Compassion in Combat | How Unit 669 Balances Duty and Humanity (Pt. 2)
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When a Syrian arrived at the border with Israel, his condition was as if a soldier was wounded, we would call a helicopter because it's far away. It's a border. We're far away from a hospital. The Syrian would receive the same treatment itself.

Hello and welcome to State of a Nation. I'm Elon Levy. We are back with part two of my fascinating conversation with Sergeant Major Guy M, author of the upcoming book, The Rescue. Full disclosure, my translation. Guy was there on the ground on October 7th as a member of Israel's elite special forces unit 669. He was saving lives under fire.

And his book brings you an eyewitness account for a first draft of history of how Israel's citizens responded on that dark day. We got swept away in conversation and felt we wouldn't be doing it justice if we cut it down.

So Guy becomes the first guest since Douglas Murray to have a two-parter, an episode split in two. If you haven't watched part one and you're following on YouTube or another video platform, you'll notice we're not showing his face. We're recording from over his shoulder to protect his identity so we can speak freely.

We look at the psychological impact of frontline combat on Israel's soldiers, especially reservists, who all had ordinary lives and jobs and careers and studies and boyfriends and girlfriends on October 6th. And we look at how Guy's eyewitness account preserves the testimonies of those who fought on October 7th for our nation and for history.

It's a powerful story of courage, service, and a struggle to rebuild and find normalcy in the most abnormal circumstances. Join me and Guy. We're diving between the lines and beyond the headlines.

Taking news out of Israel this morning. Shocking hostage. Hundreds of Israelis are dead. I want to bring in Israeli government. What happened? Have you resolved it? Where does this go? Sergeant Major Guy M. Welcome to State of a Nation. Thank you. It's great to be here. You're in reserves and you're witnessing mutilated bodies, people who are

tortured before they were killed or their bodies were mutilated after they were savagely killed and then you go back home and you have a wedding to plan tell me about that we got engaged Noga and I in June 2023 we

I want to say we, her, she decided we're getting married on Tu Bishvat. She calls the shots in your household? Yeah, the M house, the M family home. I'm not sure if we go by M, it's also debatable. So she said we're getting married on Tu Bishvat for so many reasons.

What happened in the first weeks of war, we ceased to be a couple. If you look at our text messages in those weeks, the whole army is not functioning, and it's all about circles. Noga...

Those days, there were casualties from her brigade, her battalion. And as I myself couldn't reach out to get backup, to get support, to get rescue teams, so obviously the paratroopers couldn't. So she was texting me, I need a helicopter here, I need a helicopter there. And I helped her, of course. She's my fiancée. It's not about the casualties. Right. Many guys that go for it will write...

Hey, I need you to pick up some milk and some cucumbers on the way home. And she's like, hey, guy, can you lend me a helicopter? Yeah, no, it doesn't happen in every couple. I need a rescue team. This isn't only in Israel. So she's texting me, I need a rescue team. And we send her, of course, in a...

Beside a story, Israel, sometimes it actually works. I mean, through one of the officers from her battalion, if it weren't for her calling me three times, asking me, guy, I need a helicopter now.

And I would call people that I know that are at headquarters. He most likely would have made it. He told me. It's not like my... But anyway... It's insane that it works like this. When everything collapses, I guess there's no other way.

So for months, she's in combat. She has... I have no idea how she stands the pressure. She's overlooking the combat of her unit in Gaza. I mean, if she is not sharp enough, you know, she's not on the details, she could approve an airstrike on her own people. I mean, that's, you know, in the middle of the night when under fire. I don't know. I can't stand that pressure. But she can. And between all that pressure, Wonder Woman and Superman have a wedding to plan. And...

I was honestly, I wasn't sure it's the right thing to have that wedding. I mean, I wanted, and this is being a little bit kitchen or romantic, but I wanted, you know, to have the whole thing, the whole shenanigan, to fight over stupid things, you know, to get excited together and not, you know, just have it as a list of chores, you know.

And as much as we got closer, also my father kind of told me, "Guy, there's no way we're postponing a wedding. I mean, the fact that I'm going to be there is a miracle." He made it and he managed to recuperate. So we had that wedding. We didn't know a few days before the wedding how many people were going to come. All my friends, all my guys, all the unit during Gaza and her unit also, it's like these are the circles of our friends.

We told the venue it's going to be between $200,000 or $300,000 to $500,000. We just don't know. And no one was getting married. So they were just, honestly, they were amazing. They were thankful for some couple to get married, some insane couple. And this, I think, you know, I was so afraid no one's going to come. It's a war going on.

And I think that as much as I was afraid and hesitating to have a wedding, it just accelerated the excitement. And the most, I think, moving thing I've ever heard was so many people coming up to us and saying, you gave us a legitimacy to be happy in that time, on January 24. And you're giving other people strength.

It's, I think, one of the best ways to cope with trauma is to find ways to strengthen others and generally. And we were very, you know, very, very lucky that also, and this is also as a thumb rule, I said, we started working on October 7th book. It's going to be a strong and optimistic book. That's what fighting is about. It has to end good.

it has to end if not good. So at least happy and strong and optimistic. And, uh, at least there was a happy. Yeah. I think the most moving thing about the wedding was the speech you gave under the hopper. Cause you are like, can I tell viewers, you are such a cry baby. Oh, you are such like, they wouldn't expect from this tough action man who's swooping out of a helicopter. You broke, you broke down under the hopper. It was very sweet. But, um,

It was an amazing wedding because you sense that this was happening in the middle of the war, that everyone was putting life, the war on pause for a second to try to find this island of normality and say, just give us 24 hours to be normal human beings.

I was a little bit zoned out because it was on the eve of the ICJ delivering its interim ruling and my mind was already racing ahead to the interviews I was going to. You had a country to deliver its message to the world. But anyway, you had a bunch of guys from the unit there, all the characters from the book. And a few weeks later was the heroic rescue mission

that rescued two of the Israeli hostages from Rafah. And I remember texting you and I said, Guy, were you there? Were you part of the rescue mission for the two hostages? And you said, no, but the guys you were drinking shots with at the bar were. And it was surreal that one day we're dancing at a wedding. The next day they're swooping out of a helicopter and rescuing hostages. So,

What can you tell me about that operation within the rules of what you're allowed to say? And tell me about what goes into planning a mission like that. Because you don't just say, oh, we have people who need rescuing here. Swoop in without a plan. I'm Imogen Folks, the host of Inside Geneva, a podcast where we tackle the big questions facing our planet.

Can UN investigations bring more criminals to justice? Does the world need a pandemic treaty? What about climate change or refugees? Should we ban autonomous weapons? Some call them killer robots. Get the answers you need with me and our expert guests twice a month on Inside Geneva, free with your usual podcast app.

One of the best things about, and I'm not objective at all, but serving in 669 is the best service in special forces in the Army.

We have another episode with a reservist in Duvdevans, so be careful what you say. Okay, okay. So we'll let whoever's listening to decide. But you get to... And that's for... You can go back and search on YouTube, on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, the episode with Stav Cohen, who will tell us his own experiences. Lucky him, he could go by full name. And after... Yeah, and anyway, after that promotion for the podcast, carry on. So you're actually so lucky to be...

participating in every operation the IDF goes for. Far, close, whether it's, and there's many operations going on in Gaza on a constant basis to try and allocate and rescue. Many of them the public doesn't hear about for so many reasons.

And of course, we have seven front war now or eight or nine. We went down. What's the score? No, eight includes the diaspora, but it also includes... No, eight. Because you have Gaza, which is still raging. It's an insurgency. Hezbollah, where as we record, we're in the transition phase towards the ceasefire.

The Houthis who keep lobbing ballistic missiles at us for the week we record. We've had three nights this week in which the Houthis have woken us up between two and four in the morning with another ballistic missile attack sending millions of Israelis to shelter. So a little bit sleep deprived at the moment.

heavier makeup than usual. We have the Iraqi militias. We have the Syrian issue. We have the Iranian regime itself. And I always forget, we still have the issue with the Palestinian terrorism in the West Bank, Judea and Samaria. Then you also have attacks on Jews and Israelis around the diaspora. And of course, they're trying to open a new front on Jordan and to rope in the Taliban and Algeria. Eight for now. Anyway, I digress. So...

We're very, very lucky. I mean, we, it's like a 669 is a tiny unit. We're talking every year, 30 tops, 30 guys graduate almost two years pipeline. That's it? That's it. This whole slogan, logo 669, when the worst happens, call 669. That's not the number of special forces offices you have? 669? I mean, that's it. We're talking 30 guys and...

Half of them need to, you know, it's not like everybody's available for operations. You need officers, you need the guys that go to train the next ones because we all, we serve for three, four, five years, that's it. So we're always training constantly. So,

You are very lucky to serve at that unit, and especially myself as being sent after two years of training also for another year at Maganda Vida Dome, Israeli Red Cross, to be a paramedic. And therefore, I was also sent every time they wanted, like, you know, the top-notch, the guys that are also doctors, paramedics who are capable of doing whatever a physician could do on a battlefield, and also a two-year training of a rescue soldier. You do... Wait, does that mean at any given moment there were only 30...

Or each year, but you do three years of mini-trips, is there 90 of them? Once a year, 50, 60 guys and possibly also girls for the last two years.

who made the tryouts, they enlist and they start the training. 50%, that's the average will drop out of the training. And that gives us between 25 and 30 that will finish. They'll stand on the finish line. I fainted just reading about the training process. Just the tryouts. But wait, at any given moment, how many 669 soldiers are there?

So you could do the calculator. I'm not allowed to talk. No, I'm kidding. But it's a three-year service, right? Okay. And because the training is so long. What if you were with an 100 then?

Much lesser. So that's all. So you're sent to work with other units on special operations, including what you mentioned on what's going on in Gaza, rescuing hostages, bringing in detainees that maybe have intel. It includes also special ops going up north, definitely in combat in full-blown war in Lebanon, and also things that obviously we can't talk about, but Air Force is the long-term

a distance branch of the IDF and we're part of the Air Force. So foremost, our job is to rescue a pilot ejecting its plane. So we need to be capable of getting there, you know, and

If I, you know, looking at all these different missions and you do everything, the army, you know, every Red Bull commercial of extreme, you could think about jumping out of airplanes, out of helicopters, using all kinds of weaponry, anything, ropes, rappelling, and it's all written in full throttle in Memphis Le Mans. That's why I guess it became such a big seller. From all that,

for myself and all these death-defying stunts i i think the most amazing thing amazing and this i think is is very uh common for 669 operators to feel that way the biggest privilege of service in that unit all the extreme in action and special rescues and and secret missions is that moment that you are in a helicopter with a casualty he is in the worst moment in his life he just

got him out of Gaza, he got him out of Lebanon, he saw his friends just blowing up or getting killed or injured, they're lying next to him on another stretcher in the helicopter, and you give him the confidence that

He's going to make it. He's going to make it is a big word. It's a big phrase. It's not only medical wise. For myself, if I might say, one of the things I've adopted over the years is when we when I'm in the helicopter with soldiers, when I extract, what's the word? Extract. Extract. Sorry. When I extract the soldier.

From the battlefield before we landed in the helipad at the hospital if he's still conscious I give him I give him back his rifle and

to hold it when we land there. Because there is something that I feel when I see the pride and dignity of a soldier. Because, you know, he's a hero and then he comes on a stretcher. I just took all his clothes off to see if there's injuries. He's all naked and shivering because it's freezing. I want to give him that dignity that he's holding his own rifle, returning like a hero from the battlefield. And I think, you know, all those stunts and special ops and stuff, that's

That is the biggest privilege for a special forces rescue team operator to do is to be with that soldier in the helicopter at that moment. Amazing. I think it's incredible really to hear about something that's really underappreciated definitely from people looking at this war from outside, which is the rich psychological lives of the soldiers who are doing this, who are not machines. They're not robots. They weren't born for this.

They're trained for this. They do it incredibly well. And they're suffering and they're struggling and have to make difficult decisions and find ways to accommodate and absorb all of this. And I guess for you, it's especially complicated because your job as a combat medic is to save lives. Now, the IDF has come under a lot of criticism internationally, mostly unfair, I believe, for taking lives.

At the extreme end, of course, there are the crazy people who say Israel's accusing genocide. Okay, Israel's doing genocide. Okay, whatever. No, it's not. Then there are those who say that Israel is being indiscriminate or not taking adequate care to protect civilians and should always do more, always do more to protect civilians among the enemy population. And I'm wondering, as someone who has witnessed combat on the inside, as someone who's taken part in missions before,

We can talk about what you did in Syria to save lives of a quote-unquote enemy population. How that makes you feel when you hear world leaders constantly bashing you, you on the head, for the way that we Israelis value the lives of people on the other side? 669 as a unit.

Over the years, participated in several humanitarian missions. Turkey, just a few years ago. Brazil, Mexico, Nepal as part of the medical corps sending missions. And Syria is...

a whole different story. Because it became kind of obvious that Israel is the first one to send the biggest plane to Haiti when in their need. But with Syria, when the civil war started in 2001, 2011, sorry. At some point, casualties from Syria started arriving at the border with Israel. And

What's amazing, many times in the army, you get orders from above what to do when something happens, how to act, missions, et cetera. But here we have soldiers, and you said that a rich psychological thought. We have teams of soldiers that are just on the border. They're infantry brigades. That's their routine. And they meet casualties on the other side of the fence asking for help. And they need to decide, well, what do they do? They call their officer. Can we let them in? Right? That's how stuff begins.

And months, years later, it became one of the most, for myself talking, intriguing,

episodes in Israeli military relationship in Syria when Israel has treated thousands and thousands of casualties from the Syrian war. This is Operation Good Neighbor. Good Neighbor. That's the name. It got all these names. We tried all kinds of methods. Operation Doctors Visit. Yes, so many names. But Good Neighbor was like what people remember. And 669, of course, as...

definition in the medical corpse when you see a casualty you look at the medical condition period that's how i was taught in the military bad so the military medic a course and a paramedic it's always you don't see who it is you see the medical condition meaning when a syrian arrived the

at the border with Israel. His condition was as if a soldier was wounded, we would call a helicopter because it's far away. It's a border. We're far away from a hospital. The Syrian would receive the same treatment itself. They're approaching the border, the Israeli border, and we as Israel are taking them in and taking them for medical treatment. We are taking them in

Sometimes a dozen, dozens of them in the middle of the night because they arrive at dark. Assad tried, you know, who knows where he is now? Moscow, I think. Moscow, Moscow. So Assad was trying to avoid them from reaching out to Israel. It looks really bad, right? So he was trying to kill them and shoot them on the way. They would arrive hiding, concealing their identities at night, afraid in a way that I can't even describe.

And the infantry soldiers protecting the border, when they would bring them in, they would do a quick evaluation and they would send a helicopter if needed. They would call 669 and say, well, this is the best medical unit in the IDF. Well, it needs a helicopter, this poor Syrian casualty. For so many, so many years, between 2011, 2018, it was,

Sometimes, not even a weekly, sometimes on a daily basis, we were, I mean, my team and I, we were launched on helicopters to the Golan Heights. Sometimes it would be a mass casualty incident, a dozen of Syrians. We would stay on the ground, you know, trying to triage, giving a first, treating them like, you know, life-saving tourniquets, blood and stuff, and then taking them in the helicopter to the different hospitals in Israel.

I think for myself, I mean, it's... I'm not even exposed. This is more of Noga's world to...

the decisions made or not made depending on if there's innocent people. This is things I hear with Noga when she comes back from reserves and we're making dinner once in a while. Mrs. M. Mrs. M. And she says, she shares with me stories that she didn't approve of a airstrike or didn't even get from above an approval for a airstrike because there was thought to be civilians

in one compound or another. We're talking about the war in Gaza now. Yes. Yes. For instance, if there was a, you know, it's a war. We need to do what we need to do. But if there was no reason, and this is a consideration that is, it always exists.

And the fact that it always exists, I mean, this is, you know, 669 rescuing Syrians. I hope one of the guys that we, when we brought thousands, so I hope one of them now is in the government of the Syrian. So I wanted to ask you about this. I mean, look, let's first of all, park the thought about how painful it is to hear people accusing us of not valuing human lives when you see the extent to which the IDF is going to take into account the presence of civilians and minimize harm to them, even when Hamas is fighting out of those compounds.

But Israel treated thousands of Syrians in hospitals. And now we're in a situation where Israel's taken a narrow buffer zone on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights, warning the al-Qaeda offshoot that's taken over Syria, you know, keep away from the border. We don't want to fight with you, but don't mess with us. I'm optimistic that there's potential for Syria to become a neutral country because it doesn't want Iran on its soil anymore.

either because they have enough to be worried about building Syria that they don't want to start picking a fight with Israel. And when they look at Hezbollah and Hamas, you know, they realize it's not worth it. But within all that, you have thousands of people. And when you take into account the first circles of their families, many more thousands of people who had direct experience of receiving life-saving aid from Israelis, from Israeli soldiers. I wonder how you think that

that will affect how they engage with Israel given Syria's future now. I know we're jumping from asking about your personal experience to, whoa, let's zoom out and give me your take on the news. But you saw it with your own eyes. It's not only that. I mean, if we'll talk even more generally, we treat Palestinian casualties from Western Israel from...

Gaza. From the West Bank. From the West Bank and from Gaza. We treat them on a weekly basis. When a Palestinian gets in a car accident in the West Bank, 669 is called. Period. When Palestinians from Gaza, for years, running away from Hamas atrocities many times, came to the border asking for help.

669 was launched to rescue Palestinians from Gaza. It was always, and it still is, about the medical condition. How is it possible I've never heard about this? For months, we would look at the graph of the numbers. There's a briefing every end of the month, and 669 had HQ, and the numbers many times were, we rescued more Palestinians than Israeli civilians and soldiers together in that month.

So that's to say the least. One of the things when I was writing Full Throttle, Mephes Lemea, those days, one of the things that... The working title was Full Speed, but we settled on Full Throttle. It's American English. You can't go, you know, it has to be ruined. So one of the things that we put there on Full Throttle is...

One story that I would want to share with you, for me, I think it's an example of what's the length that we went rescuing the enemy on those days. We were launched from an air base in central Israel to a baby at the Golan Heights, a Syrian baby that just arrived. It was midday. That was like the info we got. And we were flying towards northern Israel in a Black Hawk plane.

I was trying to concentrate for myself, trying to remember what's the dosage of pharmaceutical therapy that I need to give him if I want to put him to sleep and intubate him and stuff, because I don't remember that. It's like a milligram and stuff. And I couldn't concentrate because on the comms, on the radio, I was hearing HQ telling our pilots...

to fly, we'll call it like a tactical altitude, lower towards the ground. So on the Syrian radar, they won't be able to see us because there were threats, like really intelligence concrete threats that they're going to try to shoot a missile at a helicopter arriving towards the Syrian border. You don't want the Syrian army to know that you're flying in to rescue a Syrian baby. Exactly.

And I just couldn't hold that in my mind. What the heck is going on in this neighborhood? I imagined that the uncle of that baby is standing on a hill nearby the border and is just aiming towards us as missile as we're approaching. And we were really terrified that they'll hit us. So we landed there. We did what we had to do. And that baby was like two, three. It was like in a terrible condition. Yeah.

Terrible condition. His mother brought him to the border, a very young Syrian. And there was a huge dilemma what to do there with the mother because our direct orders were just to get the baby. We were really afraid that Assad or the militians there were trying to bring terrorists into Israel as casualties or refugees, etc. So...

We ended up bringing the mother with us, seeing her in our own eyes. It was a decision we made. We brought her with us. We brought him to the hospital. I was sure he was going to die. And a few months later,

He got a picture of a smiling baby and he went back to Syria with his mother. And that's one story out of a thousand, I mean. That's amazing. And let's hope that that little baby grows up to bring peace between Israel and Syria. Maybe he's a minister these days. Maybe he's a rebel and he's going to get a title. No, no, no. Let's hope he's going to make peace with us when we can have peace in the Middle East. Guy, we're talking about two books, Biblicals.

The first book that is coming out in English is The Rescue, October 7th, through the eyes of Israel's elite pararescue forces. The second one is Full Throttle, which is the original book about the experience of being pararescue operative before October 7th. What's the schedule for release and where can people buy the books? So The Rescue is going to be online everywhere and in stores in the United States towards March, December.

2024 and published by wicked son by wicked son yes amazing wicked son publishers and further on the road the second half of 2025 full throttle is going to be released we switch between them and baby book became the first book to come out

And it's a great opportunity to say, thank God you weren't spokesman of the government when you considered doing Full Throttle. Otherwise, there was no chance. And you know, I spent every day cursing myself for taking on the project. But when you started working on the October 7th book, I said...

The craziness of having to get this out even months after deadline is worth it because this is the story that needs to be told. And Guy, for those following on our YouTube channel, they can see here the original Hebrew books. Explain the cover art to me. So the symbol of 669 is a cat with wings, a black cat. And it's a very well-known symbol in Israel.

Everyone knows that a black cat means 669, and that cat, with its wings around, it has green eyes. That's how this...

when the first one, Memphis Le Maire. It's supposed to be cat's eyes? Yeah. I thought it was night vision goggles. So it's, you know, we could play with it, but there's a helicopter inside. So everyone kind of understands, well, okay, this is 669. So it's like this slight hint. And what happened, the book became a really known book because,

I'm still amazed by it. It's still a shot. It's a huge bestseller. And I even caught a few guys from the unit saying to mostly girls that they wrote the book, which is totally cool. I don't have my name on it. You've got guys pretending they wrote the book to pick up girls? Yeah, because you could say there's no name on it. So...

And yeah, it was actually, it was amazing. I was very... Wow, to think the contributions you've made not only to our national security, but other guys' romance. For the romance, for the stories. And what happened with October 7th when it came out, so because there's such a big...

crowd that knows the first one, it had to be related from the Yediot publishers, the publishing company in Israel. And that's how October 7th got those eyes. But since this is perhaps the biggest

or most terrible thing that happened to Jews and Israelis, and maybe for the good, hopefully. So it got this red, strong...

The same cover just in red and the English edition is different. It's an amazing image of you looking proper badass stepping out of a helicopter, right? Well, I needed to go to the gym a bit more to pop it up here. But, you know, there's a slogan. Soldier is all about how you look. It's not about what you know. It's about what you write. Guy, thank you for coming.

And that brings us to the end of part B of our engrossing episode with Sergeant Major Guy M, a Special Forces medic from Israel's Elite 669 Rescue Unit. He's here to talk about his books, The Rescue and Full Throttle, both translated by yours truly, The Rescue, out now, Full Throttle, later in the year. As always, if you enjoy these episodes, find them enlightening and informative.

Please subscribe on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts. Share the link with friends, family. Give us a like. And on all the social media platforms, it really does help to help us get the message out and to get amazing stories like guys out to a wider audience. So from me here in the studio, thanks for joining us.