How Hamas Executed a Massacre, and How One Israeli with Nine Bullets Fought Back

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Oct 27, 2023

Avi Issacharoff, a prominent Israeli journalist and co-creator of the hit series Fauda, provides an insightful analysis of the recent Hamas attack on Israel. He discusses the minute-by-minute chaos of October 7th and the unexpected factors that facilitated such a breach, despite the high cost of defense infrastructure. Avi reflects on the emotional toll of conflict and the moral complexities arising from the situation. He also speculates on the implications for Israel's future and the urgent need for investigations into the intelligence failures.

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ANECDOTE

Nimrod's Call to Action

Nimrod, a special ops reservist, woke up on a holiday to a call about missiles from Gaza.
He felt compelled to help communities near Gaza, despite only having a pistol and no uniform.

ANECDOTE

Horrific Sights

Nimrod recorded a goodbye message to his children before heading into combat, anticipating death.
He witnessed horrifying scenes of dead civilians and families in cars along the road to Kibbutz Be'eri.

ANECDOTE

Kibbutz Alumim Firefight

Nimrod and a small squad engaged in a 3-hour firefight with Hamas terrorists outside Kibbutz Alumim.
Outnumbered and outgunned, they managed to kill all 30 terrorists, preventing a massacre.

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It’s been almost three weeks since Hamas attacked Israel. And there are three questions that, despite having reported on it so much over the last 20 days, many people are still asking. The first is what exactly happened that day, minute by minute, and what were the battles across the south of Israel like? There are so many accounts of civilians waiting in safe-rooms for hours on end for the IDF to arrive—what happened? The second is how did it happen? How did thousands of terrorists cross a border wall that cost more than a billion dollars to carry out the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust? And the third question is what comes next in this already horrific war?

Over the next two episodes of Honestly, we will answer those three questions by talking to three different people. You’ll first hear from Nimrod, a special forces reservist, who fought Hamas at several locations in the south of Israel on the morning of October 7—not because he was called by his unit to go there (he wasn't), but because he knew he needed to go save innocent civilians. His account helps paint a picture of what happened that day in Israel along the Gaza border, from a person who saw it up close and took the brutal fighting into his own hands before the army even arrived.

Then you’ll hear from Avi Issacharoff, a prominent Israeli journalist who’s also one of the creators of the hit TV series Fauda, which is based on his own experience as a member of an elite undercover counterterrorism unit of the IDF. My conversation with Avi helps explain how the most fortified and militarily sophisticated country in the world could have been overtaken in the most horrific way by thousands of Hamas terrorists.

In our next episode, you’ll hear from Walter Russell Mead, who I think of as one of the most prophetic foreign policy thinkers of our time. There’s no better lineup than these three people to help us make sense of what happened, how it happened, and where Israel, and the world, go from here. You’ll want to listen.

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