to be taking it hard, but there's really no way to tell them anything other than the truth. Just taking a more kind of macro look at the impact of a day like today on events going forward. How do you think the return of these four dead hostages might influence Israeli public sentiment and potentially other directly or indirectly shape the second phase of the deal

and the future of the war if there is going to be a second phase of the deal and the future of the war, if there is going to be a second phase of the deal. Does this change how Israelis go about where you go from here? I think the question today is not that different than the question yesterday, which is, what do we do now? Do we resume the fighting in an attempt to destroy Hamas?

Are we enraged by what we're seeing in a way that makes us want to resume the fighting in an attempt to destroy Hamas? Are we enraged by what we're seeing in a way that makes us want to resume the war? Or do we do anything we need to do to get hostages back? And if you look at polling information and if you just talk to Israelis, you'll see that people tend to prefer the second option. People are willing to do a lot, almost anything, to get live hostages back, even if that means leaving these terrible people intact in Gaza. So I'm not sure that what happened today will have a dramatic impact on what was going to happen anyway. Israelis have no faith that peace is going to be possible with our neighbors. That was true yesterday. It was true on October 8th. For many people, it was true on October 6th. So that hasn't changed. And I think

that we're going to be torn by these conflicting desires. We want to eliminate the people who could do something like this to us, to Kofi al-Bibas, to his mother, to Oded Lifshitz, to the other victims of October 7th. And at the same time, we understand that there are limits to our own power. We've been fighting for 16 months in Gaza. The two goals of the war were to eliminate the military threat from Hamas and get the hostages back.

And there's no way today to argue that those goals have been achieved. So that dilemma remains. I try to remind myself that there's a difference between perception victories and real victories. And it's something that we Israelis have had to deal with in an intense way since the 90s when it was really Hezbollah who pioneered it. But when the media started to be used almost as a weapon against Israel where our enemies were creating these very powerful propaganda narratives that told a story of their victory and our defeat. And actually, one of the first really successful examples of

that was at this small military outpost where I served in the 90s, which we've discussed in the past called Outpost Pumpkin. This was October 94. A Zbalat team attacked the outpost, managed to kill a soldier, stuck a flag into the top of the outpost, and then ran away. And it seemed to the army as if nothing had happened because the outpost hadn't been captured and there was no major change to the Israeli deployment in south Lebanon. But one of the Hezbollah fighters had a camera, a video camera, and they produced a propaganda video where you

see them attacking the outpost and planting a flag on top of the outpost. And it looked like Iwo Jima. So it told a story about Hezbollah's victory and the defeat of Israel. And Israel's insistence that nothing had happened was almost irrelevant because what they had discovered was that part of this war, a big part, maybe the majority, is being fought in people's brains. It's being fought on screens. And that's something that started to happen in the 90s. And what you saw today, what we've seen in all of these twisted ceremonies produced by Hamas is that they are acutely aware of image. And if you tune into the live feed that you can see on places like Al Jazeera,

not that I'm recommending this, but if you tune into the live feed that starts before the ceremonies, then you'll see that there are people who are very carefully arranging the Hamas fighters in a line, and they're draping them with kaffiyas, and they're giving them Palestinian flags. Someone is going to the trouble of printing these banners that appear behind the hostages,

like the one that we saw today, which showed Netanyahu as a vampire and blamed him for killing the people who were being returned. So someone is very smart about image, and someone in Gaza, maybe many people, believe that this is a victory. And I think that many Israelis watching these images are also convinced that this is a victory. And I think that many Israelis watching these images are also convinced that this is a defeat for Israel. And in many ways,

of course, it is. As I mentioned, it shows that the twin goals of the war in Gaza have not been achieved and maybe could never have been achieved together. But I think it's important to remember that in the real war outside the perception war, we're winning. So Israel's position in the Middle East has been revolutionized in many ways over the past six months. We've seen Hezbollah decapitated in Lebanon in a campaign that I think will be studied for decades into the future. We saw the fall of the Assad regime in Syria and the elimination of almost all of Syria's military hardware. We've seen the Iranians weakened with a few brilliant operations by

the Israeli Air Force and the Mossad in the heart of Iran. And we've seen Hamas' military capabilities severely degraded. They haven't been erased as we saw today, but they're not the force that they were a few months ago or 16 months ago. And I think it's important to remember that there is a war that is not on a screen. And there's a war that isn't connected to some production by Hamas where they parade coffins in front of parents, their own parents and children, and tell themselves some kind of story about how they're winning,

ultimately, if you zoom even farther out beyond this war and just look at Israel over the past 75 years, over the past century, you'll see that Israel's managed to create an amazing country, which is a dark moment that we'll get through. And it's a flawed society in many ways, but we've built a refugee camp in a war zone into a place that is full of more or less happy people who have kids and can provide services to citizens.

And it's still a good place to visit and people are living their lives, including many Arab Muslims. And on the other side, you have our enemies who are kind of waving a flag and declaring victory while they stand on a pile of rubble. And it's not just the Palestinians, of course, it's Hezbollah and Lebanon and many other examples from the from the immediate region. So they can tell themselves that story, they can tell us that story. But I think if we keep our gaze fixed on reality, there's no question in this war, the one that started on October 7, and in the long

war to which we've been subjected for almost eight decades now, there's no question who's actually winning. Mati, in closing, I guess my last question is, I try not to fix it on any one particular image or event, but as we've been discussing, this one does feel like an inflection point or seminal. What do you think the long-term effect of what we saw today will be on Israeli society?

I think it's gonna be very hard to forget the images of those kids. And I don't think that there's a dramatic change today, as compared to yesterday. I think that the lessons that we learned today are lessons that we've been learning since October 7th. And I think that many Israelis would say that that lesson has been learned

since the eruption of the second Intifada and the collapse of the peace process and the kind of decimation of the Israeli left by Hamas and by groups like Hamas and Hezbollah and the rise of radical Islam across the Middle East and the hopes that many Israelis had when I moved to Israel in 1995, the hopes of a peaceful resolution of this conflict. Those hopes have been dashed again and again until I think we can say that they were conclusively dashed on October 7th. And I think that today was a particularly painful and dramatic illustration of something that we've seen, which is that many of our neighbors will be satisfied with nothing short of our death or disappearance. But the images are deep in people's brains.

This is not a passing event. If people in America or in the West are imagining that this is a war that's gonna be concluded with some kind of peace agreement and everyone's gonna move on and kind of return to the same kind of thinking that we indulged in before October 7th, it's just not gonna happen. It's not that kind of event.

It's not a big terror attack. It's not a short war. It's a seminal event that's changing the ways Israelis see themselves and their place in the region. And going back to that question that you asked about the kids and thinking about how this will affect region. And going back to that question that you asked about the kids and thinking about how this will affect them. Someone like me, maybe someone like you,

we have certain ideas, and, you know, we're pretty far along in our lives, and our kids aren't. I mean, for many of our kids, this is really the first thing that they will remember. And I'm not sure exactly how it's going to affect them, but I was sitting at a Shabbat dinner a few weeks ago with good friends of ours, parents basically our age, you know,

mid late 40s, they have five kids and we were sitting around the table and we're talking about what Israeli parents talk about these days, which is the war and you know, people with kids in the army and member of our synagogue, I mentioned Yuvval Shahn was killed not long ago and Hirsch, who we all knew, was a kid walking around the neighborhood a year and a half ago. We're having this conversation about Hamas and Hezbollah and all of our kids are sitting at the table and you can kind of forget there were nine Israeli kids sitting at the table. And my friend, Yonatan, who's actually a listener of this podcast, he turned as we were speaking and he turned to the kids and he said, I'm so sorry, which I thought

was such a profound comment. He was apologizing for the fact that this was their world and this was the country that they had to grow up in. And it's worth remembering as we persevere through this dark moment and we will persevere through it, but it's worth remembering as we persevere through this dark moment, and we will persevere through it, but it's worth remembering that this is gonna have an effect on our children, and we have to hope that they get through it as best they can. Mati, we will leave it there. Thank you as always, and hope to talk to you soon

on this podcast on a less dark day. Not gonna say on a bright day, because I don't know where the bright days are, but hopefully one that's not as totally demoralizing as this one. Those days are coming. Thanks, Mati. That's our show for today. Before we go, I just want to take a moment to thank Rebecca Strom,

who has been running ArcK Media's operations almost since the beginning of the war. She's now moving on to the next chapter in her career. Rebecca was our first hire and just looking back, having her run and build out our operations allowed Alon and me to think beyond the next episode each time we recorded and think about where this podcast was going and the larger vision for it. So more on that in the near future. But in the meantime, on behalf of our Arc Media team, I wanted to just thank Rebecca for the long work and long hours. And I know those hours were long, including some holidays and the odd weekend here and there that Rebecca poured into this enterprise.

in the odd weekend here and there that Rebecca poured into this enterprise. With Rebecca's departure from Call Me Back and Arc Media, we also wanted to alert you, our community, that we are now looking for a hardworking, mission-aligned, and highly motivated Chief Operating Officer to help us continue to build things out. So if you want to get more information or actually apply, please follow the link in our show notes. Just click on that link and I'll direct you on how to engage with us on this position we are urgently trying to fill. Call Me Back is produced and edited by Ilan Benatar.

Stav Slamas, our Director of Operations. Research by Gabe Silverstein. Additional editing by Martin Tuergo. Our music was composed by Yuval Semmo. Rebecca Strom, we will miss you. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan C. North.