The Ben Mulroney Show - He was 33. He was Canadian. He Never Came Home but Died a Hero.

Episode Date: October 8, 2026

On today's episode of "The Ben Mulroney Show," Ben welcomes Raquel Look. Her son, Alexandre Look, was at the Nova music festival on October 07, 2023. He never came home. He bravely fought with terrorists that day and survivors say that it is because of his sacrifice that others survived. Read more about Alexandre Look here. If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://link.chtbl.com/bms⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Also, on youtube -- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@BenMulroneyShow⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Insta: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ TikTok: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠   Executive Producer:  Mike Drolet Reach out to Mike with story ideas or tips at [e-mail] Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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So I'm 50 and I was thinking back about how much life I've lived since I was 33. And there's been a lot. I've fell in love. I had a family. I've experienced some of those incredible, joyous moments of my life. I've laughed to the point that I thought I would stop breathing. I've felt pain that I never thought would end. I've had success and a lot of failure and I wouldn't trade any of it.

And then I think of Alexander Look, who was 33 when he was murdered by Hamas on October 7th at the Nova Music Festival. And I think about all the life that he has not never, will never get the chance to live, all the happiness and all the sadness and all the adventures and all the relationships. and it is it's it's it's it hurts me and I never and I never knew him and so let's open up this conversation with the person who knew him best and that's his mother Raquel welcome to the show thank you for having me then I'm so so very sorry for your loss you know I went I went to the Nova music festival site when I was in Israel. I believe I saw your son's commemorative plaque when I was there. And that's, that only tells one part of the story. When you, when you think of him, you must think of so many things.

You must think of every, every memory you have. But what's one that tends to bubble to the surface that gives you happiness? It's his sense of humor. He just was so witty and, you know, made everyone last. He could make accents. He had a gift about him, making everybody around him comfortable. So really, the laster. He had a roaring laugh. And, yeah, he spoke a lot of languages. He was a world traveler. And am I right? I think I'm remembering that as he would travel the world, he would make pit stops in Israel. Always. Yeah, yeah. Because, and why?

He loved Israel. He was a very strong. strong Zionist, the big word. He loved the people. He loved the food. He really loved the food in Israel. That's what I was told before I left, before I went there. I was told by people, if you don't have the best meals of your life while you're there, my friend was joking, but she literally said she would refund my ticket.

And she was, I couldn't, well, because every culture in the world is just jammed in there, you're getting influences from, from, you know, the Mediterranean nations of Italy and Portugal and Greece. And then you've got Middle Eastern food. You've got North African food. You've got, you've got stuff coming from, you know, the countries to the north. I mean, it's, it's everything. Exactly. And all accepted and respected and lived beautifully together. Kind of like the opposite of apartheid. Exactly. Well, you know, if we can zoom out to, Canada for a second. You know, I'm not, I don't, I don't agree with most of this current government's positions on that part of the world. But I, I will absolutely commend our prime minister today

for his, his position that he put out on October 7th. It was unequivocal. It was, there was no victim blaming. As a matter of fact, he named the Canadian victims. And I think, and there are, there's lots of days to discuss government policy and. strategies of war and outcomes of war and what is acceptable collateral damage. But not October 7th. And certainly not in the same tweet that essentially is a de facto version of victim blaming, which we saw from Zoran Mamdani in New York. So we got one guy who got it right here and he deserves a lot of credit for that.

And you can see how bad it can be when somebody gets it wrong. Exactly. Yeah. How has life been for you since? I mean, it must have happened in phases that there was, you know, when you learned of the passing of your son. And then with the war and the propaganda war that we all had to deal with, as well as the mounting anti-Semitism here at home, the demonization of people who were torn apart because of it. And now we're sort of out of that phase, but the information war continues. Have you been able to make sense of the past few years?

Absolutely not. It's like I call it upside down world since October 8th before Israel even did anything in response. I remember sitting in my living room with my friends in total shock, not even having located Alex's body. And they told me about protests that were going on downtown. And I didn't understand why, what. like they surely don't understand what happened there. And so having not slept over, it was 28 hours perhaps, the husband and I had all the media come over.

And they were lined up. And we were just telling that this was a young man on vacation, a Canadian citizen, not a soldier. He was at a festival for peace and love. He loved music festivals. That's another very big part of who Alex was. And they were gunned down and massacred in the most barbaric animal savage attack that even, I don't think in your worst nightmare you could even think of the things that were done. And I knew that they had taken hostages and the babies and older people were taken hostage.

For me, like, that makes you no longer part of civilization. I felt like, why is the world not appalled? And then the rates were coming about. Well, but see, and that, Raquel, that's when I knew something was going on. When you heard feminists in Canada making excuses and doubting the stories of rape victims from the Nova Festival. And so, hold on a second. Two years ago, three years ago, you're telling me to believe all women. And now you're telling me, except if they're Jews, I see something really bad's going on here.

This is not a normal back and forth of good faith conversation. This is something orchestrated. And I don't know what we're marching towards, but I'm going to try to push back against it. Well, it's obviously only against Jewish people because if you're really caring about human rights, there are so many countries that do such horrific things and I never hear a peep about just as recently as in Iran

when they gunned down tens of thousands of young people what happened in Syria in Congo I mean well Raquel you don't you didn't know that's that's because of American imperialism and and Israeli

aggression you didn't know that that explains it all yeah it explains it all it's the guiding hand around the world oh see that it's we We solved it. We solved it right there, you and me. It's all, that's nothing to see here. Yeah, it's all, it's all nonsense, but pushing back with facts is all, is, is never a bad thing. I just don't know how useful it is these days. And, you know, the, there are so many, there's so many ironies and so many sat. The fact is, you know, I went, when I went, I visited some of the, the, the, the, that are no longer livable.

those if ever you were going to find open hearts for a Palestinian homeland it's on the kibbutz right does that exactly I mean for people who don't know they're pretty much hippies right they're pretty much communal living hippies and

and those were that was ground zero for so much of the bloodshed exactly those were the people that were giving them work on the kibbutz team that were driving them to Israel for doctor of and so on and who truly believed that there could be a peaceful two-state solution. But sadly, as long as all they want to do is not let us exist, it's not going to be possible.

Hamas has to be disarmed, dismantled, and there needs to be a shift in education. I mean... Well, Raquel, hold that thought because we've got much, much more to talk about when the show continues. Don't go anywhere. This is the Ben Mulroney show. I'm continuing my conversation with Raquel Look. She's joining us from Montreal. And we are remembering her son, Alex, who was a victim on October 7th as he was listening to music in a field at the Nova Music Festival. And you must have bad days and good days, Raquel.

When do you, what makes a good day? A good day is, it happens quite a lot, actually. People come out of the woodwork that I didn't even know new Alex or I never heard of. And they have these amazing little tidbit stories of something he did to make their day better, or how he was so generous and helped them out in a really hard time. And they just like, I get these amazing little messages every so often, like gifts from Alex. Yeah. So you did a great job as a mom.

That's what that means. Thank you so much. He was, and he was not only a victim, though. I really want to emphasize he was a hero. Yeah, yeah. He fought and he saved some lives, and he wouldn't have been, I wish he wouldn't have been so brave, but he was definitely not the guy that was going to hide in the shelter, not that there's anything wrong with hiding in the back.

But that's just not how this kid rolls. They say that there's nothing more unnatural than a parent burying their child. So the grief of a parent losing their child is something that not only do I not know, but I don't even want to try to understand. God forbid, no. So how do you deal with that? How do you mourn? How do you grieve?

How do you move on while also dealing with, you know, a war that is affecting Jews on the other side of the world, but Jews in your neighborhood as well? In my neighborhood. How do you, are you able to keep, are you able to keep those things? separate or are they one big frustrating ball of emotion? Kind of that. Yeah. Like, I try to not get angry at what's going on, but there just seems to be like every

day something to go crazy about. Yeah. And it's just so unfair and I don't understand what is happening when I see like the, like the gay rights people like that are for Palestine or. they would get thrown off of the nearest roof. And in Tel Aviv is the biggest gay rights parade. That definitely does not help the grieving process. When I go downtown and I have to see the Kofia and the whole terrorist garb,

as you can imagine, very, very triggering. Yeah. What else? And we have PTSD. Oh, you do? We all do. just we heard everything we were on a face time with him

so like therapy and all like there aren't no words there actually aren't a word that can bring comfort when you lose a child already but when you lose them so violently and so unexpectedly like we were speaking to him one moment and then he was gone and then we heard Allah Akbar

so I I take medication for PTSD's medication to be able to sleep. I have to numb it a little bit in order to do the things I need to do because actually I quickly realized, okay, so I can't just be a grieving mom. I also have to be a voice. You have to be a voice. And right. And Alex would have wanted me to. He used to always tell me, I loved when I was a teenager and you were such a lioness mom and talk for the, You know, because obviously the kid that stood in front of the shelter was the kid that sat quietly at a desk. So we had to often go have meetings at schools and such.

And I was always a lioness for Alex. And I quickly realized, well, that's going to be my part. We all have to do whatever we can. like we appreciate like beyond words people like you a journalist that have such a moral compass and who even though it's not easy or on the right side of history we truly greatly appreciate you well thank thank you Raquel and uh i won't quit um but but talk to me because it's it's interesting that you say i have to be a voice i have to be you know in a certain way like public facing but the every story that I've heard from my Jewish friends and family is I you know we have to we have to make

ourselves look smaller we have to make ourselves a smaller target we have to take our mazuzo off the door we've got a we've got a we don't want to we don't want to outwardly present like Jews because we don't know what's around the next corner has that been your experience in Montreal um some people but gracefully not that many because I we really that I feel like that would be the last thing we need to do because hiding in in the past in history has not served as well so no i feel like we are strong we have we have a homeland now we have an army now and uh we fight back now and i got to say it does the last thing we need to do is hide it does feel like on the on the information warfare front it's taken a while but the uh the uh you

The counter arguments to the blood liables, the counter arguments to the misinformation, the counter arguments to the victim blaming, they seem to be getting their act together at least to a certain extent. Yeah, I noticed. Yeah, you're seeing the IDF pushing back against the narrative that the IDF was indiscriminately killing journalists. Yeah, and they put out a list of the ones who were actually working for Hamas. Exactly. You took part in October 7th. Yeah, there's, I think there's a, today I saw a list of, of a number, does, dozens of current and former high-ranking military members making the case that the war that was prosecuted in Gaza was one of the most surgical cases of urban warfare that the world has ever seen, demonstrating that, in fact, not only was there no intent for genocide, but there was an,

an intent to to minimize as much as possible. Yeah. So these are good things. The word genocide has been thrown around. And, you know, it's very specific. And I personally do believe that if we look at the true definition of genocide, October 7th was definitely a genocide because the intent was to kill everyone and anyone who cross their path. Yeah.

Now, in Gaza, I think that it's like 3% of the population. that was, you know, it's sad. Over, like, maybe 70,000 people always sad, always traffic, but it's tragic. But of those, there are many combatants, like, more than half. The numbers are clear. But that's not genocide. In Poland, during the Holocaust, there was three million Jews before, and there were 45,000 after. Yeah.

That's genocide. Look, the numbers are clear. The numbers of children who died versus the numbers of fighting age men. men is a demonstrates without a, if it was indiscriminate killing that they didn't care who they were getting, you get more or less the same number of babies as you got, you know, 25-year-old men. That's not what they saw. They saw lower numbers of children and a much higher number as the potential age of the

potential combatant would go up. That is targeted. That demonstrates, that does not demonstrate. Absolutely. It's the most moral army. And if you're really wanting to commit a genocide, you're not vaccinating that population or, you know, feeding the population. It's just insane. Is everyone in the Army perfect?

Probably not. Of course not. But as a rule, they really do have a moral standard, a code of ethics. Yeah. That is, I don't think any, I've heard, like, no one could compare how well they've done. as you said, really targeting, and they sent pamphlets and there's phone calls. I mean, our kids at the Nova Music Festival got no warning. No, no.

People are coming down here to do some damage. Yeah, there was no pamphets. You know, they paraglided down on them and they, they were grenades. You name it. They did to them. Well, Raquel. People have a very short memory of how all this began. We only have about 45 seconds left.

and I want to give you the microphone for the last 45 seconds just to tell us one more thing about your son. My son, okay, so the night of, we had an hour and a half conversation while he was in the shelter thinking he was safe. And he was so true to himself because he stayed so upbeat. He was, you know, some of the people were getting nervous. He's like, no, no, we're going to be good. What are you going to do when you get home to L.A.?

And what are you going to do? And mommy, what are you going to make me when you come for Passover? And just trying to stay upbeat and, you know, no one's getting in here. I'm standing out there. And he was, like, he was true to himself to Alex to the very last second. Ah, you could have picked any story and you chose to tell one of his optimism and his courage. And I thank you for that. Thank you, Raquel.

I really appreciate your time. And I thank you. Oh, you do.