Habits and Hustle - Episode 313: Unveiling the Truth: IDF Soldier Recounts Straightforward Events of October 7th

Episode Date: January 23, 2024

Imagine going from the best day of your life…to the worst. In just a matter of hours.  That’s the reality of this week’s Habits & Hustle guest, Yadin Gellman.  Yadin is an actor who serves as a reservist in the Israeli military. He knows the painful reality of the Israel-Palestine conflict better than most, being on the front lines of October 7 and fighting for his life after being shot by Hamas fighters near the Gaza Strip.  His is a tale of two starkly different worlds. From the deafening silence of the battlefield to the wild applause of an audience. Yadin shares the deep impact his experiences in the Israeli Defense Forces have on his approach to acting. How he balances the gruelling demands of special forces training with his life in the limelight. As well as the harsh truths of his encounters with radical ideologies and how he maintains his hope for peace.  TRIGGER WARNING: Graphic detail of violence and injury. What we discuss: (00:01) - Military service and acting in Israel (19:44) - Going from soldier to actor (37:55) - Concerns of military negligence (43:33) - War and an analysis of the Israeli government (58:26) - Driving through an Israeli war zone (01:10:38) - Fighting and Clearing Houses (01:24:21) - A heroic rescue and survival story  (01:32:59) - Surviving trauma and exposing lies (01:44:10) - Israeli-Palestinian Conflict and Media Bias (01:52:52) - The desensitisation to violence and radical Islam (02:05:04) - Hamas and the possibility of peace  (02:10:25) - How the experience of war has impacted his acting plans Find more from Jen:  Website: https://www.jennifercohen.com/ Instagram: @therealjencohen  Books: https://www.jennifercohen.com/books Speaking: https://www.jennifercohen.com/speaking-engagement Find more from Yadin:  Instagram: @yadingellman

Hi guys, this is Tony Robbins. You're listening to Habits and Hustle. Crush it. This always happens and I try so hard for this not to because I wanted to see him like, okay, so I have a great conversation. I don't want to have a conversation with you before because then I'm going to ask you the same questions. I have a podcast in Israel that hasn't come out yet because of the 7th of October. Stop it. Also a podcast with you? Okay, so I have... Like, it's my podcast.

Yeah, I know. You're the host of the podcast. What kind of podcast is it? It's called, in Hebrew it sounds so much better, it's called L'Ojamim Medabrim, which means combat soldiers talking. Oh, okay. It doesn't sound good in English. It doesn't translate that well. I mean, it sounds really good in Hebrew, like L'Ojamim Medabrim.

It's like a slang. Like I mean, it sounds really good in Hebrew, like, L'hochamin medabrim. It's like a... It's like a slang. Like, friends talking, it feels like. Yeah, so it's friends talking, but like, combat soldiers talking. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I need to find a better... A better name. ...name in English.

So it's about just combat soldiers that are in the industry. I have actors coming and... That already came, and singers, and different performers, stand-up comedians. So you have everybody, basically. Everybody come that were combat soldiers, and singers and different performers, stand-up comedians. So you have everybody basically. Everybody come that were combat soldiers and how they deal with what they went through in the army in their life after as a known person in the Israeli industry.

Oh, that's really interesting. Well, it's interesting because maybe for those who don't know, number one, I want to just introduce who you are. Okay, I'm going to say the name wrong, I feel, but Yadin Gelman, who was a soldier. He got badly hurt, now is obviously recovering, nicely it seems. But he's actually a very famous actor in Israel,

and he had to go back into the army because of what happened on March 7th. But in Israel, everybody when they turn 18, guy, girl, doesn't matter, go, that is part of it. They have to be, they go right into the army regardless, right? And everybody does reserves. Like what I had to explain a lot to people here is that people didn't understand how I'm also an actor and also a soldier. Yes, explain that. That was a lot of the questions I was getting too. Yeah, so in Israel we have to do reserves,

especially combat soldiers. You finish the army and then you do reserves. So we do reserves every month for a few days. What does that mean? Explain what that means. You go in to train. You train for war, for combat situations. Yeah, for different- Every month?

Every month, yeah. You go in and train. For every month? Every month, yeah. You go in and train. For how long? So if something like this happens, you know what to do. And you have all your equipment ready for you. Your gun, your own equipment, your own shoes that wait for you there,

your own bag, everything. Yeah. For how long? Like how long does that go on for? Until you're 50 years old. Yeah. So forever. Where do they even have space and room to

keep your gun, your clothes? So there are units that are are built just to storage the clothes and the equipment of reserves. Huge hangers just like waiting for us. Really? So then you go, so explain this. So then you turn 18, you go into the army for what four years? Three years. Oh three years. Is the mandatory and then I did seven. So why did you do seven? So I went into special forces, which automatically means I sign on another year. That's the first thing. The day you go in, you sign on another year.

So I did four that I had to do. And then I went to officer's course my fourth year. So I had to stay on more. And then I became a commander. So I had to stay on more. And I loved what I was doing. I felt like I'm doing the most important thing a human being can do in Israel. For sure. That's what I felt at all times.

And so can any how did you even become a special forces? Can you describe like what's the process? I mean, so can anyone just do it? So it's like here it's very hard. You can for sure do it. But I don't know. I don't know about that. So it's like first of all, it's everybody's dream to become, like to go into the army and get as high as you can.

Is that like a Navy SEALs? Is that the same equivalent? Yeah, so it's the same, so it's equivalent of like the Delta Force or the Green Berets. The Navy SEALs is what's called Shayetet in Israel, which is whoever's in charge of the Navy. Right, I mean more like the Delta Force, like the high level. Yeah, it's like the high level, right. So what you do is before, when you're 18, you start doing mental tests and psychological tests to see like where you are. And also just regular tests of like mechanical things

and your brain and IQ and all those tests. And then when you finish that, you start doing physical tests. And then you do a day of physical tests, and then two days of physical tests, and then you finish that, you go back to psychological tests, and then you do a week of extreme physical tests all week, where they just try to break you mentally all week. That's what you do.

Give you some examples of what kind of training would they do with you? So first of all, you have no watch all week. Of course, no phone, but no watch. So you don't know at all what time it is. You go to sleep and they'll wake you up an hour later and you won't know if you slept, if you didn't sleep, you have no idea what's going on.

So they tell you to start sprinting. And then you sprint and then they tell you to stop when you get to 20. And then when you get, oh, they tell you to start sprinting. And then you sprint, and then they tell you to stop when you get to 20. And then when you get, oh they tell you to yell out 20 when you get to 20. You get to 20 and then they tell you to keep going. And then after that you start crawling and you're racing all the time. You're racing people and you crawl and you finish that and they tell you to pack up sandbags as heavy as you can, put on your back and start climbing up a mountain. And then you do that with stretchers. And then you sprint two stretchers and whoever gets first

gets to take the stretcher. So if you get there first, you're punished because it's harder, but everybody wants to get there first. So you're always like battling the rest of your team. And then after three days and three nights of that, they cut out half of the people. So you start like a thousand, they cut out 500 on the spot. Wow. Yeah.

And then the rest of the week, four days later, they like the elite 500 that stayed, do that in different teams, continue the training and all week they're training your mind as well. So in the middle of sprinting, they'll give you a riddle. Just throw out a riddle and they say, whoever knows the answer, raise your hand. And then you start sprinting and then suddenly somebody answers the riddle and then another one answers the riddle. And then yeah, so they try to break you at all times. After two days, I had somebody put a gun in my head, like while we

were crawling, just slammed the gun in my head. Slammed it or just pointed it? No, by accident, when we were crawling, he just smashed it in my face. Yeah, I had a concussion and I kept going. With a concussion. I had a concussion, they asked me if I can keep going. I kept going.

I had, my entire face was purple till the end of the week. That's the only reason I went through, because they saw like, okay, he can deal with it. Wow, and they're like basically like shouting, like riddles because they wanna see if you're mentally acute and like an alert. If while you're suffering and physically, you're just going to the edge,

you can still use your brain and be focused at all times. Yeah, and there's like fighting also, like they put you in a ring and strongest man that stays in the ring. Go. So it was so interesting. It's like Israel's known to have like this, like the best army in the world, right? How does the training for the Israeli army compare to like the training for the Delta Force and for the special forces part? You know, have you ever found out or asked? I have trained with the Delta Force and the Rangers and the SEALs in different occasions.

Yeah, there's a lot of work that we do together, a lot of training that we do together. First of all, the main differences that it's better for the US military is that we go in at a really young age and we go in for three years or four years or even seven years, but in the US military, it's a career. And they go in at a much, I mean, even if they go in at 25,

you're not 18, you're 25. You're much more stable. You're not a kid. You're not a kid anymore. Yeah. And it's their career. They look at it as careers. That's what they want to do.

The combat soldiers sometimes are 20 years just combat soldiers. They don't become officers. They don't move forward. They're just combat soldiers. They don't become officers, they don't move forward. They're just combat soldiers. So they're much more professional. I'd say the main difference though between both armies is we fight on our land, on our houses. Like we fight for our people and we see our people with our own eyes.

The US military gets sent to the other side of the world. So when we fight, we feel like if they kill us, that's it. I mean, the family behind me is dead. And it gives us, I think, a much stronger drive to win. Right, because it's basically you, your people. Yeah, it's our people. The survivor mentality is so strong that way. But in terms of the actual tangible practical

training techniques, is it very similar? It's very similar, yeah. It's very similar. And we like change information a lot. We switch between us information. Like if they come up with a new technique, it just happened a few months ago, they have a new technique of taking over a room, they'll share it with us and then we'll share information about how we did it, how we trained. So it's very similar. I think during the training,

they get pushed a little more to the edge in terms of training. But after when you're already a combat soldier, it's pretty much you go through the same things. Because the mental toughness that you have to kind of endure is unbelievable. And because you guys are so young, what's like the I mean, are they more lenient to who gets in versus like they're 25, trying out for the green berets, let's say versus, you know, the special forces in Israel, because you are 18,

we're doing it, do they kind of allow more lenient of who's able to go in to the army in the first place in the special forces? Or it's not they don't think of it that way? No I think they they have their tests and they know what they're testing for and what they're looking for and that's who goes in. But for someone like you, you were 18. Yeah. Okay so what was your background before because you were just like you're a kid. Were you always mentally tough? Were you strong-willed? Were you athletic? What were you like? So I was if I go way back I grew up in Jerusalem during the second Intifada. And then during the second Intifada, you were walking around the streets and buses were exploding in front

of your face. And coffee houses were exploding. And there was the pizza in Sbarro pizza that blew up. A terrorist bomber blew up inside, a suicide bomber and killed so many people. And then there was the Dolphinarium in Tel Aviv where he hurt 130 people I think. And then Park Hotel in Netanya. And you grow up during that time and every day is a risk. And you go to school and it's a risk. And that's already a moment when you realize, okay I got to toughen up. And I remember as a kid looking for terrorists in my own eyes. I'm 10 years old, I'm 12 years old, and I get on the bus and I'm looking for terrorists to see if he's a terrorist, should I get off?

Should I fight them? Should I? I don't know what I'll do. Of course I wouldn't fight them. But I mean, you're looking at it, you're much more aware. So that mental toughness, you grow with it. It has to be there. And then the other like messed up thing is that you grow up to your friends and family being killed

all the time and people being kidnapped and terrorist organizations calling for your death from right and from left at all times if it's the Fatah or if it's Hamas or if it's Hezbollah or Iran, it doesn't matter. It's always coming. I remember during the second Lebanon war It doesn't matter. It's always coming. I remember during the second Lebanon war, we were preparing our gas masks and we would cut off pictures of the terrorists and put them on the gas masks for like, these are the guys that want to kill us. We're going to we're going to win. And I was, I don't know, 13 years old or 15 years old. That's just how you were raised.

That's how we were raised. Oh, no, I was 12. Sorry. I was 12 years old. Yeah. how we were raised. Oh no, I was 12, sorry, I was 12 years old. Yeah. I mean, to like grow up in that way, that's why like I think Israelis in general are just so tough because that was like, they have to be. That's like how you were kind of built because that's what you saw. That was part of your life. Like, did you have a lot of people even like when you

were younger, you said, did you have a lot of close relatives that died that in these suicide bombers? I know from Canada, I wasn't allowed, my mom wouldn't allow me. We had a school trip to go to Israel. My mom would not allow me to go on the school trip because the year before, my mom's friend's daughter went and she was on the beach and there was a suicide bomber that blew up the beach and the daughter died. Oh my God. Terrible.

So I wasn't allowed to go. That happened and that was kind of like, cause my mom's Israeli by the daughter died. Oh my God. Terrible. So I wasn't allowed to go. That happened, and that was kind of like, because my mom's Israeli by the way too. Yeah, from Haifa. But that was like, I remember just from living in Canada, like people I knew of who were even visiting there were killed. I can't even imagine living there your whole life,

growing up there, what could have happened. How many people you must have known? Yeah, you always know. And that was like, until today, that's the thing that we fear the most is you open up your phone and you look at the news and you see somebody you know. Or the instinct is now when there's a rocket

or a terrorist bombing or an attack or any sort of thing, you send messages to whoever lives there that you know. That's the first thing you do. You take out your phone and you send a message. Because it could be anyone and you know it. That's how you live. And then once in, I don't know how many people it is, it's somebody you know, and then you go bury a friend

or you go bury a family member or, yeah. But then like, I hear people who live there who always feel safe. They're always like, I feel safe living there, like walking around. And they don't feel like it's dangerous. Like even people now who live there who always feel safe. They're always like, I feel safe living there, like walking around. Like, and they don't feel like it's dangerous. Like even people now who are there, they're not, they don't feel like, I'm like my friends who are going there, I'm like, aren't you scared?

They're like, no, I don't feel scared. No one feels scared. So that's the other side. I mean, you always feel like that's happening around you, but you don't, I mean, you keep your head up high. I've never not felt safe walking around Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa, or I studied in Gush Azzion, where the three kids were kidnapped in 2014.

I studied 500 meters or a kilometer from the bus stop that they were kidnapped from. Never felt like I was, like my life was in danger. And we knew that people were getting kidnapped, people were getting killed. And we didn't, like, we would not let not let that like put us down. We would keep our head high and that's that was that's like the amazing like what's so different about yes you feel like there's always terrorist attacks going on

but you'll never let it get to you. You'll always keep on going, you'll always keep your head up high and that's the mentality that we grew up with. Even though it's a part of your life, it's not something that you don't like. Not even though, because it's a part of your life. It's anyways a part of your life, keep your head up high. That's incredible. I mean, but even people who it's not part of their life,

I guess we just say, like I was like tourists and visitors, like I told you, like even after October 7th, and my friends have been going there a lot for different, you know, to see what was happening and to kind of bring awareness and all these things, who have not grown up like that. And they don't feel scared, which is what I find to be just miraculous. Like, how is that possible? They didn't have this, they don't have the same mental toughness that you have been, you know, fortunate enough to kind of have, which is amazing. So then

you, Kate, so then you go, you finish the army, then why did your four years and turn into seven? So then you do the special forces. What was the other three years? Officers course. What is that? Like, tell me what this means. Talk to me like I'm a dummy.

Yeah, officers course is basically you go to like a school. Okay. What's it called in the US? University college. There's the school, the officer school and for the military something point. Oh Dana point. No, no God, you're asking the wrong person Something point never mind. It's the officer's course here. It's basically you go to study Tactics different tactics of how to fight and you practice being the commander in the fight instead of being just the soldier

Oh now you're running the unit. Now you're running, not the unit, but like your team or your squad or that battle, or you're running what's going on. So you learn how to kind of think differently, think out of the box, get different solutions that you can to attack. So this house, you can either come in the front door, which is the obvious solution, or I don't know, I can blow up the wall either come in the front door, which is the obvious solution, or I don't know, I can blow up the wall and come in through the wall. Or come in through the wood of this ceiling.

Yeah, or come in from under, whatever. So there are so many different ways that you can attack, so that's what you learn in office school, the different ways to command, to attack, to be with soldiers, and it's a few months of just basically school, and then you go out in the field and kind of just do whatever you studied. So you're basically like in charge of that. You become like a commander in charge of that unit.

In charge of your force. Your force. How big is your force? The numbers change, and I'm not allowed to say exactly how many of the numbers are. It changes, yeah. Okay, and so then you do that for three years? No, so officers course you do for a few months. For a few months, no, but then you do that. And then I get back to my unit and I stay on for a few years. That's what I mean. So then you do that for three years that no so officers course you do for a few months for a few months so but then you did then I get back to my unit and I stay on for a few years as I mean so then you did that

you were the commander I guess you would say like a fourth a smaller force a small force yeah okay for three for three years right okay then when did you become like so then you leave and now how now you're what now you're 25 ish 26 26 okay then you go and you're like hey? Now you're 25-ish? 26. 26, okay. Then you go and you're like, hey, I wanna become an actor. Yeah. Okay, so I'll take you back.

Okay. I'll take you back to, it was 2013. So I'm just a few months in. Okay. And to get accepted, like after you get accepted into the unit, so for them to accept you inside the base, like our special forces base,

you have to go through a few months of training. Until then, you're always out in the field sleeping in tents. You have no home base. Yeah, because you're not like good enough yet. Oh my gosh. Okay. Yeah. Make sure you like you're a rookie. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Yeah. So you're eating out, you're sleeping out, you don't see, you don't have a watch, you don't have a phone, you have no idea what day it is, what time it is, what's going on, you just keep going. So that's for a few months. So during those few months, you do like these hikes. Now a hike means you have 60% of your body weight on you

with all your equipment, your gun, your helmet, everything, and stretchers. So there's stretchers with a few hundred kilos on them, and you're walking with stretchers. And the last hike is 90 kilometers, which is, I'd say about 45, 50 miles. So that's the last. Miles? Yeah, miles.

With all that stuff on you? Yeah, yeah. So that's the last, without stopping, you don't stop. You walk the whole, I don't know, night, whatever it is. Yeah. Okay, go on. So that's the last one. So the one before that, which is 75 kilometers, so I'm walking, you're whatever it is. Yeah. Okay, go on. So that's the last one. So the one before that,

which is 75 kilometers. So I'm walking, you're not allowed to talk, of course, the entire night. And you're walking and you have two like stretchers and everybody, you switch the two that are in front of you all the time. And you do like this kind of carousel like thing. So I'm in the beginning, me and my friend, and we get switched, we go to the back, and he says to me quietly, because you're not allowed to talk, he says to me, so what's your dream, like after the army? And we're 19 years old, I mean, we just started. And I think about it, and I tell him, you know what, I think I'm going to be an actor. And then we both start laughing. And then our commander yells at us, everybody be quiet, you're not allowed to talk, and we keep going. And that's it. And I never talked about it after that. Never. Because I went to officer's course and I had nothing to do with acting and you're a soldier and you have

no feelings and you're a killing machine and that's what you do. And then I had one year left which the start of that one year was the 2018 conflict on the Gaza border. Which for me was okay. I saw that and I said, I've seen enough. They just, what they did, what the Hamas terrorists did was they put a line of kids and then a line of women. I remember them holding their hands and then all the terrorists are behind them. And so, I mean, you can't do anything. You can't shoot, you can't attack, you can't do anything.

You can only start when the kids move around or the women move or something opens up and the terrorists come forward which barely happens because the kids are sent to cut the border. It's just messed up. So I saw that and I said okay that this is the end. I've seen enough. I've done enough. I felt like I've done enough for my country. I had one year left on with an operation in that year and I said okay I'll do the operation and then I'm done. I'm finished. And I was thinking what, I'll do the operation and then I'm done. I'm finished. And I was thinking what I wanted to do after, and I got offered very good jobs after.

And I told my commander- It's not like LA, it's not like being in the US, right? Like to do all this stuff. What do you mean? Like, okay, sorry, I'll tell you after, okay, go ahead. Yeah. No, no, no, go ahead. So I had one year and I thought about what I was gonna do

and I asked my commander if I could go out once a week to do an acting course. And he thought, of course, that I'm going to do one lesson and then come back to the army. They offered me another seven years deal to stay in the army. And I said, so let me do the acting course and then I'll think and then I'll figure out what I want to do. And I did the acting course, which I was terrible at, terrible, absolutely terrible, and I loved it. I loved every second of it. And I kept on doing the course. I did two courses. I finished the second one, started doing the auditions for acting school, did auditions for acting school, all this during my last year in the army, which nobody knows about except for my commander. Not even my family, not my teammates, nobody knew about it until I got in. I remember the phone call I got in. I told my commander

I'm out, I'm done. He thought I was kidding. No, he said I'm done. I got out July 2019, started October 2019, three months later. Really? Yeah. What was your first job like as an actor? So I was I started October 2019. I got good very fast because I worked very, very hard. Also you have no, like I was saying to you earlier, you have no accent. My dad's American and my mom's Canadian. There I have to give them all the credit. They spoke strictly English in the house. Okay.

Just so that we'll grow up without an accent. Okay, your mom's from where? Toronto. You're Canadian. Yep. No wonder I like you so much. from where? Toronto. You're Canadian. Yeah. No wonder I like you so much. You are a Canadian. I am, I have, yeah.

Holy crap, okay. And where's your dad from? South Carolina. Okay, so your parents moved to Israel. Yeah, they moved separately to work on a kibbutz for a year. Really? Met there, fell in love, stayed forever.

But you were born in Israel. Yeah, they met there in you were born in Israel. They met there in Israel and stayed in Israel forever and then never left and all four kids were born in Israel. And so you spoke like you said, English all the time. All the time and with my siblings Hebrew. So in one conversation in the house, you'll hear both languages just going through the sentence

without us even knowing. Like we'll just talk to siblings and parents in different languages. Do your parents talk to each other in Hebrew? In English. In English too. But they have perfect Hebrew. They just won't speak Hebrew to us.

We'll have English. Okay, so because you're Hebrew, like so you you're technically Israeli though, right? I'm a hundred percent Israeli. Right, so like even though your parents are not, but like all your... But I mean they've been there for 42 years now. So they're absolutely Israeli.

No, yeah, but I'm saying is that why you don't have an accent? Oh yeah, because they spoke only English. So for four years until I went to kindergarten or three years, I didn't even know about Hebrew. They would only speak English at home. Wow. And then I went into kindergarten, started speaking Hebrew, but I would come home and speak English until I was 18, until I left for the army. My best friends from Jerusalem, same deal. Their parents are from the US, moved to Jerusalem

to like an Anglo-Saxon environment. All my friends speak English and we speak English between the friends. You do? In Tel Aviv, yeah. We'll walk in the Tel Aviv streets speaking English. English? So you don't speak Hebrew to your friends? Yeah. Because the Hebrew accent is so heavy. You do in Tel Aviv. Yeah, we'll walk in the Tel Aviv streets speaking English. So you don't speak Hebrew to your because Hebrew accent is so heavy. It's so heavy. Yeah. And you speak like you look like it like just like a Canadian American boy. Just hanging out. I go to like Europe.

Yeah, I'll speak English in an Israeli accent because they don't get they don't understand the American accent. So I'll go to Barcelona and I'll go to taxi guy and say, we need the taxi now to hotel, quickly, $100 no more. And then, yeah. It works. It works. Oh my gosh.

So is that why you became so successful as an actor though there? Oh no, I spoke, so I did only one job in English, in Israel. Oh, okay. But I played a British agent, so like a British spy. So I had to do a whole course of a few months to switch my entire accent to a British accent. And then I acted in British and then, yeah.

And all the Israeli roles I had in Israel, I did like an Israeli accent for my English. Wow, okay, so what was your first job that you got though, you were saying? And I couldn't believe that you sound like this. It's crazy to me. And my English has gotten better since I've been in the US. For what, four days?

Yeah, I can feel it getting better. Like the rust kind of gets off, yeah. That is amazing, that is amazing, cause I would never, if you didn't, if like Brad or you didn't say that you were like Israeli, I would never have known it. People say I have like a mix of American and Canadian, like they can hear it's a mix. Just like me.

Yeah, like you. Yeah. Oh my god, you can be like my brother. Okay. This is so crazy. Okay, go on. So I started school, October 2019. And while I was in school, I would do acting courses online in English to kind of get, like, just understand what's going on. And then three months into school, I met a casting director of the biggest Israeli director in Israel, Avi Neshe. He was in Hollywood. He did two Hollywood movies, came back to Israel. So he was casting a new movie about the Independence War in 1948 in Kibbutz Nitsanim about a kibbutz, which is going to sound crazy to you, about a kibbutz that small squad of soldiers with

an elite commander, played by me, come to the kibbutz to protect them from the attack of the Egyptians in 1948. This may sound like I'm talking about October 7th, I'm talking about 1948. They were sent and they get into a brutal fight and he gets shot. I can't believe you're finding this out right now, but he gets shot four bullets on his left side, the commander, which I know, and dies on spot. It's a true story. And I played him. So that was my first acting role I'm cutting three years later to October 7th of me and my team getting sent to kibbutz very To save the kibbutz from the attack of Hamas and me getting shot for bullets Luckily, I survived but yeah the like it was crazy. Oh my god

I'm crazy laid that commander. So that was the movie they were casting. She saw me, she didn't even know who I was. She found out my name, my agency, called me in for an audition. I did one audition, then I did an audition every single day for that same week until I did a chemistry test with the lead actress and a meeting with the director. And we started talking. The first thing he said to me was, there are much more famous actors than you

that are on for this role. We're just meeting. That's how we started. And we ended with him saying, you got the role. This is your role. So in an hour and a half conversation, that's how I got my first job. Yeah.

Wow, that is so eerie. Yeah. And then that became you. That became my reality. Yeah, exactly. And I mean, when I like talk about it, I show people the video of him getting shot, four bullets on his left side.

Yeah. And it's me and you're looking at me dying on screen. Yeah. That is like giving me chills. That is so insane. It's insane. It is, it's insane. When you see that, like, doesn't it freak you out? It like giving me chills. That is so insane. It's insane. It is. It's insane. When you see that, like, doesn't it freak you out?

It freaks me out. I'll tell you another crazy thing. I play in, I act in a play in Tel Aviv about a gay couple that there was a terror attack in 2009 in a Tel Aviv gay club, in an LGBTQ club. Two people died, 11 were injured. I play one of the ones that were injured. And my boyfriend is a religious kid. And that's how he comes out of the closet

in front of his parents. So it's an amazing story based on different real events. And I start that play with a cast on my own. And I did the play since I went on once to try and do it again. It was insane. It was insane. It was insane. Yeah.

This is, this is like unbelievably surreal and like eerie that this is actually like it's life imitating art. Yeah. Absolutely. In every way. Yeah. And like it's like foreshadowing your life that is so crazy. It's insane.

Yeah. Like manifesting my future in so many different ways through art and then that imitating life and that imitating art. Like it was such a crazy circle. Yeah, like a circle. Oh my gosh. Yeah. So like then walk me through this. So then now you're acting, you're doing your thing, you're becoming very successful. You're doing you're doing more like TV shows, movies, a combination of a combination, more movies, like bigger parts in movies than what I've done on TV shows, but I've done them both. Like are you, for example, if I were to go with you to Israel, would people be like going crazy for you?

Like fans and stuff like that? So people would be stopping me on the street. It's not like, I don't know, it's not like Leo Raz walking down the street. It's not Gal Gadot. Oh, Gal Gadot, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. Who? It's not that, but... You're not Gal Gadot, okay. No, not Gal Gadot. Oh, Gal Gadot. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Who? It's not that. But you're not Gal Gadot. No, not Gal Gadot. Okay. Okay. Yet. But yeah, people know me. People know who I am. People have seen the movies,

have seen the show. I mean, the play. Like, give me a comparison. Like, you're like as famous as who in the US. Like, what would you say? Like, you're not like a Leo DiCaprio. So do you know, like, I can't remember his name. Something Pitt, Brad something. Like Brad Pitt? So yeah, so something like that. Kind of. Kind of, yeah.

You know, like give or take a little bit. I think I got his name right. Yeah, Brad Pitt. Brad Pitt. Yeah, Brad Pitt. Or you're like a Brad Pitt. Are you like a Bradley Cooper or like... No, Bradley Cooper is insane.

I know, I know. I'm joking. You're probably like a... I don't know, I don't know. Like a Zac Efron? No, everybody knows Zac Efron I know, I know. I'm joking. You're probably like a... I don't know, I don't know. Like a Zac Efron? No, everybody knows Zac Efron. Okay, you're right. He's pretty popular. Yeah, he's popular.

But in Israel... But I'm popular, yeah. People know me. People know me. Like if I were to walk around, would your face be on like covers of magazines? So first of all, yes. My face is going to be on a cover of a magazine in two weeks. In America? I mean in Israel? No, in Israel. Okay. I mean in the cover of the front page of the most popular newspaper. So that's happening soon.

And I have two movies coming out in Israel in February and March. So my face is going to be everywhere now. Okay, so you're like a popular actor. Yeah. So you're not maybe like... I'm not Bradley Cooper, but I do different movies. You're like a B-list versus an A-list. Yes. Okay, got you. And now soon, okay, so this is what's... But I'm working Bradley Cooper, but I do different movies. You're like a B-list versus an A-list. Yes.

OK, got you. And now soon, OK, so this is what's up. I'm working my way up. You're definitely working your way up. This guy, I'm not just saying this, he is literally going to be like a humongous star in the US. I'm telling you, everybody in the US that he came, he came to LA to meet all these people,

and everybody wants to work with you. You're going to be huge. It's been an amazing time. No, you are. You're going to be. So then let's go through this. Now you're gonna be like, you're gonna be huge. It's been an amazing time. No, you are. You're gonna be okay. So, so then like, let's go through this. So now you're doing your thing. You're working in Israel. You're doing all these movies, TV shows. I'm doing reserves all the time.

I'm going every month and each time you go for the month for the reserves. How long is each reserve though? I'm so confused. So it changes. It's, it's sometimes three days just to like, you know, brush up a little. Yeah. And then sometimes they take you for two weeks and train you to death okay so you don't you never know no you know before we know in that way but like that why is it like kind of back and forth why is it sometimes a few days why is it sometimes a couple different training so we trained which is also crazy but a few months ago we

trained the entire army trained for a war on all fronts. So that was two weeks long. So we know that we have that training and we go in prepared for that. And then you you make the adjustments and you have two weeks off of work, whatever you're doing, everybody. I mean, I'm an actor, so I have two weeks off from movies, TV shows, plays. My friends are business owners go out for two weeks. Other friends, owners, go out for two weeks, other friends, high tech, go out for two weeks, all come and meet for these two weeks of fighting. We just train all around.

And then a month later, so you have, I don't know, three days just to brush off. So sometimes though, like if you're on a movie set or something and then it comes up, you gotta be there, do you have to work around this? Is it like, if you don't show up for that particular month because of your working schedule, are you allowed to work around this? Is it like, if you don't show up for that particular month, because if you're working schedule, are you allowed to miss something?

So yeah, so in Israel, it's a law that you're not allowed, you're not allowed to not send somebody to reserves. Oh wow, okay, so you have to go. Yeah, but because I'm in special forces, so I can talk to my commander, tell him, listen, I'm going on, I'm flying out to film a movie, I'll just join a different team next month. I'll catch up on what I missed and then I'll join you guys.

And so they allow you to do that? Yeah, yeah. It's a law that you can't miss it, but then you talk. But because I'm in special forces. It's a different thing. So the special forces has a different thing. It's smaller, yeah, it's smaller. You know, like the head of my unit now

was my personal commander, so I can call him up. Right, so you guys have a relationship. It's like a real, it's like real life, right? Like you're not supposed to, but if you have a relationship, you have something that happens. Right. Like they'll give you some leniency. It's like, it's like a microcosm for like what happens in the real world. Okay. So can I ask you a question before we get into all this other stuff, because it's like so intense and I want, I want you to tell your story about October 7th. How did anybody like, did anybody in the army at all, your special forces, nobody knew this attack

was even being planned? Like how can some, like the Israeli army is supposed to be the best, the smartest, the fastest, the greatest. How could nobody have known and then nobody be around for hours on end, for like seven hours? Like how did this even happen? That's the question I know.

That's like the question that everybody wants to know. Yeah. So I'm breaking it up into different things. So people had intelligence for different things that they thought was going to happen. Different things they heard. And it went up the chain of command. It felt like the top of our chain was pushing down

that everything is okay. So everything you hear, just ignore it. Because everything is fine. So don't worry. That's what we feel like today. That our top of our command was telling us... Who is the top of the command? Our Prime Minister. Like Netanyahu?

Or our government. Okay. They felt like Hamas was totally taken care of and everything is fine. And then once you hear that so much, I think people started believing it. But we do have lookout girls that saw Hamas training. I have pictures on my phone I can show you later. That saw Hamas training four days before the attack. Training, fighting between Sukkot.

Just like that. And they reported it and people told them, nevermind, it's not happening. We have lookout girls that talked about training inside Gaza, told their commanders, they told them, don't worry, nothing's gonna happen. An intelligence officer who also told them that she heard stuff that are happening,

they told her, just forget about it, nothing's happening. So the soldiers on the ground were doing their job as best as possible. Up the chain of command, that's where the problem started to happen. And so, I mean, we're an attack unit. So we don't, we're not looking out, we don't listen to the phone calls, we don't listen to the intelligence, we go out on missions. So for us, we, I mean, it felt like Hamas is taken care of, because that's the story that we were getting. The Hamas is taking care of, because that's the story that we were getting. The Hamas is taking care of, and they're doing what they can. There were no more attack tunnels that were coming,

so we didn't think they were going to come out of the tunnels. And the people that were telling and warning and giving the signs, so people just weren't listening to them. So that's the problem. Why were they not listening? That's suspicious to me. Like how is that possible? So you're telling me you literally have pictures on your phone of these lookout girls who are seeing yeah them train Hamas train

They tell their commanders their commanders are saying to them. It's no big deal Don't don't worry about it And I'm saying it really nicely their commanders told them to shut up told them that if they want to keep their jobs they should be quiet. Like, brutal things that they told those girls, those lookout girls, and for no reason at all they just ignored everything that they told them. And I mean, everybody in Israel is going crazy about it. And we don't have answers, especially because there's this weird saying of our government now that will deal with all the problems after the war. For now we're not dealing with any of

our mistakes because it weakens us and we're saying the exact opposite. Let's quickly see what our mistakes were, learn from them and be prepared for the next thing that's gonna happen. And our government is just totally ignoring all the mistakes that they made just so that we don't see their mistakes. So that means Israelis must be, well, they're really angry, I would imagine. Like, what's happening in Israel, that's the thing. I don't think America, whenever I say America, I mean like, you know, this North America, whatever, the world, knows really how Israelis feel in Israel.

So it sounds to me like everyone's kind of like, what the hell happened here like is it is it like a Netanyahu thing like do you think that there was something like I don't want to you know this whole conspiracy theory thing but like then there was nobody even around for seven hours or 10 hours even like there was yeah it was completely moved the platoon out to the West Bank and then nobody came back, which we have no idea why. How was that possible? And we checked how long the drive is. It's an hour drive from the West Bank to Gaza, or an hour and a half. We have no idea why it took seven hours. And even after the soldiers got there, nobody was there to give them the green light. Now I am breaking it up here because we came there and we didn't wait for a green light.

We went in. We dove deep. How long did it take you to get there? So I was called at about 7 a.m. It took me an hour to get to my base, a little to get dressed up. 930 ish we were already in Kfaraza. Okay, so at what time did we had teams fighting inside already? Okay, so then what time did this whole thing break in 630?

Okay, 630 in the morning. Yeah, you got there at 930. Yeah. okay, and we have already teams that are fighting inside So we're reserves right we come from home There are teams that are already waiting on base that already went into I mean the first team that went in Five four guys died and five got injured fighting not they were nine That's who went in because that's how we had no idea what was going on. So only nine? I mean that was the first call. Right. The first call had nine people go in.

And how many terrorists were... You said 500 I heard you say once. So we fought in Berry 500 terrorists. Yeah. That's the number that I got. I don't know. I haven't counted them. The number that I received was 500 terrorists. And we're a group. We're a small group. I think you, I think you, how many, okay, yeah, how many

were, I don't want to say too many numbers, very few, very few, there's very few people in your group, but you got there within three hours of it. Okay, so then where is this number of like seven hours it took for people to actually show up? So that is the massive, the large amounts of soldiers, they come in platoons and companies and they come with armored vehicles and tanks. Those are the soldiers that the big question is where what happened that it took so long to get there, which is a question that we asked as well. And what's the answer that you get?

We don't get an answer yet. Nobody says anything. The first answer is that this there were soldiers outside that didn't get the green light, didn't get the okay from their commanders, the top commanders to go in, which we didn't wait for. We just went in. I mean, which is my instinct. If I, and I'm sure I tell you a situation, the house next to you has, you hear people shooting and you have a gun, you would go in. Yeah. I wouldn't wait for somebody to tell me. So that's what we thought as well. We just went in and the bigger amounts of soldiers waited for an okay from their commander and they didn't get it.

Okay, why in your opinion, what do you think the reason is? Like, why do you think? So this goes to conspiracy theories because I don't know exactly. Okay, what is your conspiracy theory? Okay, I'm going to say something very bad here. Okay, can I put this on? I don't know, we'll figure it out. Okay.

The more the war continues, the more this government stays. The moment this war ends, they're out. Today, the numbers are 70% of Israelis across the board from religious people to non-religious people, right-wing, left-wing. The number is 70% want new elections. 70% want new elections.

So the moment this war is finished, they're out. They may win again, that doesn't matter, but this government is done. And the more this war continues on going, Hezbollah, Hamas, doesn't matter, this government stays on longer. So the story that they kept on, that the extreme right-wing part of our government kept on telling us is that because of the left-wing and because of the protests in Tel Aviv that would happen every week, our enemies saw that we're weak and they attacked us. That's the story that they're selling. And that shows you that they're wrong on so many levels.

Our intelligence was wrong, our attack forces weren't in place, the speed of our government, of how fast they reacted took days. I think it took four days for our government to announce that we're in a war. When our Channel 12 news announced it at 9 a.m. They announced this is a war. This isn't around, this isn't an operation, this is a war. This isn't around. This is an operation.

This is a war. It took our government four days. I think that's the number. I mean, it is unbelievable of what has happened in that sense. Like, do you and how about the fact that there was all these people from Gaza that were kind of helping Hamas. They were coming in. Yeah, working, working for Israel. Yeah. Giving them all this intel. And a day later, after we figured that out, we thought there are for sure silent squads that are in working zones inside the major cities waiting for the day of command. That's what we thought. We know now it's not true, but I mean, it could be true. That to me is what's unbelievable. And how about even the cyber part like no one saw the cyber, like

they were in the cyber in like Israeli cyber. And people are saying that Iran trained them. How do we figure that out? Like there are so many different ways here. I mean, it's crazy for me that there wasn't a helicopter in the sky in one second, taking down everyone on the border. I mean, it makes no sense. Yeah.

It should have taken one second. Do you think that Netanyahu is corrupt and he was like in cahoots with them? So that's extreme conspiracy. I don't think he's in cahoots with them. I do think he made a lot of mistakes in this war, a lot of judgmental mistakes that he's done, a lot of war mistakes that he's done, and he won't account for his mistakes.

That's what I think. That's my problem. Because if he wants to stay in power, right? Like what most people do when they want to stay in power is they create war, right? Because then your job is secure, basically. And people do it all the time. Until it's done, right?

So like people do all sorts of crazy things politically to stay in power. And so, I mean, I don't think that, I don't know if that's true or not true. I'm just throwing out all these different crazy conspiracy theories because- I have crazy conspiracy theories as well, which I don't know, but I mean,

nothing could be crazier than what is happening. That's exactly the fact. Nothing could be, the answer, it just happened, we missed it, is crazier than what is happening. That's exactly the fact. Nothing could be, the answer, it just happened, we missed it, is crazier than the entire government is working with Hamas, really. That's what I'm saying, it's crazier, especially because within like, across time, people know, like it's like a known thing,

there's nobody, there's no army, there's no intelligence units smarter, better, stronger, stronger, more in control than us. That's what we were told. Right. And then like you're thinking, but people also have this idea there in their head that like Hamas is like fighting with like sticks and stones. You know what I mean? They don't realize the amount of money that's been like, you know, billions of dollars, billions that's been infused into them with their buying. Of course, they're making rockets and all this other stuff. Well, they should have been using it for infrastructure or whatever else.

People assume that we're like the Jewish Israelis are like the big bad wolf and they're like these little, you know, meek. These poor guys are just... and it's the opposite. Right. There are also billions of dollars that went into building the tunnels. That's where all the money went. Billions of dollars that went into buying weapons, rockets, guns, ammunition and billions of dollars to build inside Gaza factories for weapons. So they also build inside. People don't know that. Exactly. They have

factories. Why? They have factories to build these things. So why is it that the media, the PR with Israel is so lousy? So lousy. So terrible. So terrible. Where the whole David and Goliath, that we are like the Goliath and like the truth is we're actually the opposite. We're like the David. People forget there are 21 Muslim countries around us. And people don't even know. Forget about forgetting. They don't even know. And I mean, in the Six Day War, Jordan and Egypt denied all the Palestinians from coming in, denied them. They wouldn't let them even more.

When they attacked us, they told them, leave your houses, come back once we've killed the Jews. And then people forget all this. So the Palestinian people are Jordanian and they're Egyptian and they're from Lebanon and they're part of 21 Muslim countries around us. They're not a small group that lived there their entire life. It's just wrong. It's just against the facts. And yet we're the oppressor. And so how did that story what how would that even happen?

Like I felt like over time it's become even worse with the time that we've become you know, quote-unquote the bad guys So I've heard a story which I don't know if it's true. Okay, and I if somebody hears this and can go check it I'd love that. Okay. I heard a story that law firm in New York I heard a story that law firm in New York was paid with Arab money to change the narrative, to make the Arab people in Israel be called the Palestinians and then change it so that they're the small, poor little David and we're the Goliath. To separate them from the Arab world so that they'll have a better story. That's what I heard really Yeah, I heard a story similar where the their PR machine

Was very strategic over years to build out like to change the I guess the narrative to make it very to what you just said Right, like because for many many years back when I mean, you're a baby. How old are you like six? Yeah How old are you, like six? How old are you? Six, turning seven. Yeah, six. You're like a little baby. You're 30, right? Yeah. Like I remember many years ago,

Israel was considered to be the, you know, the kind of the oppressed. And like we were kind of like being, we were the ones constantly being picked on, which is actually the accurate story of people actually do their research. And then over time, especially now with social media and everything else, so much money has been infused with robots even with online and they did. I heard the same story that they hired all the top brains in the world and machines and AI to create

a completely different narrative, which has now become the propaganda machine, right? Right. So I mean, they've done also that. And also, in all the like the big universities, I believe, whatever, they bought the curriculum, they bought the teachers, they bought the spots. Yeah, we put in money and made buildings like the Jewish people made buildings, but they bought whoever's teaching. Isn't that exactly true? Like I was even- Oh yeah, I've read articles about it. It's completely true.

It's 100%. Okay, tell us about that. It's 100% true. Talk about it because it's 100% true. So a lot of money, yeah, a lot of money have come from the Arab world, the big oil money, Qatar, the big oil money, to, I think it started, if I'm not mistaken,

in the 70s, that was when it started. They gave money to the Ivy League and they gave them two conditions. One condition was to close the Jewish history studies, close it. And the second one was that they get to choose the teachers. And the Ivy League said they won't close it, but they will minimalize the Jewish studies. And they got to a number that they all agree on and courses and whoever teaches the courses, but they agreed on the teachers, that the Arab money can put in their own teachers. And that's, I'm talking about the 70s, that's when they started to change the

narrative. So it's been 50 years that they've been working on this to change whatever they learn at school. And then all the kids just go and learn the wrong narrative. They forget that the Palestinian people have been created when it when was the Palestinian flag created 1964. So before that, there were Jews and way before that there were Jews and we've been there the entire time. They forget to tell that every single Arab Israeli war has been started by Arabs. It has never been our side that started a war. We always wanted peace. They forget to say the 6th of October was a ceasefire. We've been on ceasefire

since 2014, which we never broke and they've been shooting rockets at us. The only reason they haven't heard of it is because we have Iron Dome. So if we talk about the thousands of rockets they've been shooting since 2014 and Israel hasn't done anything, hasn't been attacking, people forget to mention that. And then the 7th of October was just the continuation of thousands of rockets being fired since 2014. And then they attacked and then they came in

and they literally left us no option. No option. No option. Okay, so talk about what happened with you. So then you're acting, doing all your stuff. It comes- I'm preparing for a role that I was supposed to, I'm not gonna say where, but in a US network,

I'll tell you later. Okay. That I was preparing for three months. You already had a job. I already had a job that I was supposed to fly out, October 22nd. Fly out to film three months. Yeah.

And so- So I'm preparing for that role and I have another film that I'm preparing for that was supposed to film in March. And so that's what I have ahead of me. And it's October 6th and we're driving me and my girlfriend down South and she won't tell me where we're going.

I only know it's my birthday party. That's what we're celebrating. And we're driving me and my girlfriend down south and she won't tell me where we're going. I only know it's my birthday party That's what we're celebrating and we're driving down south and we go into this like glamping site In um, this Ramon in the Ramon crater down south Okay, and my entire teammates are there like my whole team is there waiting for me and my best friends from home when you say Team, what do you mean your team my team for my unit? Oh, so you are like, literally like best friends with these people. Yeah, yeah. They're my best friends. No matter what. Yeah, yeah, my best friends.

Regardless about this. I mean, we've seen everything together, shed tears, blood, sweat, everything. Totally. And we've become best friends. And my friends from home were there as well. And she organized this whole event for me, and they closed this entire glamping site and brought a barbecue like a guy that did a barbecue for us and

DJs that had music on for us and that's how we were supposed to spend the entire weekend yeah this happened on your birthday so that was supposed to be between the 6th of October and the 8th of October my birthday my 30th birthday party yeah your life is like very eerie and surreal. My life is like always on the edge. Yeah. I never have like a normal situation. Monday afternoon.

Never. Never. I was going to say never on a regular Monday. Yeah. Wow. It's always in the extreme. And what's even more surreal is that at the end of my birthday, so we're celebrating all day and

We at 11 p.m. They have to shut off the music because we're in this open place And that's the law in Israel in these special places you have to shut off the music at 11 p.m Which was lucky because we'd be partying till the morning. Mm-hmm 11 p.m We shot the music we sit around like a bonfire and we start like We sit around like a bonfire and we start like talking my entire team and friends and me and and we all like bless each other and talk about like what's waiting for us this year and Everybody is laughing at me that my life is always so extreme. That was the joke that night Yeah, it was crazy. The joke was your life is always extreme Of course

This is your 30th birthday party the best party ever like that's what they're saying and then we go to sleep and On the way to the tent. I take my girlfriend. I kiss her and I thank her for the best day of my life That's how we ended the day and then I go to sleep and then I wake up and she says I'm sorry There's a war check your phone. That's it And I check my phone and I have a message from a commander, get to the base, everyone now. I wake up my team, we get on the cars, we start driving down south and she is the last

car because she's a journalist. She's going down there as well to give the news. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Okay. And then so we're driving all of us one after the other. She's the last. All the way we're on the phone, me and her.

She's Israeli too? Yeah, she's Israeli. I turn to the base, she goes down south, and she's supposed to go to like a news, like... Outlet or whatever? Yeah, like a news station, but in the field. Like not like a closed station, just like something that they put up for when there's a war. And she goes there and I go to the base.

And then I get prepared. We get into the car, my entire team drives down south. We're driving like guns out the windows because we understand that everywhere terrorists could be waiting for us. And a car before us gets jumped by terrorists on the way down south. We stopped the car, get out, take care of the terrorists,

get in the car, keep driving. Hold on a minute. You were, like, in the car. Yeah. We're on the way. Our first mission was Kfar Aza. And you had a car coming towards you, or like in front of you, whatever,

and you saw a terrorist there. Yeah. What do you mean? What was he doing? A terrorist attacked a car. A terrorist, like, squad. Were they on the car? Like, give me the sign.

No, we're all driving like on the road. Okay. On the way to our mission. Okay. They're driving to separate mission. We're driving to Kfarazah, but we're on the same road down south. And a terrorist squad that was hiding in the bushes jumps them, starts shooting at them. And then we all just get out, kill the terrorists.

How did you kill the terrorists? Shoot them. But how'd you even have the stuff? You had all this stuff? Oh, we had everything. We stopped in the base, got prepared, got on like our army car and went down south. Okay, okay, okay. Yeah, yeah. I didn't realize you had the stuff. Okay, sorry. I was like, yeah, okay. This is unbelievable. Got off. How many terrorists, by the way? A squad. So like three or four. Yeah. I mean, we didn't

even stop to like assess the situation. We just finished getting the cargo the car, go. Like it was that, yeah. Did any innocent people get killed? No, there weren't any innocent people there because so a second after that or before that, we got to the blockage of where the police are and the army are. They're stopping any civilians from coming through because they don't want anybody to go into the war zone. So we get there, we pass that and then just like the entire

road was full of bodies all over and we're driving our car through the bodies just like that and then on the right and to left of the street. What car are you driving? Just your own car? No our army car car. Okay, you're driving an army car. The whole team is together. We're all prepared, guns out, driving down south. Do you have a bulletproof vest on? Yeah, but it protects you like here. I was gonna say,

because it doesn't obviously protect everything. Not your left side, yeah, or your right side. It just protects here. The middle, the back, and like a little bit of the sides. Okay. But not up here. Okay, go on. Because I mean, you have to be like- Ag sides. Yeah, but not up here. Okay, go on. Because I mean you have to be like... Agile.

Yeah, agile. Yeah, you gotta be able to move. Okay, so then go on. So... Are you freaking out right now? No, we're like focused. We know what we're going to now, we're laser focused. We see cars on the right and on the left like burning with bodies inside.

Yeah, and whatever car wasn't on fire, just bodies like spilling out of the car and all over the road. So that road today is known as the blood highway. So we're driving down that road, just literally going through the bodies. And I remember the guy driving, there was like a terrorist dead on the left, like with his head and he asked me if I saw it. I was like, yeah, just like... I want you to tell me the details. What did you see? His head was off? So that terrorist, yeah, his head was like disconnected from his throat and he was just all broken up, which we were very happy about because he came in with like a motorcycle with

RPGs to shot down cars on the way but civilian bodies of Israeli civilians just on the floor next to him. How many did you see? Just there? Yeah. 50 dead bodies. 50. Just there. Yeah. That were driving through and that are in the cars on the side of the road. Oh my god. Yeah. So that's how we started. Like that's the first thing we saw. And then we keep on driving down south. The entire time we have rockets falling left and right. Yeah. Everything's burning. Okay. Yeah. It just didn't feel like we're in Israel. It felt like we're, I don't know,

in a crazy war zone outside of the world. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. It sounds like a movie, it does sound like a movie. Yeah, it was like a extreme action movie, really extreme, but like you couldn't believe this is Israel. You couldn't understand that. So how many people are you, I know you're not,

with you at this moment, as you're going down this blood road, how many people are with you? 20. Okay, and you guys are all just kind of like going through these dead bodies. Going through these bodies, guns are all out. Okay.

We're talking to each other, like get prepared, get your bullets in the chambers, whatever, everybody be ready to get out of the car. Like we're getting each other hyped up and until we get to Kfar Aza. Okay. And then Kfar Aza is a kibbutz where we get there and everything's on fire. Everything's just like exploding and you hear the gunshots inside and you hear the fighting

inside. And what we had to do was get connected to the team that's already fighting for a few hours and get inside and help them. And they didn't answer the communication, the radio, because they were in the middle of fighting. And you can't just go in because friendly fire. So we had to like, just figure out what to do. So what we did was we opened up like a medical point outside of the kibbutz. So we asked a different team that was there to drive their armored vehicle inside, get out the injured people and bring them to us. And that's what they did. Yeah.'s what they did. Yeah.

But what if there were terrorists there who were gonna kill them while they're walking out? So an hour in, a car came racing out. We shoot down the tires. We stopped the car. We pulled the guy that's driving out of the car. And he had two girls, two women, that he tried to kidnap in the back of his car.

So it was a Hamas terrorist just racing out of the kibbutz with two women tied up in the back. So we knew there could be a terrorist anywhere, but we didn't care because we knew that there were civilians injured inside and we had to take care of them. So that armored car went in, brought out the civilians. Did you kill that terrorist? No. So we tied him up and sent him to interrogation.

We need that information at that point, especially because we have no idea what's going on. How old are these guys that you saw? So he was about 20 years old. So these guys are like kids, basically. They're kids, but we fought guys at around, I'd say most of them were around 30-ish. That's what it seemed like, 30-ish, a little more, a little less.

So, like combatants, men that were trained, that were prepared, that had an infinite amount of ammunition on them. That's what it was. I saw the amount of ammunition these guys had. It wasn't a little. Each one of them brought crazy amounts of ammunition. I mean, it was mind boggling. And you see the videos, they go into the kibbutz, they shoot down the tires of the ambulance so that the ambulance can't move.

They shoot down at the Nova Festival. I have a friend that was injured there, she was with me in the hospital. She was shot in the leg. They shot an RPG at a moving ambulance with her friend inside, burnt her all up, killed her on spot. They went to the medical aid tent at the festival, threw grenades inside the medical aid tent. So they came with infinite amount of ammunition with the sole goal to kill as many people as they can. And it didn't matter if it was old people, young people, or injured people, or doctors, or whatever.

Just kill them. And also, the people that they were killing are like the most, they were like peace protesters. They were like the most... Believed in the peace and in living next to Gaza. Can you believe how insane this is? It wasn't anybody... Shooting themselves in the legs. The problem is the world isn't looking at like that. Like these are the people who are kumbaya. We can all be friends. We can all live together.

We can all live in Gaza. Everything's gonna be fine. Don't worry. And that's who they're killing. Yeah. So then, okay. So I mean, yeah, we're taking care of civilians and the first like the first person we're taking care of is they open up the armored vehicle and this mother steps out, she's hugging her three year old daughter and they're both burnt all the way from head to toe. Her daughter is screaming and the mother has like a piece of shrapnel in between her eyes with blood all the way down her face, holding her daughter. A terrorist just shot an RPG in their house.

That's the Tamaz's enemies. That's who they're killing, that three-year-old girl. So her mother saved her life. She ran into her room, which was on fire, pulled that little girl out and came out to us. We had to separate them and give them each like the medical attention. And then from there on, it was just like a guy came out

with his leg cut off and you see this guy that his life is over, that's it. And another guy who was dying in our hands with his stomach just wide open. Yeah, absolutely. I don't know if he was cut or shot or whatever, his stomach is wide open and he's dying next to us. You can see it, you can feel him dying.

And they're shooting rockets at us and we're lying down on them to protect them and then keep on giving them medical attention. And all the time we hear our team, our second team that won't answer the communication fighting inside. Just, and you hear them shooting RPGs at them and everything. Okay, so then what happens? So we're there. How many hours are we talking? What number? So that was like two, three hours.

Taking care of just injured civilians and soldiers. And we're, I mean, we're taking care of civilians and injured people here. And on the left side of the street, we're just piling up bodies that come out. That's what we're doing for three hours. Just piling them up. One after the other. Civilian, soldiers, whatever.

Whatever came. Yeah. And then we finish that and we get called from our unit to tell us that you've got to get to Kibbutz Beri as fast as possible. Leave what you're doing and get to Kibbutz Beri. So, what we did was we left one team there at Kufa Raza and the

team that I was in we drove to Beiri. How far are the two? A few minutes drive. Oh, okay. Yeah, just a few minutes. And so we leave Kibbutz Kfar Aza, we get on our cars, we start driving, we get to Kibbutz Beiri where we just like we here we didn't wait for any orders. We just went in, straight forward.

And what we did was me and like my partner in battle, so David, so we went in straight to a team that was fighting inside. And my team just went around the kibbutz, like flanked them to get to the other side, to meet us in the middle, so that we can cover as much ground as possible. So that's what we did.

Me and David went in and we met a different team that was there fighting already from the morning. I get out of the armored vehicle next to them and we put in our friend who's bleeding out. That's how I entered the battle. And then I'm in the battle and my commander says to me, okay, we have, you see that playground? There are terrorists in the back of the playground

and we're shooting like over a blue slide and I'm jumping over like a seesaw. Yeah, and we're fighting in a kid's playground. That's like the first battle in Kibbutz Berry. And while we're doing that, there's another terrorist squad fighting us from the left, from these garbage cans that were there and another terrorist squad from the back

fighting whoever's in back. So how did you not get killed? Like how did you not get shot and burned and... Because we're good fighters. We know what we're doing. But like there's so many of them and like you don't know where they're coming from. Yeah, so you're always fighting like what was in our mind was we're fighting at 360 degrees at all time.

That's what we understood. That's what we realized pretty fast. And you see a window, there's a gun on it. You see a door, you have a gun on it. Like there's no weak points. You can't afford having a weak point. And so we would just like fight at all times at 360. And if we're outside fighting, like in this situation, you finish the fight as fast as possible and get to a house, clear out the house, which means you're fighting inside, killing a terrorist or terrorist squad, and then saving the family that's in the room, in the safe room.

You do that. You get the family out of the house. You bring an armored car. You get the family in the armored car and send them out of the kibbutz. And then you're in the safe house, you regroup, you put new ammunition in, you drink water, kind of see everybody's doing all right, nobody's hurt. All right, next house. So that was the mission. And you just moved from house to house.

But like, how do you even have a second? There's so many terrorists there. Yeah, there is no second. There's no anything. So we're fighting a terrorist there. And so we're in the house now and we regroup and then there's a terrorist in a window in front of us and we have three gunmen. I'm one of them.

We're shooting him and our commanders in back of us are already preparing the next thing. So you have no, there is no second. They're preparing. All right. The next house you finished. Good. Go. I mean, and also like you have no, like no matter how much training you have, you've never, I can't, you've never done anything like this before.

Right. It's just all like in theory you're practicing. So I mean, I've done battle and I've done close counter battle and everything. But not like this. Not like this. No. And not with the amount of hostages. That was the like the biggest disadvantage that we had. Yeah. Because I mean, if it was 20 soldiers against 500 terrorists, and I could do anything I wanted to do, I could throw a grenade in each house, game over. We'd destroy them. I don't care how many they are.

But because every time I enter a house, I have a family that's a hostage inside that house, I can't shoot my gun until I don't see the terrorist. I can't throw a grenade in. I can't shoot a missile into the house because I have a hostage inside the house. So that was our biggest disadvantage. And they knew it. And they knew it. Exactly. They knew you were going to do that. Right. They knew it. So they would wait for us, wait behind the family or wait next to the family or a door next to them so that we would have that disadvantage, which we would still beat them all day.

We still managed to beat them. How? So instead of going in the door, we went through the windows. Okay, so then what happens? So then you still go on, so then you're doing all this. Right. So we're going, we're cleaning houses all day. That's what we're doing for hours. And I mean, nobody's looking at their phone. Nobody's looking at their watch. We're just fighting.

Aren't you scared? No, I don't. It's a question I've been asked a lot. You're not scared because first of all, we're very well prepared, very well trained. And also to see a family of hostages with your eyes, and then literally stand between them and terrorists gives you so much power and such a strong position to be in because

I'm not gonna let them get through no matter what because they're behind me because that family's behind me so fear was like out of the window nobody cared we were there to fight. And the adrenaline, I'm sure, cause like you had a job to do. Okay, and then like, so what happens now? So we're fighting all day, we're clearing houses, we're seeing really the most horrific things from entire families that were burnt

and just bodies left out of the houses to die, an entire family that a terrorist, like what they did was the family was they put the parents on top and then two siblings and then two younger siblings and terrorists just like shot them all in a pile and left the four bodies there the two youngest siblings that were on the bottom managed to run out so we see just a pile of bodies in between houses and then so it that was the entire day just going

through houses saving the hostages that we can save, killing the terrorists that were there and just getting to as many houses as we can. That was that day until about so it was 7 p.m. so it was already after sundown so it was pretty dark out and our mission now was to get to like the big hostage situation that was in the kibbutz. We didn't know how many hostages there were. You mean the big hostage, that's all a big hostage situation? So this, so the big hostage situation was there was a rumor that day the dining room of kibbutz Berry had 50 hostages inside and we heard that and that became our mission,

to get there. Now- They were hiding in there? No, hostages. So they're terrorists- Yeah, no, the hostages were like- Holding 50 hostages. Why would they be, hold on a second.

So, yeah. I didn't know this. So this is the rumor. Okay. So it was just a rumor and I'll clear it up now. So the intelligence we get is, the dining room of Kibbutz Berry, so it's a kibbutz, so they all eat together

in like a big dining room. So there's a dining room. The rumor is the terrorists took 50 people from different families, put them in the dining room and are holding them hostage now. So that's 50 people. So that's like the big hostage situation. The reality of it was that there was a woman

named Pessy Cohen, that's her name, she took in survivors from the party, from the Nova Festival, and fed them at her house, 14 survivors. And the terrorists came in there and saw just a table full of food and called it the dining room between themselves. And that's the information we got. That's the intelligence we got. So they called it the dining room. So we were on our way to that house, 14 hostages, then we thought it was 50. Today we know it was 14. Two survived. That's it. So two? Two. Yeah, two women. That's it. They killed everybody else. They killed everybody else. Yeah. And why did those two survive? How did they survive? I don't know. So I didn't get there sadly, but we were on our way and we had one house left until we get to that house. And I'm leading my team and David, my partner in battle, so

he's next to me, he's number two. And we get out of that last house and I'm on my way to the house before the big hostage situation and I'm about 10-15 yards from the door which until now what I did was you get to the door, you smash in the door and you start fighting whoever's fighting or saving whoever needs to be saved. And I'm about 15 yards, 10 yards from the door and a terrorist takes his gun out of a window from the right side and shoots around. He misses, but he gets one bullet through my trigger finger, which is a little shorter now. Yeah. Yeah.

So he gets it through my trigger finger. I managed to just switch fingers and then me and David attack him, kill that terrorist, and then I get back to the door and I'm running towards the door because I realize okay there are terrorists inside there are probably hostages I gotta get there as fast as possible so I'm running to the door and then when I get to the step of the door a terrorist takes out his gun from the window right next to me and shoots a full round at me and David

which a round of an AK-47 is 100 bullets in 10 seconds. So it's an aggressive gun. So he shoots a round at us, hits us both, we both fall, which I'll tell you a crazy piece of information that I found out this week, I found out on Sunday or Monday. We both fall and I look under the house and I see that there's like an opening. So I push David in and I go in myself and I turn around and just aim my gun towards the stairs of the door. So I'm laying there aiming my gun because in my mind a terrorist is going to come out and throw a grenade or shoot at me. So I'm prepared to shoot at him first. So I know if I see feet coming at me, I'm shooting. So and then I look back and there's like

another opening behind me and I feel like okay he's gonna there so they're gonna come in back of me so I take like my Glock out of my leg and I put it here and I see that I can get to back here so I'm like okay I got this out and under control. I feel pretty protected where I am and my team is continuing fighting in it like I don't know where we came from so they went back to the house and they're now battling the terrorists that are coming at them just closing in on them so they're fighting their fight me and David are under the house with my gun I'm looking at those stairs I I'm looking back. I'm ready

for what's going to happen. And then just time goes by. I take my radio out. I tell my team that I'm injured and David is next to me injured. We're under the house. They say, okay, we're coming to get you. They prepare for like a rescue mission. They come out and then they get shot down as well. Three soldiers get shot down. One guy gets a bullet in his leg. Another one a bullet in his throat, which luckily hit nothing important. He's fine now. Totally fine. And another one that had two bullets in his legs, two bullets in his arms and a bullet

that stopped right between his helmet and his head. Just stopped. He told me after that he fell. The first thing that went through his mind was I told my wife I'm not gonna die. That's what he said. No way Yeah, so they got shot down they got pulled back to the medical point and I hear that on my radio and I know that that's it game over like me and David are are are stuck and

time keeps going by and David are stuck and time keeps going by and I tell David that it's time to check our wounds. Why? Why did you think of that then? Because I felt if I have a bullet in my leg, I could close it up and deal with it and not die. I had to know what my situation was, just my medical situation. So I feel my legs, I'm fine, my stomach, I'm fine, my head, I have blood around my eyes but I'm fine and I have just like a piercing pain all through my left side which I can't move because of it and I realize there's no option but to start checking it. So I put my hand here and I feel just like a bullet hole in my chest and like the side of my chest so the bulletproof vest

ends here. It like kind of does this slanted ending. So right there I have a bullet through my chest. I have two bullets in my vest in my protected like the ceramic protection. So that saved you the the bullet proof. Two bullets saved me. Yeah, a bullet here, which I feel and I feel I'm losing blood from it. And I feel my just my breath. I'm losing my breath, which means my lung is punctured and probably filling up the blood. And my arm is just I can't feel it, but I'm just I'm so much pain here. So I move my arm just to feel what's going on and all I could feel is like an opening just wide open yeah and

I kind of touch it and I could feel just like the inside of my arm and I'm losing a lot of blood I can just feel the blood coming out through my shirt like because I'm on my right side and it's like spraying out on my face. So I realize that it's just a matter of time. Like it's just I just have a few minutes and I asked David what's up with him and he tells me he has a bullet in his stomach and a bullet in his chest and three bullets in his arm. And we're both losing blood very fast. And we can't move. And I realize also that the only thing that's keeping my lung from totally collapsing

is my equipment. So if I move and it loosens up, it'll let all the blood in. So I can't move at all. And David can't move as well. So we're just waiting there, waiting to be attacked from a terrorist. And I'm talking to my team the whole time on the radio and they're in battle. They're fighting terrorists that are just closing in on them. And they're

trying to get to us but they can't and they're fighting and they can't. And then about, I don't know, 45 minutes in. You're still alive after 45 minutes. So I'm like, I'm losing it coming back, losing, coming back. I feel my arm like, like just letting go of my gun and I wake up and I'm like, no, I have to hold my gun. Like I have to hold my gun. And David too. And David's next to me. Yeah. And he's doing the same thing. And he's doing the same thing. And we're just both trying to be focused as much as we can, but we know that like just a matter of time until this is it. Yeah, what are you thinking? So so I was thinking only two things first one was of surviving. That's what was in my head survival and

As cliche as it as it is I was I was thinking about my girlfriend and that I should have married her and then I should have brought brought kids with her and I didn't and I I felt like I just messed up. And I felt if I did one thing wrong in life, it was not marrying her already and not having a kid with her. How long have you guys been dating at this point? Two years. Two years. Wow.

Almost two years. And you were thinking about that? That's it. Nothing else. Couldn't think of anything else. Oh my gosh. I'm gonna cry. Okay, so then what happened? So 45 minutes go by and then suddenly a guy comes on my radio and tells me that he's coming in with a tank. And I was like, I couldn't understand what he said. I didn't get what he meant.

And he said, listen, I'm coming in with the tank now. I later learned that this guy gets to the kibbutz a little after us Sees a tank gets in the tank with the tank like team Just goes in without waiting for any command. No green light just went in killed Tens of terrorists who's this guy this This guy from my unit. A hero. And he basically just said... He said, I have to save everybody in this kibbutz. I'm going in with the tank. He's never been in a tank in his life before this.

Yeah. And he went and shot everybody. He took the team, he was like, get in the tank, turn it on, we're going in. I'm your new commander. Just walked in, started driving. People should do that all the time. Right. Why don't they? Because he, I don't know, he thought about it. I don't know.

Okay, go ahead. So he went in. So he comes, I hear the tank coming in and just parking in front of the house. And then I hear all the guns, like moving towards the tank, towards the house. And then they start working on a plan,

how, so he can't shoot inside because there may be hostages inside so he can only shoot at the walls so that the idea was to shoot at the walls next to the windows to kind of scare the terrorists get them down and then when they're down my team will flank the tank and come get me." And they executed it to perfection. Perfection. Yeah. And he was shooting at the wall and every time he kind of like injured the wall, he moved so that no bullet would go in so that he doesn't kill any hostages, which is how important it was for us not to kill hostages and not to injure anyone. So, and then my team flanks me and comes and crawls down

and just gets to me and David and pulls us out. And I remember them looking at me and saying, you're gonna be okay. And then at that point I said to one of the guys, I lost my arm, so just forget about it. And then he like just found my arm in back of me connected just by like skin and I don't know a few blood vessels left. Your arm was detached?

All bones were shattered. So nothing is holding it together. Muscles ripped all of them. Nerve system cut off. So nothing's holding my arm. Like my, I don't know if you can see the... I can see. Yeah. So it was open the entire way up through here. So it's just wide open in the back. All shattered, all broken up. Nothing left. And he saved your arm. And he pulled my arm back, tied it to my vest, to my equipment, just and got me out of there and saved my arm. Yeah.

And then they took us to the first medical point where what they do there is they just cut off your, like your clothes to see that you aren't injured anywhere else. At that point, I tell them, listen, my phone is in my left pocket, put it in my underwear because I got a call, Adva, Adva is my girlfriend. I gotta call her and tell her I'm fine, which I'm not, I'm like almost dead. And they do it,

they listen to me, they get me out of the kibbutz to the second medical point and right before I get to the helicopter, my friend pulls out my phone and he asks me if to call her and I tell him to call her. He calls her up and she she's an investigative journalist so all day she was at the Nova Festival saving lives. So she went in with her car, drove, searched for kids, like left her news station, abandoned her news station, drove her personal private car in the fields, pulled kids out of the bushes and saved their lives. That's what she did all day.

And brought them to the medical? And brought them back to the medical points. How many kids did she do that? Hundreds of kids. Her and another guy. Just drove around saving people's lives. She was the first person at the Nova Festival before the army, before police, before everyone. She was the first one that saw what was going on there. Yeah and and they were still, I mean she was saving people when terrorists are shooting at the on the other side. So she's risking her life,

this amazing investigative journalist that shouldn't be risking her life to save these kids. So as there were terrorists. As I'm battling terrorists in the kibbutz next to her, she's saving kids that are running away from terrorists that are a few hundred yards from her shooting at people. So that's what she's doing all day. And then. You're making it sound like she went to get a quart of milk from the supermarket.

Right. She's doing this all day. Like that's crazy. That's what she's doing this all day, like that's crazy. Yeah, just saving people's lives all day. And reporting it back and just running around and pulling kids out of the bushes. And there was actually terrorists around there too? Yeah, terrorists shooting right next to her.

And she's driving her car. How did she survive? I don't know, I have no idea how she survived. Just, yeah, and it's all on the news. Like it was all live on the news. And her cameraman is running after her, and she's just like pulling people out of the bushes, like screaming her name out.

It's me, it's me, Chang. It's okay, come out. Is she totally traumatized? So we're not there yet. Yeah, because you're still in it. We're still in it. Yeah, but she has seen the most horrific things that people talk about. She's seen it all. The party was a massacre and she was the first one there before they did anything. Took out any bodies, gave anyone any medical aid. She was the first one there.

So she saw all of it. It all, yeah. Yeah. And it's like, I guess you're still, you're like in shock at this point still. Right. So she's there all day and I'm fighting, like battling all day and we don't talk at all.

And then like our last phone call was, I don't know, eight in the morning, like talking when we split on the road. That's our last phone call was, I don't know, eight in the morning, like talking when we split on the road. That's our last phone call. Now, we haven't talked all day. She's getting ready for like the main broadcast of the night. And she takes out her phone, sees I haven't called, calls her dad. Her dad says, haven't heard of him all day, haven't heard from him. And then she's like a minute before live broadcast, her phone rings, it's my name on the screen. And then she says in her mind, oh, okay, great, he's fine. I won't answer the phone.

Puts it in her pocket. And then she thinks again, she says, you know what, I'll answer the phone. Maybe it'll be the last time we talk in a while. She answers the phone and she answers, she says, she says, honey, I'm 30 seconds before broadcast. Is it urgent? That's how she answers the phone. Is it urgent? Is it urgent?

And I'm like, you know what? Well, I'm gonna die. So what I say to her is, listen, I say, I'm okay. Go back to work. I got shot in my chest. I'll see you at home. I'm on my way to the hospital. And then at that point, she realizes that like my head is like probably exploded with

adrenaline, I'm out, like I have no idea what I'm talking about. And my teammate tells her like I'm in bad condition and she goes on live television, does the broadcast, comes to meet me at the hospital. And at the hospital, I mean, they had, it was 600 surgeries and three hours. So they told her, we're not going to get to his arm. He lost his arm. And then she brought an ambulance and put me on the ambulance. Brave decision, like last second decision, send me to the hospital in Tel Aviv where they saved me.

So in that place where they were not going to touch your arm? So they had so many injured soldiers and civilians. They first were saving lives, and then we'll get to the rest. So they stabilized me. How did they stabilize you then? So they close up the wound, which I was losing so much blood from. They close up my arm and they start giving me blood and plasma and everything they can, washing my wounds, whatever they can do.

And then close me up and just wait for the operation. And you're like, she's like, no way I'm going to go. She says no way. Yeah, no way. Gets ambulance, signs all forms she needs to sign, gets me out of there. Drives like- And they saved your arm.

And they saved, yeah, saved my arm. Can move, it could work. Yeah. Even after so many hours, like what was, did they tell you if they waited any longer or did they give you any kind of- Yeah. If I would stay there, I would for sure lose it.

And if I wouldn't go straight into surgery, I'd lose my arm, like right away. And how long, if they didn't catch you when they caught you and got you, how long did you have to live? I was supposed to die 50 minutes before that. Five zero. Five zero.

I was supposed to die seven minutes after I was shot because of my wounds, because of losing my lung, blood going in my lung, losing my blood, about seven minutes. But you survived. David next to me was supposed to survive five minutes. Yeah. And then we get sent to the helicopter. We get, we fly out and then I wake up three days later.

I wake up every day, but I don't remember it. I wake up three days later. That's when, when I start remembering, I call my commander and ask him what's up with David and he says, just take care of yourself. Forget about it. And then I knew something bad is happening. And then somebody came to the hospital told me that David died in the helicopter. So he died in the helicopter.

Yeah. Because his whole stomach was basically ripped open. Yeah. Wow. And that was your number two, that was your best friend. That was number two. I've known him for 11 years. Yeah. Wow.

Yeah. And he, I mean, he was newly married two years, had a seven month old child, Shaquid, beautiful child who looks exactly like him. Exactly like him. Oh, wow. Yeah. And so, now what? Like, what do you do now? Do you kind of go on with your life?

Like, are you... So... Like, what happens? Like, how long until this is healed? Yeah. Like, what... So, this is already starting to heal. Okay.

So, what they did was they just, like, opened up different nerves and went... Can I see the whole thing? Do you mind if I see? I can't open up the entire way, but it's like... I don't know if you can see it. Will it be fully functioning again? Yeah.

Are you now out like you're never gonna fight again, right? Oh, I am. The second I can hold a gun again, I'm back in. How? I'll be able to hold a gun again. I know you don't think you're traumatized, but aren't you kind of traumatized? I know you're not yet, but you're not scared again? I just don't think like... I think everybody in Israel is traumatized.

7th of October, before 7th of October, everybody goes through trauma. And I mean, we still have to fight. We still have to... But what about like... So how does this work? Like, you know, you come to LA, you know, you have all these meetings, you're going to be a big movie star. I mean, so LA was just is a stop.

What happened was I was in the hospital for a month and a half watching the news every day. My team's still fighting. My brother fighting, brother-in-law fighting, everybody I know is fighting. Were you ever in Gaza, by the way? Yeah. You were? Yeah, 2014 was the war. You were in Gaza.

Yeah. So you kind of like now, because of the injury, you're just basically healing. You can't do anything. So I can't do anything. Right. And I was going literally insane in the hospital. And I saw what was happening in social media.

And I was watching CNN and BBC. I couldn't believe what they're telling the world. I couldn't believe because I was there. I saw it. I know what I'm fighting. And I felt like I couldn't sit aside and watch these lies just continue going around. So I-

What were the biggest lies that you saw that really disturbed you the most? First of all, I can't hear people saying apartheid state. I can't. I mean, I live in Tel Aviv, Jaffa, which is an Arab city right next to Tel Aviv. Today in the Tel Aviv University, Palestinian students that study and learn in our university, vandalized photos of hostages. So in an apartheid state they'd be, I don't know, killed or thrown out or whatever.

Not in Israel. In Israel, my doctors were Arab. Some of my surgeons were Arab. That's not an apartheid state. Who saved you? So my, the surgeons, the performed different, yeah, different surgeries on me, or doctors, or nurses that were there, I mean, Mwanid was one of my best nurses.

An Arab 31 year old guy, great guy, studied in Tel Aviv University. What did he say about all of this? So I, we never got into it. You didn't? No. He saw me in a really,

so we met when I went back into operations and I was not happy about that. So we didn't get into any hard conversations, which is too bad. That's too bad actually. Okay, so then you're watching all that. What was the worst thing that you saw that CNN, BBC, whatever? So, I mean you're

probably like oh my god this interview. I have no idea what time is so don't even tell me. Okay I don't want to, I'm not gonna tell you. What's so interesting about talking to you is that I've spent, you know, this podcast is not typically a podcast about, you know, Israel, war, Hamas, like at all. It's about like how to be the most productive, like what are your habits to be the best version of yourself, how to optimize your life, practical things, right? But because of what's happening, I've kind of taken upon myself to kind of bring awareness

to the world of what is really going on in Israel and like what's happening. So I've had Nate Buzz on, I've had the son of Hamas on, I've had Ilan Levy, all these people I was telling you, like I've had, you know, I had Nate, you know, Nate Buzz on, I've had the son of a moss on, I've had Ilan Levy, all these people I was telling you, like I've been doing this a little bit. And what's so interesting about you and why I find this so riveting is that you actually like

were physically there doing it, like fighting in the war, like in the kibbutz, like you're an injured soldier. I mean, your perspective is so unique and different and real, authentic. I mean, you can't get any more real and authentic than this. And that's why I'm like, I'm sitting here like, basically like holding on to every last word,

like I'm baited breath, like, and then what? Cause it, you know, I hate to laugh about it, but it does sound like, it sounds like an action movie. It sounds like I'm listening to like another Terminator 4 or like Mission Impossible movie. Like it does- The pitch of the movie. Yeah, like, and then this is scene five.

This is what happens, right? Like, and you are an actor. And so, and you're actually, again, art imitating life, life imitating art. Like, and then you are- It will definitely become a movie, I'm sure about that. Yeah. Oh, there'll be many movies about it.

And the fact that you played this exact character in a movie three years prior to this, and you are here as an actor, and you probably will be in a movie about this, like it could be your life yet again. This is just like the whole situation is so riveting. It's just, I'm just like, I'm just really, it's just fascinating. And that's why this is like, I don't mean, this is like going on and on and on. It's like, you'll be here tomorrow morning.

We're here for the next day. Exactly. I feel like you're in like your tactical training for the special forces. Survival week. I'm back in survival week. Survival week. One more funny thing, the son of a musas guy, Mosab, he says to me at the end of my interview, he says to me, you know, I feel like this was very similar

to like the, when Israel interrogated me, like, because, you know, he was a double agent, you know what I mean? Because he was also here for many hours, because he was riveting too. Right. Right? Because he's talking about being, being, he's amazing. Amazing. And he was the son of a Hamas Because he's talking about being, yeah, like. He's amazing. Amazing, and he was the son of a Hamas leader.

So he grew up with him. Like to me, people who. I read his books, he's unbelievable. Fascinating, the. The, what's that? Son of a Hamas. Yeah, but yeah, but his name in the movie, the movie that his son of a Hamas,

they call them something, the Green Prince. Right, the Green Prince. The Green Prince. But what to me is the most fascinating people to talk to are people who are in the weeds doing it. Not just authorities or people who've read books, but you're doing it, living it, like him. I mean, this is where people should get their information from.

And this is not biased. This is your experience. Well, it could be biased, I guess, a little bit, but this is actually your experience. Like you're not making this stuff up. This isn't even my opinion. Yeah. So I have an opinion. I saw and did and yeah.

And you have the you have the wounds to show it and prove it. So then here you are. You're in the hospital. Oh, I think what drove me crazy was the Alshariah hospital. Oh, yeah. They shot the missile. And I was watching that and I knew that there's no... First of all, 30% of their missiles fall in Gaza.

Nobody knows that. 30%? 30% of their missiles fall inside of Gaza. And kill their own people. And kill their own people. That drove me crazy. It drove me crazy that after an Israeli attack, they know the numbers like that. How? They don't. How the hell? No,

they come out with numbers. But they're wrong. They make them up. Of course, they make them all up. Out of all the people that have died, zero are terrorists. That's an amazing, really amazing statistic. They're all women and children and really peaceful people. It drove me crazy. In Gaza, I've seen with my own eyes ammunition and weapons and missiles inside schools and playgrounds and hospitals in my own eyes. I'm not talking about videos. That's what I saw in 2014.

So of course that's what I'm seeing. That's what's happening now. And I saw all those things that for me were so obvious that the world knows that billions of dollars have gone into terror into Hamas and everybody is just looking away and talking about, oh, Barzilai Hospital in Ashkelon, a week before the Alsharia hospital incident, Hamas fired a missile at Barirei hospital in Ashkenon. No CNN, BBC, any news report, nobody talked about it, about Hamas shooting missiles at a hospital. But it was such a big deal when they thought that Israel did it. And then it came out that Hamas did

it, which they didn't even, it took a while for them to apologize. It took a long time for the New York... All the news, all the news that... Look at the how about the UN and Red Cross. Why isn't the Red Cross going in and saving these people? Yeah, I mean, why aren't they getting... So today I read that the deal was for the hostages to get medicine. For each box of medicine that the Israeli hostages get, Palestinians get a thousand.

Why is the deal not just give them whatever medicine they need? Why is? Are you serious? Yeah. That was the deal that Qatar negotiated. One box of medicine for Israeli hostages, a thousand for Palestinians. Why? No, I don't know.

Why aren't Israeli hostages getting whatever medicine they need? Why is there a baby celebrating today's his one-year-old birthday? I know. It's one-year birthday. The truth of the matter is the chances of that sweet baby being alive. I know. I mean that's the thing that and like what what I'm so worried about is that the longer this goes on we're losing the fight because people are just seeing the numbers climb in the war and they're forgetting why this war even happened in the first place, right? And they're forgetting about, oh, we have 150 hostages still there.

And that's why I'm still wearing this sweatshirt because it's about like, oh, well, we're killing innocent people, but we wouldn't be having to kill innocent people at all if they just like let the hostages go. Right, so it's important to say we're not killing innocent people. There are casualties which are part of a war. Of course.

Right, I know. I was just saying there are casualties which are part of the war, which also this is the lowest amount of casualties, not in the history of Arab and Israeli wars. In the history of wars, I've gone back and checked it since the 1800s. This is the lowest amount of casualties ever.

Nobody's talking about that. Why not? I know, why is nobody talking about that? Nobody's talking. The government is saying the ratio is one to one. One terrorist to one casualty. That's also the lowest ratio ever. Nobody's talking about that.

I know and we're looked at as like villains when we're like when because of time people can rewrite history. Right. The longer time goes by. Exactly. And say whatever they like and like even like regurgitate things that they heard that are not factual and that's what's really really scary. And like nobody's talking about, why are we even having to give medicine to the hostages? We should just let those hostages, why are those hostages even having to- Let the babies out, let the hostages out.

Why do we have to negotiate for medicine? It's insane. And nobody in America, and I say America, all of, nobody is talking about letting these, besides the same six people over and over again. Like nobody's saying like, why are they like allowing these hostages? Why are they, why is it okay to have hostages? These people who are going around being like, you know, pro-Palestine, like, you know, ceasefire,

ceasefire, no one's saying let the hostages go. Let the hostages go and then we'll talk about it. Nobody's saying it. And then we're the bad guys. I don't, I'm, I'm just perplexed about how this is unfolding daily. I don't understand. It really is insane. And all the rape stories are just unbelievable.

I've heard the eyewitnesses stories that are just, really, you can't believe what people have seen and everybody's shutting up. No one's saying a word. No one's saying a word. No one's saying it worked But what's interesting also is people are thinking because the hostages come back from their you know The ones who were released and they're like they look okay. They don't look like they're right tormented that much They don't look like their their stories aren't like they're like, oh, yeah, like, you know, they didn't feed me

They had they only gave me bread. They're not like staying her, So Hamas are trained for this. So I'll tell you what, there are two options. Either they tell them, if you talk about whatever happened, we'll kill your brother. Of course, that's what, but no one's even, that's obvious. Right, it's obvious. And I believe the people that have gone through the worst,

that's why they're not releasing them. The people that have been tortured, the women that have been through the worst, that's why they're not releasing them. The people that have been tortured, the women that have been raped, the women that may be pregnant, they're not releasing them because then we'll have more evidence, we'll have more things to talk about, more things to show. They prefer those people to be dead.

Like they prefer for us to think that they're dead than for us to know they raped them. That's how extreme we got. That's how crazy it is. I think that's 100% accurate. And like, so the ones that they like, is it just like luck of the draw? Like the ones who they let out,

they were in the homes, like it was so random. Like some of them are in homes, some of them are in tunnels, you don't know. It feels like Hamas lost control. And people took and hid hostages and they lost all control of where the hostages are. How is that possible? When they lost control to who?

To the regular civilians? To the jihad. To the jihad that are also there. Or to regular crime families that are in Gaza. Do you think that why they only released the amount that they release and are not seeming to release anymore is because they are actually all dead? What is the likelihood? For sure they're dead or they're very hurt or they're trying to give them medical support so that they look better when they come out to the world. It can't

be that the Beavis babies are just fine and they won't let them out can't be no There's no way and other kids that are still there and other women that are still there and older people are so that there's no Way that and and I mean this week they've been sending out videos to play with our minds. I know Yeah, that's the problem and then but yeah, nobody seems to care. Nobody seems to care. This is the thing also, people are now desensitized. They've seen such horrific videos. Like you can't see any worse than like babies burned to death. Which is another thing, like Hamas had a GoPro. They had GoPros on their fricking head.

They took the video of them putting a baby in an oven. And yet people still don't believe it. People think it's fake. They took the video. Mind boggling, okay? Yet at the same time, nobody, because people have seen such horrific things, people become desensitized.

They feel like, I'm telling you this, when you're telling me your story, it's so terrible, I think that your brain goes to, it's a movie, it's not real. Like people don't realize. There's no way this can be real. Yeah, or like they don't, exactly, like, okay, so I saw a baby burnt. That's not real.

That wasn't a real thing. So like, when you become so desensitized, like nothing you see after that is affecting you anymore. Yeah, nothing affects them. And that's, to me, that's why I stopped posting. Like I was posting incessantly because I'm'm like people have to know what's going on. I realized that wasn't only doing a damn thing. It was like, yeah, it helps for a while.

Yeah, showing some people who otherwise wouldn't know. But like people don't care anymore. It's like, okay, they're back to like business as usual. What I'm trying to post now is showing how, I have Muslim friends. It's not about Islam. It's about radical Islam. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And there's a big difference. And that's what I'm trying to show, how radical Islam is taking the world to terrible places. How I was in New York a few weeks ago speaking at different events and there's violence all over the streets. Oh, I'm unbelievable. They're walking around with swastikas. A swastika is not a thing that you're supposed to be walking around with. I mean, if somebody will walk around with a KKK costume, I'm sure they'll be in a lot of trouble.

So why can somebody walk around with a swastika and protest in the streets and tear down the Rockefeller tree and tear down and break into Jewish owned stores. I mean, and that's where the radical Islam is going. Sharia laws are not just Muslim laws that you should maybe be open to. Women will not be allowed to vote. You're allowed to rape your wife in Sharia law.

Whoever's not, doesn't abide to Muslim laws can be executed. I mean, these are not laws that you want in London, which they're talking about. How about the whole LGBTQ situation? That don't even get me started on that. Really, the best thing I saw was LGBTQ for Palestine is like chickens for KFC. That's the best thing I saw. I never saw that one.

Really? You've never seen it? I've seen it millions.. I never saw that one. Really? You've never seen it? I've seen it millions. I haven't seen that one. Perfect. It's the best one I saw. It's so stupid that I really, I'd love for somebody to speak to me, somebody from the LGBT community, explain how the hell they can support Palestine or Hamas or Gaza or Islam or anything that shows you that they should all be killed in that religion. It's a they would walk they put their toe in there and they would be cut off.

The throat would be right off. Nothing. Walk in a male walks in wearing a dress dead on the spot on this spot and then thrown off a roof. Right. And show everybody thrown off there. And yet yet people like this is the lewdacy of what's going on. I mean, I can go on forever. And this is why I've become so enraged by this. It's like the pure lewdacy, the craziness, the outlandish, like it just shows you where we are in a society right now to me. But so then you're sitting here, you're looking at all this stuff, you're like, I'm going to go to New York. Like, how did you end up here? Right. So I was going crazy in the hospital seeing how all the lies that are going on in all the media and social

media different platforms. And I was my entire everybody I know is fighting. And I just couldn't sit in the hospital anymore. And I heard through a different friend who was organizing an event in New York, heard about the event, asked her if I could speak in the event. She said yes. We talked about bringing Anat, David's wife, who died next to me. So we flew out together to New York, spoke there together. And then since then, I've been called out just to come to different places and speak to different communities, different schools. I'm going to Berkeley next week. And you're going to Berkeley?

I'm going to Penn on March to speak there. I'm working on getting into Harvard. So I'm just as many places that I can talk about. I'm not even talking about my opinion. I'm talking about my experience, what I've seen with my own eyes. You can hate me for being a Jew, but you can't say that what I've seen is a lie. You just can't. And I'm showing them pictures and videos and everything.

You have pictures and videos? Yeah. How do you have them? Photographers that come after us to take the pictures. So I'm showing what I saw and I'm explaining what I saw and what I thought. And I talk about my experience and I also talk about growing up in Jerusalem during the second intifada, which is another ending to radical Islam is the second intifada. People walk around and chant intifada in their protests and they have no idea what that means.

That means buses exploding in the middle of Jerusalem and people at a club in Tel Aviv, 30 of them dying and 130 being injured because they went to a party in Tel Aviv and a suicide bomber exploded. So that's what intifada means to me. So I go around and talk about those things and talk about my experience and it's been, I don't know, two months that I had to go back to Israel for two operations in between. Really? Yeah, I had to go back to two operations, operations in between. Really? Yeah. Yeah. I had to go back to two operations, came back out. Are you able to fly like blood clots and all that other stuff? Yeah, then I'm fine. You're fine? Yeah. Yeah, I got cleared and everything. I mean. So yeah, so I'm moving around. I'm here in LA, going to San Francisco, going out to the University of

Pennsylvania, University of Cleveland, going out to Toronto. Who are you going to talk to students to open students they could come in here so who hires you or brings you or whatever who's so some of the events are private events that people hear about me and asked me to come could you spoke by the way she say he did it we had a hostages of the kidnapped family like sorry the families of right of the kidnapped hostages of the kidnapped families of the kidnapped hostages here a few nights ago. They were amazing. I mean, amazing. And my friend Brad Slater, shout out to Brad, brought Yadin here, Yadin. Nice. Perfect.

It was good, right? You spoke so eloquent, so articulate. Your story was just so incredible and so moving. I mean, you really are a great speaker. I mean, you should be doing this a lot because I feel like you really kind of explain the situation so well, like if people really can get like a taste for what really is going on,

that I'm so glad that you're doing a circuit of speaking because you- And I really do believe that we if we will never shoot first Never we never have and we never will and we can get to peace if the right people lead the Palestinian people to there It's not about they have a right to resist they have a right to whatever they want until they start killing and raping and Burning our families so there can be peace raping and burning our families. So there can be peace, but there has to be two sides to it. And we will never lift our guns up and shoot if they don't. And that's it. That's where it ends.

Well, they always say if they put down their weapons, there'll be no war. If we put down our weapons, there'd be no Jewish people or Israel. But then the last thing I want to ask you, why hasn't the special forces in from the US like the Delta Force and the Green Beret or whoever would do it go into Gaza? If they're already helping, are they helping? I don't really understand what's going on. There isn't like there aren't boots on the ground. There aren't troops that are on the ground.

I don't think there should be. Really? Yeah. Why? I think that'll lead to a World War Three. I mean, we do have the ships that are surrounding us and helping us out. We do have the US on our side at all times.

I spoke in Washington in front of the generals, the heads of the CIA, FBI, telling them my story, and I've been getting emails back from them that they've been telling my story in their base to give their soldiers kind of sense of camaraderie and fighting and battle and friendship and everything. So they're on our side. I think they should leave the war for us and keep supporting, but boots on the ground is

a little, is one step too far. It is too much? Yeah. Why though? I don't know. It's just the feeling is that if they put boots on the ground, everybody's gonna join. But like, and again, this is just again one of these practical, like could you, can people go into the tunnels and find these people? Like is it, like the hostages? Like how?

No, because tunnels are all booby trapped.pped. I mean, they control the tunnels. We don't know what's going on there. And they're big, the tunnels, right? Yeah, so there are some tunnels that you can drive a car in. There are some tunnels that are for motorcycles, but you can walk in all of them. And they're miles long. And they're all really complicated.

It's a whole city. And all the money that's come from the world into Gaza has gone into that. The rest of Gaza are living in poverty. And do you think that the Palestinians there, and this is I'm sure I'll finish with my questions, but do you feel like, what do you think the percentage of people who live there are actually for Hamas? Because there was a lot of people who were, you know, who,, they were like all like, very excited when the hostages came and they also did a lot of pillaging and raping and all the stuff. The scary part is that 85% of Palestinians, West Bank and Gaza supported what happened on 7th of October.

What's the percentage? 85. Wow. Yeah. So 75 strongly supported and then 10% supported mildly. That was the poll that came out. Wow. That is a problem. But on the other hand, that may be influenced by Hamas as well. That number. And they'll tell you to vote, but if you don't vote for them they'll kill you. They'll kill you. And on the other hand, Palestinians that have been taken into custody or stopped in the war areas in Gaza have been telling our soldiers that Hamas has ruined Gaza and that they've

been waiting for us to come. We have videos of them yelling, we've been waiting for you to come for 15 years. Palestinians, we went when so my girlfriend was in Gaza twice doing two different stories. She drives in and you see humanitarian aid waving at them, at the soldiers because the soldiers come and give them water. And I mean give them water and I mean the humanitarian aid I mean the humanitarian court corridor what is it called in English the corridor no okay yeah here in quarter yeah maybe just let the civilians walk down and on the other hand Hamas soldiers are shooting at them so that they won't leave the north the civilians and our soldiers are

giving them water and they're hugging us, and Hamas is shooting them on the other side. So I really do believe that without Hamas, we have such a good chance for peace, and there could be such an amazing relationship between Palestinians and the Jews. And it all started, I mean, we're always going back and forth, back and forth, but it all started with Ben Gurion saying that we are calling for independence, but we were doing it with our brothers, our Arab brothers,

and together we will prosper. He's the first one that said it, and he's right, and this was 1948, and he was right. We can do it together, and we never came to fight, but we need a partner. Wow, my gosh. This has been so, like, so riveting. I'm telling you, so riveting, eye-opening.

This was like such, I really loved this conversation. I swear, I don't know how I'm gonna edit this thing, my God. Good God, I don't need to edit. I know, this is gonna be like, this should be like part one, two, three through 10. This is like a docu-series, really, I think, at this point.

My God, thank you so much for being on this podcast. Where do people find you if they want to know more about you? I'm sure they will want to. My Instagram is at Yadin Gelman. That's Y-A-D-I-N-G-E-L-L-M-A-N. I'm mostly there and I'm available to talk anywhere and fly out anywhere. I'm always coming from Israel out to the U.S. I'd love to come and speak wherever.

I think this story has to come out the best it can everywhere as fast as it can. And yeah, we can go save the world. Let's try. Let's try. Wow. Thank you so much. Thank you. Music