The Daily Signal - Hamas Murdered Their Friend. Now, They Are Meeting Needs of IDF Soldiers to Keep His Legacy Alive

Episode Date: December 14, 2023

David Newman sent a text to a friend the morning of Oct. 7. Something terrible had happened. Word quickly spread among Newman’s group of friends, who had known each other since high school. Newman had traveled to the music festival close to the border of Gaza on Friday night. It was supposed to be a fun weekend with his girlfriend “celebrating life,” something Newman was very good at and loved to do, according to friend Gidon Hazony.  Hazony later learned that Hamas had murdered Newman, 25, on Oct. 7, but not before saving nearly 300 lives, including the life of his girlfriend.  Newman’s actions that day, and the atrocities Hazony and so many in Israel witnessed on Oct. 7, led Hazony, David Gani, and several of their friends to quit their jobs and start a nonprofit called Soldiers Saves Lives. The organization is working to collect tactical and humanitarian aid for Israel Defense Forces.  According to the group’s website, they have supplied more than 20 “IDF units and civilian response teams with protective and self-defense gear.” Gani, who serves as board chair and CFO/CTO of Soldiers Save Lives, and Hazony, president of the organization, recently traveled to Washington D.C. to raise support and awareness for their mission to provide IDF soldiers with needed supplies. They join the podcast today to explain how to partner with them, and to honor the legacy Newman leaves behind.  Learn more about Soldiers Save Lives here: https://www.soldierssavelives.org/ Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I remember standing there confused for about 15 seconds, a feeling that I've never felt before as I stared at something I didn't fully understand. And after about 15 seconds, I realized these bodies were no longer alive. And not only were they no longer alive, they've been dead and lying in the middle of the highway for hours. This is the Daily Signal podcast for Thursday, December 14th. I'm Virginia Allen. And that was Gidon Hazani. Gidon received a troubling text message from his friend on October 6th.

7th. His friend was attending the music festival in Israel near the border of Gaza. Something was wrong. Without hesitation, Gidon and one of his other friends jumped in their cars, and they started driving south to see if they could save their friend, David Newman. Tragically, they never made it that far south, and their friend David Newman was killed by Hamas Terrace on October 7th. But the experience of seeing what had happened in Israel that day inspired Gidon and a number of his friends to found an organization in honor of their friend David Newman's life. They started a group called Soldiers Save Lives

to provide needed materials to the IDF soldiers, things like bulletproof vests or cots to sleep on. Both Gidon and his friend David Ghaniqani, who serves on the board of soldiers saved lives are joining the show today to talk about their work and to share about the life and the legacy that David Newman leaves behind. Stay tuned for our conversation after this. Hi, this is Rob Louis, executive editor of The Daily Signal and co-host of this podcast. Each day we strive to bring you news you can trust.

We see it as our mission to cut through the liberal media spin and provide honest, thorough, and responsible reporting on the most important issues of the day. But we can't do it without your help. As we approach the end of the year, the Daily Signal is counting on donations from listeners like you. We are the non-profit news outlet of the Heritage Foundation and rely on generous gifts from our supporters. Please help us by making a tax-deductible year-end gift.

You can do so by visiting dailysignal.com slash donate. Your gift will ensure that we continue producing cutting-edge journalism and investigative reporting. Again, that website is DailySignal. signal.com slash donate. Thanks for listening. We are grateful for your support. It is my privilege and honor today to welcome David Ghani and Gidon Hazani to the show today. They are founders of an organization called Soldiers Save Lives. It's an Israeli organization. David serves as board chair and CFO slash CTO of that organization. And Gidon as president.

both so much for being here to talk about your organization, soldiers saved lives, and also to tell the story of your friend David, who was tragically murdered on October 7th when Hamas attacked Israel. And if you would, just share a little bit about when you knew something was off that day, and specifically when you heard from your friend David and when you knew, okay, something seems amiss here. Of course, first of all, thank you for having us on. I really appreciate it. It's wonderful to be able to spread the word of what's going on about our organization. And we started this in memory of David, so it's really a pleasure to be able to come on a show like this. So thank you.

October 7th, Saturday morning. I was at my apartment in Katamon, Jerusalem. And the first siren ran off at about 7.30 a.m. And, you know, living in Israel, it's kind of regular. It's a season. Good to get a missile here and there. I know that sounds crazy, but that's the life that we live. You know, you go into the bomb shelter, you go out, finish a cup of coffee.

And the problem with Saturday morning is that we had, consecutive sirens both in Jerusalem and in Tel Aviv, which is rare. And that was the first alarm for us that something serious is going on. That's when, you know, you start opening up your phones. You check the headlines. So around 9 a.m., the headlines didn't quite come up, but videos were starting to come up on different social media platforms of terrorists in the streets on the border of Gaza and in Israeli territory. And that was the first alarm. That's when my friends and I started realizing that something serious was going on. And my friend Baruch-Hapisdor, who is the CEO of the organization, he received a text from David who said something terrible has happened. David drove down

on Friday night to a party at the border, the Nova Music Festival. And he was there with his girlfriend and the arena celebrating life, doing as David does, dancing, loving, having fun, and, you know, spreading peace and happiness. And the invasion came in from Gaza and almost directly into that party. It was one of the first places that were attacked. We didn't know exactly the extent of this attack, but we did know that he was in trouble almost immediately, and I, without hesitation, decided that I was going to go down and try and save him. My roommate, his name's Ezra, he is his cousin. He and I, we took med kits. We're both medics. I was a medic in the army and in Mada, which is the Israeli first aid organization. I had a med kit with me, and David had a handgun.

When I texted one of my friends that I was going to go down and save him, he told me to come by his house and take his handgun. His father also gave us bull-proof vests, and Barrow-Happesdorf had a car. He drove us down there. We got to the northern part of Route 232, which borders Gaza. There was a newly established police blockade there that initially did not let us pass. They said it was a war zone and we couldn't go in. But there were ambulances there with drivers, Hotsala ambulances with drivers, and they were looking for medics to join them so that they could go into the battle.

So Ezra and I got out of the car and we transferred into an ambulance. And as we got into, you know, we drove into Route 2 and in the area of Zurich City, I almost immediately felt the chaos and anarchy that was going on in that area, feelings I've never felt before. And one of the first things that happened, I remember driving down that road, I see it's a highway. And the other side of the highway, a car, half blown up with what looked like people who needed help, people who needed a medic right next to the car. And I remember telling the driver stop, we need to help them. And he said, it's too dangerous we can't stop. And I said, hey, we're armed.

Like, this is our job. We must stop and help them. and we got out of the ambulance and we approached, you know, what was seeing that we were needed. And I remember standing there confused for about 15 seconds, a feeling that I've never felt before as I stared at something I didn't fully understand. And after about 15 seconds, I realized these bodies were no longer alive. And not only were they no longer alive,

they've been dead and lying in the middle of the highway for hours. And it was very clear to me what I began to see and understand. And it was obviously a life-changing experience. and it was hard to imagine. It's hard to feel. It's hard to know. And I'm glad I was there because it was important for me to learn about really what was going on. And, you know, as the day continued, we treated a lot of soldiers and civilians in the area of Stereut and in the area of the border.

We were needed as medics. We kept trying to push the driver to help us get down towards the party so we could save our best friend David Newman. And, you know, we were trying to get down there, but we kept being needed as medics in more and more areas. as we treated probably around 50 soldiers and civilians in total that day, and we never made it down to the party. And that's probably for the best, because that area was completely taken over by terrorists, and if we had gone down there, I think we would have been killed.

And additionally, it's become pretty clear that everyone at that party was killed by noon. We only got in there around noon. We came back that day, Ezra and I, Barrow-Khabstorf, and many other friends were waiting at my apartment. They knew that I drove down, and they also told me that they received news that David was confirmed killed. I told them about the day that I had and the experience that, experiences that I went through. I was full of adrenaline, of course. I didn't yet, you know,

feel the trauma. I was more just, you know, a little more just filled with adrenaline and energy to do something. And that energy kind of spread around the rest of my friends. And together, we decided we're going to do something in his memory. So we opened a WhatsApp group initially called Let's Do Something. And we added all of David's closest friends. And that became this organization. Sunday morning, we started doing some basic, you know, humanitarian and tactical missions. One of the missions we did was deliver a drone to my brother Nftali. He was on his way into a battle. And he texted me and said, I need a drone, you know, as I go in with my guys, drones are very effective. Because he serves in the IDF. He serves. My older brother serves in the IDF.

Yes, he's a combat soldier. He's actually originally a fighter pilot navigator, but he just got married, so he was out of practice. So he went to combat with the foot soldiers. And when I met him at the, it was at Bilu Junction, which is halfway between Jerusalem and the Gaza border, He didn't have a protective vest himself, which is pretty crazy because he's a soldier going into battle. And I had one that I borrowed from my friend, and I gave him mine. And I continued on to the border to treat more civilians who needed me even on Sunday. There were still a lot of people there who needed help. And then by the end of the night, we realized we wanted to do even more and step it up

and really do something in David's memory. We were inspired by David, by who he was, by what we lost. By Monday night, we were an organization called Soldier Save Lives, and we had a flight takeoff from JFK airport filled with tactical and humanitarian aid, nine tons of tactical humanitarian aid, which we collected from the Jewish communities, mostly in five towns. Tuesday night, this part's pretty crazy. The flight landed at 7 p.m., which was at the same time of David's funeral.

We all had to turn off our phones and go be at David's funeral. That was the first time we turned off our phones. First times we took a break basically in three days, four days even. And the humanitarian tactical aid arrived. We were at the funeral, you know, we turned off our phones. phones, funeral ends, turn our phones back on and get back to work. David Gawney was here with me. He knew what was going on behind the scenes. He was working from home. He was starting to set up the different tech and finance issues that we're going to have back from his home.

And he joined us about Wednesday or Thursday. He came to our offices and joined. He became a very intact part of the organization. And now two months in, we are a fully operational organization where we have an import business running from both New York, Miami, New York and Miami. And we brought in over 150 tons worth of equipment, valued at over $20 million. and we're going to keep doing what we're doing. You know, we're here in America for one week to raise funds for our organization, to raise funds for our cause,

to fight for good and to fight against evil. Yeah. Wow. There's a lot to unpack there. It's incredible to see that you guys took such decisive action so quickly and said, you know what? We're going to do something in the face of tragedy. And it's just incredible to see how a group of friends

has rallied together to honor the memory of David Newman and saying, you know what, we're going to keep his memory alive and we're going to do it while we're helping other people. And so David, for your end, I want to get into some of the details of the organization, what you guys need in a minute. But first get on, I would love to ask you just to share a little bit about your friend David Newman. What was it like when you guys were all hanging out together? What did you like to do together? I mean, man, he must have been a pretty incredible friend. He was an incredible friend. I have one good way to basically explain this.

I consider David Newman to be my best friend. And I always thought this, you know, in the 10 years that we were friends ever since we met when I was 14 years old playing American football in Israel. And when I first met him, he had such great energy. You know, 14 years old, he took me out of town. He turned to me from being introverted to extroverted. He saw that I, you know, I had good intentions within me and he helped bring them out. You know, he taught me how to approach people, how to be social, you know, how to be nice.

He really showed that energy to me. And, you know, at age 14, 15, we started working out together. We really became very tight. So on that point, you know, I considered him my best friend. And I remember in 30 days into after he died, you, in its common Jewish tradition, you have what's called the 30, which everyone gets together and talks about him. One by one, people came up and said that David Newman was their best friend. And that really reflects about who he was. He was really everyone's best friend.

And he really did so much good for everyone. He focused on spreading happiness and helping people bring out their own happiness in their own way. He loved to dance. He loved to party. He loved to invite everyone. He loved to go to everyone else's parties, even if they weren't his type, even if there was less dancing going on. You know, I wish I could show a picture of him, but he was a big, blonde, beautiful man. And yeah, he was really taken away from us.

And that's, it's hard to feel. It's hard to imagine. And it's honestly hard to fully digest. However, this, what we're doing right now, this organization in his memory for Israel. I feel like that's what we should be doing. And that's what David would have wanted us to do. You know, we're taking that energy that was taken away when he was taken away. And we're bringing it back to the civilians of Israel and the world.

When did you realize, oh, there is a major need for soldiers to get gear that they need, that there's a gap here. And when did it click, hey, we can actually be a part of filling that gap? So I would say that on Saturday specifically, I was so focused as acting as a medic that I hadn't really pay so much attention to the soldiers and what they were missing. But on Sunday, when we started doing these missions just to help, we realized that the missions we were doing were actually very important. You know, it started with just like, you know, delivering one drone that I borrowed from, you know, some kid living in Jerusalem, 10-year-old kid who happened to have a fancy drone

that was then used by the Israeli defense forces. It's absolutely incredible that that would happen. Then followed up with just, you know, receiving phone calls, hey, I'm heading into battle. You know, we don't have sleeping bags. We don't have camel backs, which are very, like, often used by soldiers. And, you know, we started with using our own money for this. And by Sunday night, we realized that, you know, 350,000 reservists were called up in Israel. And that's more that's ever been called up in history of Israel. And, you know, you talk about proportionally that's, you know, about, I would say, 5% of all Israeli civilians were just called up in an instant. And it's unimaginable.

And unfortunately, Israel was not fully prepared for this. And there was a huge need of tactical gear and tactical aid and armor. even just basic things like winter gear is very much needed right now as well and you know even with the stuff that we bring the armor things like that it constantly needs to be replaced you know it gets used all these reserves are out there they're protecting borders they're fighting so i guess we realized it early on around sunday and when we realized that we have an ability as american Israelis all of us are american israelis to create that connection between america and israel and allow you guys to support us directly you know we we have the connection on both sides and we built that import business

to allow the donations of gear to come in. So we realized that not only do we have that ability, we now have that responsibility. So we stepped up. Powerful, powerful. David, you wear a lot of hats for soldiers, safe lives, your board chair, you serve as both CFO and CTO. You're busy.

Talk a little bit about how you first got involved, really on the ground floor, and what your role is within the organization. Sure. Before that, I just want to go back to a little bit for me how they started. I saw David the previous night, Friday night, October 6th, and he had come back. He had been living in our house, myself and Barach, who's the CEO, we were roommates. And David had come back initially from Sri Lanka.

He had done a trip there. And when he got back, we were just moving into our new apart. And David, David being this big giant guy, I really do wish we could show a picture of him, built like a linebacker, flowing golden hair. This is a beautiful man. We'll put a picture in the write-up so people can see it on our website. We'll put a picture of him in there. We got to spread that out there. But David came and started helping us move, started lifting furniture. We're a bunch of guys. We're not going to hire a moving truck. We started lifting the furniture couches. And David showed up day of off of a flight. And just that was the type of person he was. You know, just started helping us do these things. And afterwards he told us, guys, I need a place to crash for a few weeks, just so I can get set up. You know, where this is going.

Initially, my biggest concern was, how are we going to feed him? Because he loved to eat. That's one thing you didn't mention. He loved to cook, to dance, to live, love, everything, but he loved eating all of his ears. Like I said, big guy. But ironically, he ended up feeding us. David worked at a wedding hole, and he would come back every other night with just containers of all types of food, steaks, chicken, meat, all of it. Yeah, it was a fantastic situation.

Love it. And so Friday night, the night before, David had come back with his girlfriend to change and get ready for the party. And, you know, honestly, one of the last things I said to him was I just kind of roasted him on his outfit, just being kind of a friend. And he went off to the party. And, you know, I went to sleep that night and where, you know, my room happens to. be the bomb shelter room, which is a weird statement to make because what does that mean the bomb shelter room? Every house in Israel has a bomb shelter. And we become so normalized to it that that's just something we're all used to. But I mean, I don't know where to go if there was a bomb right now. If there was a rocket coming in, do you? Yeah. I mean, we have a parking garage. But yeah,

that's about it. We don't know. We don't have a bomb shelter. But in Israel, everyone knows. Wherever you are, you know the nearest place, because it's just such a normal thing. And so when I woke up at 6 in the morning to the sound of sirens, kind of like Giedon said, I didn't think too much of it. You can just go back to sleep. You're in the bombshell. Yeah, I just went back to sleep. I was just like, I'm ready.

I'm good. Waking up, you know, we saw the, you know, the frightening headlines. You know, police stations being taken over, people, you know, parachuting in, like, it's a game of Fortnite, like really weird stuff. And, you know, all the strange are just kind of horrifying headlines. start to see those things. And I think you know already went through the story, but from my perspective, I was, I found myself in, in my apartment far removed from the whole situation, just hearing about what they were doing, going in, driving down, not understanding from my

perspective what was going on. Meanwhile, I was making phone calls to hospitals and to other places to try to see if David had been checked in. We initially received news that Noam, which is David's girlfriend had actually been killed. And then later we found out that it was David and that Noam had survived. And I remember when I heard initially that Noam had been killed, but we didn't know the fate of David, I said, if Noam's gone, I hadn't have much hope for David. Because David, and this really goes to who he was, David was the type of person that I was so sure of it. I was so sure that there was no way he wouldn't be the one kind of leading the charge, the one protecting others.

And we've been inspired by that. And at the time we didn't know this, but later on we heard the story from Noam about what actually happened that day. And David is responsible for close to 300 people being alive today. He saved close to 300 people that day through his efforts. It's a bit of a story, but I'll kind of condense it. One of the things that they initially saw when everything happened, it was chaos.

This was a party. You have to imagine this was a big festival. 3,000 people were at the festival. 3,000 people were at this party. This is in the desert. And when initially the rockets started going off, most people started running towards their cars, which at the time they did not know was a mistake because that was where the terrorists were actually waiting.

To this day, there is a graveyard of cars. still sitting in that exact spot of thousands of cars that are clearly blown up. Barach, our CEO, actually had lent his car to David. And so he had sent that down with him. So David had a car there, but

as they started running towards the cars, they encountered a police officer and the police officer said, do not go there. If you want to live, come with me. I don't know if he was an active officer, if he was just someone who had been at the party. So they understood not to go there and David at that point ran in the opposite direction with his girlfriend, whoever else he could

kind of corral with him. And they saw two industrial garbage like cans, you know, big containers. And so David, David told everyone, hide in those containers. And so what he did over the course of the next few hours is he would take people. And like I said, he was this big guy and he would just chuck them in that container. And then he would go in, wait until the coast was clear. And then to go back out, find more people, put them in there. And he was at the front. He would go out searching for other people to try to rescue them. And that was one of the reasons that he was initially killed because he was out directing, telling people what to do, when to be quiet, when to hide, when to run, where to go.

That was who he was. And that's, that's a big part of what's inspired us is just kind of, you know, his, his reaction in a situation that we never want to find ourselves. I want to strengthen the fact with David 10. It doesn't surprise me. This is what David did. It doesn't surprise me at all. Like he put other people before himself all the time. You know, like whatever situation it was,

he always made sure that everyone around him was happy and protected. And, you know, he wasn't much of a career guy. He didn't, like, look to him to make a whole lot of money. He really just cared about his family and his friends and his support system. And that's who he was. So, you know, losing a guy like that, that's the kind of person that makes the world a good place. No, we have a responsibility to Phil's gap.

Yeah. To answer your question just about. Yeah. Yeah. But I, well, let me just say I, I, David, he obviously left a legacy. And I think it's incredible. It's incredible. It's really incredible to see you guys running with that.

Sorry, I don't usually get emotional on podcasts, but this is hard to not get emotional. We're going to get emotional. We're definitely going to get emotional. Yeah, you guys, he left a mantle and you picked it up and you're running with it. And that's, it's a beautiful thing. It's a powerful thing. And you're honoring him really, really well in doing that. So tell us, and it's hard to move on from that, and we're not moving on.

But I want to press into how do we join you in this? What are the materials that you guys are collecting? What do you need? What are the needs of the idea of soldiers? What are the needs that you guys are seeing on the ground? And how is soldiers save lives being a part of carrying forth David's legacy of saying, okay, we're going to protect the innocent? So I can answer that in terms of just the operational sense.

You know, we've developed since the beginning of the war that told you like the beginning, we were just doing tiny missions. And then there was that first fight of humanitarian and tactical aid. And we slowly understood what we're good at and what our job is. And we split our organization into two fronts. The first one is the import business. We collect donations of gear from wholesalers in the United States, trying to, you know, good gear that they can give to IDF soldiers.

This includes uniforms, it's includes winter gear, it's, could's army boots. You know, a lot of things can be used, and this also includes humanitarian aid for the displaced families. So those donations will then go to, you know, our warehouses in the United States and then being delivered to airports and then go through cargo space that were then sent, or set by ship. There are many different ways to send it. So that is the one side of our organization, and we have to fund the shipments that we are doing, Even sometimes we have to purchase, you know, large amounts of gear at cost from different places when we feel like there's an urgent need for them. Now, how do we know about these urgent needs?

We are in communication with both the Ministry of Defense and the Schenbet, and we are, you know, making sure that all the time you're constantly updating our list of what needs, what we need to be bringing in. And we are, you know, making sure that all the time you're constantly updating our list of the Israeli FBI. Okay, okay. Thank you. We are constantly updating a list of the needs that are what we need to be bringing in, and we make sure to focus on that as much as possible. Baroque CEO has been doing a great job meeting with the CISO. CEOs all over the United States and saying, what do you have for us that you can help donate or give us at cost, you know, like pro people who are looking to do good. And we're having a lot of success in that sense. That's one side. And the other side of the organization is acquisitions, which is, you know, we're raising a lot of funding as much as we possibly can. And when there's something that is needed urgently and it's something more advanced for one of the high tech army units or the security units or the civilian response teams or it could be, you know, the police, then the shebate lets us know about it. And we just purchase it directly with those donations. You know, we constantly, I'm in constant communication with someone in the inside who will look through all these requests that we're getting in.

We're getting hundreds of requests a week. And we prioritize the ones that are most important. Unfortunately, of course, we cannot answer to everything. So we have to answer to the ones that we find to be most important. We're hoping that we're making the best decisions in that matter. Yeah. Yeah, that's excellent. David, talk a little bit about just more of those practicals.

And I'm fascinated by you guys are gathering a lot of supplies here in the U.S. How does that work as far as getting it then back over to Israel and making sure that it's getting into the hands of soldiers. So we have on the Israeli side, once we receive shipments, we have a warehouse that we've set up. We're working with another organization called the... Khomeil-Mukaziz. I think they have an English name.

The Israel Support Bridge. Israel Support Bridge. And they've been amazing. One of the days our first shipments came in, Gidon was there. This was a... I'll just describe. This was one of our shipments got out of customs in the airport. court on Friday, Friday night, a week into the war. And remember we just picked up the phone.

We sent out a message, hey, like, we just got, you know, 12 tons of equipment out of customs. We need someone to help. And this guy just shows up with three trucks and a bunch of his friends. And he walks up to me and I was like, what organization you're part of? And he's like, what does it matter? I'm here to help. You know, I'm here to do good. But if you know, if you want to know, I'm the part of the Israel support bridge. And I was like, great. And I was like, what do you got for me. He's like, what do you need? And I was like, well, you already came with trucks. That's a good start. I was like, well, we should probably set up a warehouse. He's like, I got you. I got a warehouse. And I got volunteers. So we set up a warehouse. I remember the head of the

border patrol of central Israel showed up there by Saturday morning and started setting up security for us. Hundreds of volunteers showed up very quickly and we had to organize that. I mean, we're just a bunch of kids, but this organization that met us there, they knew what they were doing in terms of what to do with this equipment and how to start distributing it. And, you know, they very quickly became our brother organization in Israel who's taking the donations that were bringing in and distributing it correctly and they're doing a fantastic job to Israel support bridge. We really appreciate them. That's beautiful. It's a beautiful partnership. Yeah, everything is. Wow. I just didn't want to cut you off. Was there anything you wanted to add? Yeah. One just in general.

Yeah. Outside of them, that's one of the biggest things that we've kind of found ourselves doing is partnering and kind of collaborating with other organizations. We, another large kind of I guess acquisition that we did is we were able to facilitate and help contribute to a purchase of 11 armored ambulances that are going to be going into Gaza and providing medical aid to soldiers who need it in combat zones. And it's things like that that kind of like he said, kind of like he said, we ourselves weren't initially able to facilitate being just a bunch of 25-year-olds who just wanted to do good initially as a reaction to something terrible that happened. but we found ourselves in a position where we're able to, because of kind of our one foot here,

because all of us grew up, we're born here in America, and then eventually moved to Israel. And so we ended up finding ourselves in a situation where we kind of had a foot in both places. And that helped us to kind of bridge the gap between the states and Israel and kind of help to move things over. And so now we found ourselves in a position where we're working, like Edelon said, with the Ministry of Defense. defense, with the IDF, with other organizations, other entities like the police, and then just other brother organizations that are doing similar work. And we've been able to kind of all collaborate because it's all one goal. It's all one mission. It's about getting soldiers what they need. It's about getting families and civilians what they need. It's about just helping our country in a time

of really great stress. In terms of the more practical side of things of what we've been doing, we now exist as a nonprofit here in the States. We're collecting donations in a couple of different ways. One of the ways is we have a cause match, which is a fundraising platform. I encourage anyone to go there. Go to our website as well. I'm just going to plug us real quick. Please do. Soldierssafeelives.org. You can see a lot of information about us, about David's story, and about how you can get involved because there are plenty of ways to get involved, whether it's donation of goods, donation of funds, or, you know, there are solidarity trips that are coming into Israel that, you know, come and they volunteer and they get involved. But I would say the biggest

way to contribute right now is genuinely to speak to people who you know and get them to and yourself to whoever's listening to help to contribute funds because we've put together this really comprehensive supply chain and system where we're able to kind of feel the connections and get the priority needs from from the different entities and what we're lacking right now and what's going to help going forward is funds to be able to answer those needs because my wish genuinely is that when I have 100 requests and we've received things like that daily from different units and civil guards and entities, I want to answer them all. I want to be able to tell every single one of them, we got you.

So that's our goal. Yeah. You guys are going to have to get bigger. Well, that's why we're here. And again, I want to encourage everyone to check out the website. It's soldiers, safe lives.org. We will leave a link in the show notes. But thank you both.

We really just appreciate your heart, your sharing David's story, your boldness, and really being there on the ground, hearing the needs of the soldiers, then bringing that news back to us here in the States, explaining what the priorities are. Again, the website, Soldiers Save Lives.org. David Gidon, thank you so much for your time.

We really appreciate it. Thank you very much. And with that, that is going to do it for today's episode. for being with us here on the Daily Signal podcast, make sure that you take a minute later today to check out our evening show. Every weekday, we release a show around 5 p.m. We call it our top news edition that brings you the highlights, the top news of the day to keep you informed on the news that's happening. Also take a minute to subscribe to the Daily Sicle podcast and leave us a five-star rating and review. Thanks again for being with us today. Have a great rest of your Thursday. We'll see you

right back here around 5 p.m. per time news edition. The Daily Signal podcast is brought to by more than half a million members of the Heritage Foundation. Executive producers are Rob Luey and Kate Trinco. Producers are Virginia Allen and Samantha Asheras. Sound designed by Lauren Evans, Mark Geinney, and John Pop. To learn more, please visitdailySignal.com.