Inside Israel’s Elite Rescue Unit | IDF Soldier’s Story of Survival (Pt.1)
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I literally have one more tourniquet and that's it. And I start shouting around me, well, someone get me more medical supply. Is there someone here that knows medicine? Someone here that learned first aid in seventh grade? I need people. I need help. And there's no help. Hello and welcome to State of a Nation. I'm Alon Levy. Joining you today with an episode unlike any other. A top secret guest and two personal stories that intertwine in the course of a war.

The events of October 7th caught everyone by surprise and made everyday citizens in Israel into heroes. But some were already heroes, like Sergeant Major Guy M, a combat medic from the Elite Unit 669. He's also a best-selling author who captivated Israeli readers before the war with his accounts of daring do as a special forces operative. Guy and I knew each other before the war.

Because I was in the middle of translating his book, out soon in English, as full throttle. When Hamas invaded, he got called into action within hours. And in between rounds of reserve duty, he not only got married, he wrote a whole new book. It's called The Rescue. It's about October 7th through the eyes of Israel's special rescue forces. And it's out.

Because in between news interviews at the Prime Minister's office, I found myself translating his book. Because it was important for me that the world know what happened. So we're going to do something different today. If you're watching on YouTube or one of our video platforms, you won't see Guy's face.

We're filming him over the shoulder to protect his identity so he can speak freely about the chaos, the heroism and the impossible choices he faced while trying to save lives under fire. And we're going to talk about how our paths and personal stories kept crossing as we both leapt to defend our country. Me behind a microphone and him as a real hero with a gun trying to save lives.

It's the first time that we're sitting down to chat, to process, to take stock of a terrible year together. And we're going to talk about his rescue efforts under fire on the blood-soaked ground on October 7th. And the emotional toll of getting ripped out of your ordinary life, like so many Israeli reservists, to witness things that no human being should ever see. Join us between the lines and beyond the headlines.

We're talking in years now, right?

We're not talking in days anymore. It feels like it was a decade ago. Yeah, I know. It's just a constant... It's like a full-time job, just being a soldier.

going back in time. That's what it's all about. Right. Let's start off with the elephant in the room. I can see your lovely face and I know what M stands for, but we can't use your full name and viewers who are watching on the YouTube channel can only see the back of your head. Why is that? So operators in special units and the IDF for, I think since I know it, we've always been required to have our identities concealed and

We can have our faces, we can have our full names for many reasons. Obvious ones, enemy is always...

tapping our phone, trying to understand what's going on. You're saying the enemy is watching this podcast right now? For sure. I mean, that's like the obvious. I'll take it. I'll take it. Yeah. Viewers are viewers. And I hope they like it as well. And I hope they learn something and learn to appreciate Israel a little bit more. I'm sure they love you. Maybe I should be covering my face. Oh, no, for sure. I mean, have you went to Europe so far in the last few months? In disguise. Anyway, why are we seeing you from the back of your head?

So this is one of the requirements when I'm part of Unit 669, which is one of the four elite units of the Army. It's the national, not only the IDFs,

Rescue unit, combat rescue unit, and therefore where you participate in special operations. Obviously the Air Force, but in any kind of special operations that's going on, not only with the IDF, also other agencies. So therefore the people serving at the unit, we can't have our faces or our names on screen or published. That's why. Okay.

And as my neck doesn't look neat from the way you see it. Hopefully you are unrecognizable from that. Okay, but I do want us to have an unfiltered conversation because this is a very special episode for me. And it's really the first time since the beginning of the war that we've had a chance to sit down and debrief and take stock. It's a special episode for me because I translated your book. And with the exception of Hamas...

maybe Hezbollah and the Houthis there was no one that I was cursing more during the war apart from you because in between CNN interviews as a government spokesman I still had to finish translating your book that I was in the middle of before the war and then if that were not enough you have finished you know several months of reserve duty and you decide to write a whole new book

about October 7th, which you're now releasing as the book The Rescue. And I was trying to juggle that while being the government spokesman. Anyway, I know the feeling is entirely mutual because I was way past deadline. So sorry on the record in front of the camera. But it was important for me to translate this whole new book about October 7th. Firstly, because you're a hero and because you're a mensch, but also because it's important for me

that the world hear firsthand from Israeli soldiers about what is happening and hear firsthand about the atrocities of October 7. So I have my reasons, but I'm wondering why was it important for you to tell this story and to get it out so quickly?

I feel, just to share, I'm feeling like you're throwing me back in time, because for me, it's a very intimate process to work, working with you, because it's to dig into feelings and emotions, putting them into writing. And originally, while we started working on a book that is called, in Hebrew, From Zero to 100, it sounds better in Hebrew. In English, it translates, it's going to be published as Full Throttle.

And it was a diary of my team and I from five years of service in 669. For some reason, I'm not yet sure how and why, because I'm not even an officer. It became one of the most read books by Israeli teenagers. Everyone I meet

coming to tryouts for Special Forces. Everybody read it. It's been a joke on me that I'm making, it's not like I'm making any money, it's books, right? But everybody makes a, has a good laugh of it. And when we started working on the translation,

We said it has to be a chapter. There has to be. We can't go through a book that talks and narrates the story of the National Rescue Unit without, you know, showing what happened on October 7th. We started working on the translation before October 7th, and then October 7th happens. You're in the kibbutzim. We'll get onto this discussion in a little bit. And we're saying, hang on, we can't release the book as it was before. October 7th has changed everything. Yeah, exactly. And...

Originally, I started writing and I want to thank you for that because I...

The book, The Rescue, wouldn't have come out if you wouldn't give me that push to write a chapter about October 7th. Don't think either of us had a choice. And, you know, I was in the middle of war. I didn't think about anything rather than going back home when I can and seeing my fiance Noga back then, today my wife. For me to start thinking about writing something was very far-fetched.

Literally, when did you have time? She must hate you too. That's for sure. No, she didn't have time for me. She's an officer. Back then she was running all the operations of the paratroopers brigade special forces. She's the only woman in the army doing that position. So she didn't have time for me either anyway. One day when you have kids, you're going to be literally like the Incredibles. Yeah.

Wow. That's... I hope you're not going to be that fat like the Incredible Dude, Mr. Incredible. But yeah, she's good looking. She's going to fit in that suit. But...

I started writing and it was only to be a chapter in the translation of Old Fatal. And I started writing and it just started pouring out. And I brought on board the guys that were with me when we were fighting in the Kibbutzim, when we were going down south, not knowing like the whole world, what's going on. And we found ourselves in Nova and then in Nachal Oz and then in Berri and Kfar Aza. And I brought them in and I said, guys, I started writing this.

Why don't you bring me your... What happened there? And I also found that I didn't even remember some of the stuff that happened. I needed their help to collect the pieces, to put together the puzzle. And then I also brought different...

angles from the guys that were on the helicopters that day that week and from one of the guys from the unit that woke up in one of the kibbutzim he lives there and he found himself fighting with a bunch of guys from the kibbutz and they managed to save the people of the kibbutz and we put it together and it just came more and more and when i don't know if you remember that but i sent you the first chapters and you read through them and you just sent me back guy what

This just can't fit in the same book of a bunch of teenagers becoming special forces rescue team. This is a whole new story. This is a story of the Jewish people. We can't have it in the same book. And this is how, first of all, Not On Call came out in Hebrew a few months ago. And in a few months, The Rescue will come out in English.

Let's talk about not waiting for a call. I want to take you back to October 7th. I was looking through our WhatsApps, scrolling through dozens of messages saying, have you finished yet? Have you finished yet? I need the manuscript. You're way over deadline. Anyway, I sent you a message at 9.30 in the morning on October 7th. Do you remember? Yeah, yeah. I think it was maybe earlier. I remember because you sent me, did they call you? And when I saw your message, I also saw a message in the group chat

of the Reservience of 669. And the group has said there was a message from one of the officers at the unit saying,

everything's under control. If we need to, anyone will call you. That's the message. 9.30 in the morning, October 7th, everything's under control. So that was earlier. I woke up. I had no idea until Noga's mother woke me up, woke us up. We're sleeping at her parents' house nearby Jerusalem, and she woke us up trying to keep it together, saying that the country is under attack. Maybe we want to wake up. It's Saturday morning.

And right after I saw your message and I texted you back, I got a phone call from that phone call that if we need you, if it's a big word, if that phone call that says, Guy, how far away are you now from Telno from 669 base?

And I think if I try to seize it, to put it together, that mutual feeling that you text me, did they call you? And you say, you expect they'll call. And you said, hey, not yet. Not yet. But Noga's already on base. Yeah. And this is like this feeling that something's happening. We're not sure what's happening. And we're definitely not capable of imagining the scale. And this is what is so hard about...

for me, not only for me, for many of the people, the guys and girls and soldiers that were fighting on that week is to try and remind people looking back then

What we kept in our head, like what could actually be? Was it a few terrorists invaded? Is it rockets? No one could imagine the scale. And that is what sometimes is so hard also, because now everybody's like judging and looking back, you know, criticizing about what happened. But no one was capable of imagining. And then we had to face it.

And that criticism is right. And we do need a state commission of inquiry to look into how this war happened, how the massacre happened. But you're right that at the beginning of the war, it was complete chaos, pandemonium. No one had any idea what was going on. I was looking through the messages. You said, I haven't been called up yet. And I said, look after yourself. What a nightmare. And you replied, this is 9.40 in the morning on October 7th. Truly, I think we don't even understand the magnitude of the event.

And I wrote to you, we can't get our heads around it. What I'm seeing on Twitter is not what we're seeing on TV. And you wrote, fuck. Did I use the F word? Yeah, but in Hebrew. Oh, okay. So it's all right. And after that cliffhanger, it wasn't long before you threw on your uniform and reported to duty. So tell me what your October 7th looked like.

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. My thoughts, and I think this is also an example for everyone has its own personal October 7th, and it's blended into the national Jewish-Israeli one. I was...

The night before and through the whole week before at a hospital in Jerusalem in Sharetz Edek, my father had a cardiac arrest. We were on a family trip in Georgia. And

Saturday night, eight o'clock Georgian restaurant. We were celebrating. The whole family was together for the first time after almost a decade, right before I'm getting married. Georgia and the caucus. Georgia. Yeah. Not Georgia. We are not cowboys. And, uh, there was a Georgia with, uh, in the, in the Eastern Europe. And suddenly my father collapses on the floor and I assumed he, you know, fainted or something. Um,

And with the paramedic, medic instinct now, at that point, almost 50-year med student, I kneel next to him, put my fingers on his neck to feel pulse. And for very long seconds, I say to him, I feel like it can't be happening, guys. It can't be happening. Just push your fingers harder. And at some point, it just hits me. And I started CPR there. And I know too well...

low the chances are to save someone when you are in Western country having a defibrillator and intensive care unit on the way. So it was literally for a few minutes just saying goodbye to my father on a filthy floor of a local restaurant in the mountains in Eastern Europe. And after a few minutes, which felt like hours, and suddenly I see a movement in his eyes and

And that was the beginning of the most challenging, toughest rescue of my life. That includes this war in October 7th for sure.

And we were very, very, that's talking about Hanukkah, the biggest miracle I've ever seen. It happened to me, myself, to be thankful for. And we managed to bring my dad back to Israel. And he was hospitalized at the ICU in Sharet Sedeq Hospital on Saturday. So we did a kiddish with them. And then I went to sleep at Noga's parents' house nearby.

So my mind, my thought, my exhaustion, I was all with my father. So when I wake up and I tell you, I text you, they didn't call me up and I hope they don't. It's not because I don't feel like going to reserve today. It's because I need to be with my dad. That's where my heart and my mind is. So that's the strike. That's my October 7th blended into whatever happened after. And by the way, I'll say...

One of the things that I found especially interesting about your book and following your experience, we'll talk a little bit about your wedding in the middle of the war, is the fact that the Israelis who were on the ground fighting in Gaza, many of them are not full-time soldiers. And even those who are, it's not like they popped out of an action man box. These are real people with real lives who on October 6th had their own problems that had nothing to do with the war, with plans for the next vacation, the next startup, the next year of academic studies.

and were suddenly thrust into this abnormal reality and have been flitting back and forth between reserves and civilian life. And on October 7th, you found yourself thinking that saving your dad from a heart attack on the floor of a filthy Georgian restaurant was the biggest drama and trauma you're experiencing in 2023. And then a massacre unfolds and you put on your kit and you jump into action. What did you do on October 7th?

So I was called, really one of the first people to be called into the unit. Why? Until today, I don't know. And I arrived there in the morning.

There was no one, like the whole army is on vacation. Everybody's traveling. Simchat Torah. Yep. And I arrived there. There's two soldiers under mandatory service. I mean, they're younger than me. I know them. And they meet me at the entrance of the unit. They hand me over a kit with the combat gear that belongs to one of the guys who's on vacation.

they tell me, well, we're getting into this pickup truck and we're getting out. Um, if you want to make some coffee or something now, think about it. Now it sounds outrageous to say to someone, you want to make coffee before we're driving down to the massacre. But this is how, you know, we're thinking, okay, it's another mission. Uh, we'll stop off for a latte at Aroma. Yeah. And I,

I tell them, what do you mean driving? I mean, 669 is, as its combat rescue unit, our main way of getting from one place to another is helicopters. It's an airborne unit. What do you mean we're driving? So they tell me, well, all the helicopters that are on call constantly, they've been called to something and the pilots haven't arrived yet, so there's not enough helicopters. The commander of the unit wanted to get there and see what's going on on the ground.

So for me, it was really, really, really weird just to get in a car and drive somewhere. It's weird as it seems. And I'm driving and I'm sitting in the backseat of that pickup truck texting with my brother and my sister and Noga trying to figure out what's going on. But I'm mainly thinking about my father in the hospital. The first place where I actually...

get that slap in the face that this is something else. I have to figure out how to customize what's happening. When we get to a road in the middle of nowhere, I'm not a driver, so I don't even know where we are. We get stuck in this

of traffic jam, a few cars and ambulances and pickup trucks of military get stuck there. We get out of the car and on both sides of the road, there are numerous, so many casualties. Everywhere you look, you see people on the ground bleeding, people shouting. Now, I instantly, this is one of the things you develop as a rescue soldier in 669. It's this instinct between knowing events

if someone is, if it's a corpse, a dead body, or it's someone still alive. It sounds very obvious to me, but one of the things I've learned throughout the war is that for soldiers that don't practice medicine and rescue, to come up and just say, this is a dead person, I'm not going to try putting a tourniquet or resuscitating, it's a big issue. So I look around and I see so many dead people,

And people are running from one place to another, screaming for help, looking for someone that has medical training. And I started instantly not knowing where we are, what's going on, what made this happen. We started treating casualties on the ground, putting tourniquets, trying to do triage. Where were you, in fact?

And then I realized that people were actually kind of dressed up in this weird kind of way. In my mind, it seems like everybody were dressed up like they returned from India now, from a festival in India. That's what I thought. I didn't know there was a festival going on there. I had no idea. So that was the first place I kind of felt, well, this is a whole different magnitude. But we didn't stay there for long. What did you think you were driving into?

What did you think your mission was? So I kind of applied what we were training. Not that that is the main mission of 669, but for years, one of the threats that we understood that might happen on the border with Gaza is an infiltration of

of a squad of Hamas using mainly tunnels. Obviously that's no secret and we unfolded to be that they were preparing for that. By the way, I was recently with an event with one of the actresses from Fauda who said that one of the plot

that they considered for the season was an infiltration of, that's it, a squad of Hamas terrorists into Israel. And they threw out that storyline because they said that's implausible, it would never happen, they could never break through Israel's defenses, but then 3,000 terrorists burst through. That's not what you think you're driving into. You think you're arriving on the scene of a terror attack because of an infiltration of a squad of Hamas terrorists. Yes, because...

One of the key tools of a rescue soldier is to, you never really have an opportunity to train for

for the mission you're about to do. Unlike any other special forces, which the main method of being in a special forces unit is to train sometimes for years on an operation to make the chances that you have a mistake going on the slightest as possible. But rescue obviously happens when everything goes wrong. So you train on many scenarios and when something happens, you try to apply the scenario you already know

on the circumstances and situation. So in my mind, we're going to a scenario that they managed to get through a tunnel into one of the kibbutzim. So when we saw that magnitude, we're still stuck in some sort of way in that circumstances of a squad going through a tunnel.

We don't know what's going on in different communities around. We're not on Twitter. We're not on the media. We're just focusing. We're on the field. So we don't even have the full scale. And I have to say to you, Elon, thankfully, we didn't know what's going on everywhere, you know, because it's impossible to, in my point of view, sometimes when you see the whole magnitude and the whole picture, sometimes it's much harder to function

rather than having your own small challenge that you're focusing on. Not that something was small in that day. So on October 7th, you find yourself treating people at the site of the Nova Festival? Yes.

Yes, they stopped us after a short, I don't even know how much time we were on the ground there. And the guy... 360 people were slaughtered. And it's like a field, you know, my mind degraded it. Like the visual, I know for myself...

I cannot keep those pictures in my mind fully vivid and colorful. It degrades it for now. It's just very blurry. It's like fields of corpse and casualties on the ground. Because they weren't just shot down, right?

They're mutilated. They kill them and then abuse them in the most horrific ways. And you're saying in your memory now, it's literally a blur. It's like your mind has censored it and pixelated it. You have to have different mechanisms to defend yourself. Otherwise, if you keep all this footage, like a Google Drive of photos, it's impossible.

So you're at the site of Nova. Where else do you... As if that's not enough. Yeah, so we know we're doing our thing there. But we didn't... I'm still trying to understand what's going on. And one of the two guys with me gets a phone call from the unit telling us to continue to a place called Nachal Oz.

So he tells me we got to go, we got to get back in the pickup truck. That was for me, I just, I'm telling you, what are you talking about? Look what's going on here. We're not going anywhere. And he says to me, no, we have to go. Get back into our pickup truck. That's not even an army vehicle. It's a white pickup truck, a civilian one, right? So we need to be thankful that no one shot us because that was exactly the same vehicle, the Hamas. Yes, and we didn't know that, obviously.

So we're driving towards Nachal Oz and the junctions between where we are at the Nova and Nachal Oz, and one of them there was a terrorist ambushing vehicles. And at some point we even joined border patrol on a gunfight with terrorists that were, you know, just keeping us from moving on the road.

We make it to Nachalot, we join with another unit, and we just enter the kibbutz. And if to put it under, you know, some sort of phrase, it's to liberate the kibbutz. I remember the moment watching this on TV at home when the reporter said in astonishment, he said, I can't believe I'm saying this.

these kibbutzim have been conquered by Hamas. They are no longer under our control. That was when, for the viewers at home, who maybe we had a little bit of a bigger sense of what was going on, we understood that this wasn't a terrorist attack. It was an armed invasion, and Hamas had conquered territory. And you're fighting to reclaim that territory and try to save civilians behind enemy lines who were being slaughtered

as you're gathering there. So what happens in the halos? We gather outside the kibbutz and when we enter, we don't know what we're going into. There's no intel. We don't even have cell phone reception at that point. Comms are not really working because, you know, everything really happened really fast. And

When we enter the kibbutz, the whole place is a wreck. You see buildings on fire, there's corpses, dead bodies everywhere. Many of them, Hamas terrorists, that defense team of the kibbutz there, the Kitat Kueninut, gave a hell of a fight.

And we walk through and every building in my mind, I'm entering a kibbutz. It looks like where I was born on a kibbutz up north. It looks like the community I was brought up in. And this is how I visualize it. But every building could be a place where tourists are hiding, aiming towards us and can open fire in every second. And of course, once they can pop out of any house. Exactly. You see multiple, you see explosions everywhere. And,

And the thing that struck me at the moment I entered is the terrorist bodies at the entrance, and they're holding RPGs and so much ammo. So that kind of gives me a heads up, well, guy, this is the first time I understand this is not one or two terrorists. Like, look at how many terrorists are lying on the ground there. And, of course, when we enter, the fire opens at us, and it's sort of we engage in orb and

warfare technique, moving from one compound to another with that other unit.

inside a community inside Israel and we are not acting as we are the stronger force there. We're acting like we're trying to survive. I'm trying to find the words in English to translate the military lingo, but we're actually trying to conquer it back. We're not going to boost as we should have. We didn't want to wait for more squads to arrive. We needed to enter.

And you're a medic, but you're doing active combat as part of the Liberation Force here. Yes, I'm second line. I'm not first line because every time there is a casualty, so you hear someone screaming, I need a paramedic, and you know that's your ring, that's your call. You run over. Many times it's civilians. The soldiers from the other unit would call me up, and they ask me, well, is he alive? They point on a body lying on the ground.

or on the floor inside that person's house, right? And my job is to say if he's alive or not.

There were casualties. Some of them we managed to save. And I think at that point in Nachalot, the anger, I was furious because for me to be inside Israel, inside a community that in my mind, it looks exactly like my house, my neighborhood where I grew up, a kibbutz I was born on. And I'm trying to call for backup. I'm trying to call for a helicopter. And we didn't have a comms and nothing was working right. And there was nothing. We're alone inside.

You mentioned the word triage earlier. One of the things that makes me very angry about the way that Israel is perceived and discussed around the world is people who think that Israel has easy choices, simple answers, as if Israel as a country and Israelis as people are not confronted with impossible decisions and choices all the time. Choices about life,

And death. Okay, that's what's at stake when you're waging a war, especially one that was declared on you. But you, as a medic, really did have to make decisions of life and death because you're completely overwhelmed. You just don't have the equipment or the manpower to treat everyone who needs help. And you sort of have to decide who lives and who dies. Tell me about that.

One of the things that I found on myself about myself while writing, putting it on paper, is that feeling that you're trying to get... It's like you're feeling so hopeless, right?

You're the answer. When someone is in need, someone's injured, I'm the answer. As a medic, paramedic, I'm a team of a combat rescue unit. I'm the best Israel has to offer. You are the superhero rappelling out of a helicopter to save the day. I'm the slogan of when everything goes wrong, this is the guys we want. And here I am at the entrance of Kfar Aza, a few hours later after Nachal Oz. Still, we don't know what's going on inside the kibbutz. There is...

Hell, there's bullets shooting, rain of rounds from everywhere you could look or hear. And I'm standing there outside. Casualties are starting to arrive from civilians that managed to escape, from army forces arriving and managed to get those casualties outside. And I'm at the entrance. I'm trying to enter with another team. And I find myself stuck, supposedly, right, with...

A dozen casualties from terrible, terrible wounds from grenades in Kalachnikovs. You know, people, their arm just flew off and I'm putting a tourniquet to try and stop the bleeding. And then I feel like, well, I only have one more. I mean, I literally have one more tourniquet and that's it.

And I start shouting around me, well, someone get me more medical supply. Is there someone here that knows medicine? Someone here that learned first aid in seventh grade? I need people. I need help. And there's no help. It's only you and those decisions.

When you learn about it in the textbook, a mass casualty incident, when there's more casualties than what you're capable of giving the best medical care, that's like definition. In Hebrew, the army lingo is, they say, Yeah, it's a very polite way of saying, you know. A very sanitized way to say,

more people dying than you can possibly help. It's not even dying. That's October 7th. The definition is you could have a run, you could have a mass casualty incidents when you're two people, two caregivers or medical personnel and three casualties. That's a mass casualty incident. And here we are with dozens.

And I'm asking, where are the medical corps of the army? I mean, the army has dozens of units that do medicine, not even only 669. And there's no one there. And then at some point, and this I won't forget forever. I mean, this is like one of those moments that are so deep down buried into me.

There is a vehicle arriving at the entrance of Kfar Aza. When I see a vehicle driving fast towards us, I know it's casualties. And they pull out a few casualties. One was shot in the head, one in the stomach, and a few in the limbs from charades. From shards? From shards, yeah. In Ressishim.

shrapnel shrapnel sorry i mean see this is why i'm your translator exactly exactly otherwise i don't understand what is charades is it wine and i'm there the guys with me they come to pick up the guy the person that is shot in the head and he's unconscious and um and then they stop and they say wait a second let's look around and then they realize that the one that's shot in the stomach is bleeding much faster

So they come to, you know, instantly they see, you know, basic medicine. You can't stop the bleeding. That's like the worst scenario. You need to get him out of there. And then they go and they want to pick up that stretcher. And I stopped them and I said, no, no, keep him on. I know this is the most, you know, I'm a paramedic. I'm always trying to focus on them. Worst casualty. And I tell him, this guy, he's just not going to make it. And he's still awake. He's literally still awake. Oh, God.

And I look around and say, this guy that is shot in the head, he's unconscious, but he might make it. He's still breathing. If there's a bleeding there, we might half an hour, an hour, make it to Soroka Medical Center in Be'er Sheva. Someone that is shot in the stomach, bleeding out, have no medical equipment that is, you know, they don't have blood, transfusion, they don't have tourniquets, they don't have the drugs, he's not going to make it. And I tell him, guys, leave him here.

take the guy that was shot in the head and that's what they did. And I just stay with him as he's bleeding on the floor, on the entrance of the car.

And, you know, there's literally nothing I could do. I just, you know, I put an IV just for my own feeling. I know I'm doing it because I have to feel I'm doing something to just stare at him, to cover his eyes, you know, to tell him to say the Shema. So I put an IV of fluids, but I know, and you know, 10 minutes later, you just, you know, no more pulse. And we put him together with the dozens of bodies that we already put behind the trees beforehand. How do you...

as an individual, but also soldiers more generally, because you've all seen things that no one should see, experienced things no one should experience, done things no one should have to do. How do you process it afterwards? Because at the end of the day, you're reserves and you have to go back to normal life and you have to walk down the street in Tel Aviv like a normal human being and go back to your fiance, now wife, and function like a normal, psychologically healthy human being, having suffered like a major trauma.

I imagine for you, writing was part of the therapeutic process. Tell me a bit about that. But what about the other soldiers? What mechanisms are there to help you process and put it in a box? My opinion about it, that there's no real, you know, it depends on the individual, but processing it is some sort of way. It's not putting it like I did, you know, writing it, putting it outside of you, putting it on the shelf.

It's some more of a way of understanding how that incident in your life, that chapter becomes another part of you. It's not going to disappear. You have to understand that there's going to be a toll. It's going to be there. But it's how you make it another compound of your personality and not the compound or the personality itself.

And it's a struggle. I mean, talking about myself, but so many friends, and perhaps it's even a whole generation. I feel this would be very weird, but as a Reservian, I'm now 30. I work a lot with mandatory service guys at the unit, 21, tops, 19. I see in their eyes, they're living it. They're a generation that is now...

You know, how did Alterman wrote it, the silver platter? They are a silver platter. And they cannot, at this point, cannot yet understand what the consequences, what the toll is. They cannot start processing because they are still in battle. They're still fighting. When they finish, when we finish, hopefully sooner than later. Inshallah.

Then it begins understanding, first of all,

what it made me into and talking for myself, I know for myself, there's changes of personality in me. It's hard for me even sometimes to defer. Well, I am, I have a struggle on focusing. I'm a med student. That's all I'm about, right? Focusing and learning and memorizing. I'm a, sometimes my temper and a very calm person, but sometimes I could lose my temper easier. And it's hard to me to, for me to point it out and say, well, you know,

guy, cut yourself some slack. You know, you've been through something. And because it just because it becomes part of who I am, who I function. And also for the good, I must say. There's at the end of the day where, you know, just a sum of all the experiences we've had in our life. And this is also a very, very strengthening and building. It could be, at least. Look, we're traumatized as a nation. And one of my fears is that

We're going to take all that trauma and then the crazy life here will become even crazier. But there are real people who need psychological care. And I said only half jokingly near the start of the war that the best thing that Israelis can do for our American cousins is to teach them Krav Maga. And the best thing they can do is give us therapy and counseling sessions. But anyway, I kept looking through our messages before we filmed this podcast. While, you know,

you're being a hero and saving lives in the South, in terms of how our stories intertwined. I start doing some media from my living room. And then there's a hilarious message I send you on the 12th of October with a picture standing behind a lectern in the prime minister's office. And I wrote, somehow I've become the Israeli government spokesman. And you replied with three crying, laughing emojis. And then a minute later, hang on, for real? LAUGHTER

Now, during the early days of the war, people think that there was some orderly process of information that was coming to us. And we were getting briefed and people were going around the keyboard scene with a clipboard and recording the atrocities. And we had folders of documented, verified information. There was none of that. October 7th was when the state collapsed and the lines of communication collapsed as well.

And on social media, there were reports coming out about atrocities and you didn't know what to believe, what not to believe, because many of the things turned out, sounded too horrific to be real. Some of them were and they weren't true. Some of them were, but you didn't know what you could base yourself on.

And I had to go on TV as a government spokesman and talk about the atrocities of October 7th without any sort of organized briefing process telling me which atrocity stories were real and which were not. So we did what we do best in Israel, which is we rely on our informal friendship circles. And you briefed me. I sent you a message October 24th. It's crazy that it works like this. This is not how a normal country should work.

I said, Guy, I'm going on a podcast in 40 minutes. Send me a voice note about what you saw, and I'll repeat it on air. That was how I got briefed. Tell me about the atrocities you witnessed. I want to put a disclaimer. When we arrived at, we're in Motbo Kibbutz Yengfar Aza, Be'eri, Nachalot, Kisufim, and our main goal was to look for someone who is alive, right? If it's a casualty, to try and treat him if we can.

And as we're strolling by foot or with a vehicle or with a pickup truck, and sometimes I notice my eyes lie on a figure. Sometimes it was a child mainly. That's my person. I think everyone can be on my own, but my softest point is when it's a child and not a grown-up.

or a woman, because we always imagine that it's someone we know. That's empathy at the end of the day. And many of those figures were just so hard to look at because I saw knife stabs or mutilizing of limbs, soldiers that were decapitated. And I think nothing I could say that would be new to anyone

But what was so hard after, you know, we saw so many horrible things, mutilized bodies, really. You see, I've seen bodies before. I've seen corpse. It's part of the mission and rescue unit.

Those bodies were intentionally mutilated. You see people that their hands are tied. It means I can't imagine what happened beforehand, but it wasn't a pleasant death for it to say the least. And you see places that were burned on fire. I was very in. I didn't know that they were using the gas, the cooking gas to put the houses on fire. I thought it was just from the combat that was going on.

Right, they actually came in from Gaza with jerry cans of gasoline. They were using the cooking gas that every house has, using it for cooking, and they cut the tubes and were lighting the houses on fire. Using the houses on fire? Yeah. And when I...

was looking at those figures and we didn't understand the magnitude, right? We don't know the news. It was so hard to actually look. You just cancel it immediately. You're in operational mode. You say, well, this is a body. Don't look at it. It's irrelevant. It's just draining your energy focus. And this is after the beginning was only one night without sleep. After it was the day after it was like after a few hours and sleeping in a car. So, um,

looking at those horrible scenes. And for myself, afterwards, I tried to recall many of them and to many of them, I'm very happy my mind kind of puts it in that blurry place. But the idea of spokesperson, they were also looking as you yourself to put people to talk about what was happening there, what they saw. Many of my friends were

I was with them on bases we were preparing for war, right? Not only in 669, but in other units. So we were talking about it, like men with their challenging emotional state and capabilities. We kind of, you know,

hinted at each other, you know, what's up, man? All good. How are you? Oh, wow. That was a hell of a fight. Oh, yeah. Yeah. That was terrible. How are you feeling? Good. You know, that's how far we get together. And it was I was curious, what do people remember from what they saw? And I was amazed, amazed, astonished how much of what was going on there, what we saw was

either erased, really, people in their imagination and their memory just erased it from happening because they depressed it, the mind has definite defense mechanisms, or they're just not capable of talking about it yet. And it's slightly, it could be the same thing, but it's also different. People just didn't want to bring it up

One of my friends said, and we met a few months later after he came out of Gaza, and he said to me, well, guy, you know, I was thinking about it. We started this war in Auschwitz. He said, you know, I remember the first week.

There's nothing like that first week and these past few months fighting in Gaza. It's a whole different scenario. And this is me personally talking, but I think it's also kind of a thumb rule. It's the hardest because you could easily imagine...

yourself, your family, your own house, while strolling through the pathways of a kibbutz and the Gaza envelope. You could easily imagine this is the body of your sister because, you know, it just looks like the bike and the car and the grass. You just relate it to yourself. And that is the hardest thing for a person to handle, especially when he's in this

automatic robot mode when you have to be on your soldier. And for so many people, it was so hard, even too hard to just talk about it. And for me, this is, I think, one of the biggest motives when you started working on the book. It gave an opportunity for guys to talk, gave them a reason because they're not showing emotions. They're not bringing up feelings. They're doing it for a mission. Because this book is,

Isn't just your recollections of fighting in the October 7th war, you weave together other stories of what was going on in those early days and tie together the threads of the different stories? Yes, yes. We brought the stories of the team, the angle of a helicopter team, the guys that were there.

Launched 7 or even earlier in the morning from Tel Nauf base, a siren goes off together with a red alert. A siren and they're launched having no idea what's going on, sent down south with the helicopter and we

put together with that the angle of people waking up in their own home. 669 guys that were on reserve. They're not soldiers anymore. They're doing gardening and agriculture, and they wake up and they find themselves defending their own homes against dozens of militants and jihadists arriving from Gaza. And of course, my personal angle with the guys fighting with me and the different teams and units that we meet

and also putting the place for casualties and victims that we meet on the way. We're facing people. When we enter a house in a kibbutz, we're actually entering someone's house, a whole family that was either, you know, whoever survived, of course, and were combat gear, you know, all kind of helmet and night visions and all these toys on us.

But we're actually there to rescue a family from its own house. And we kind of put it together. And this is, you know, there's more than 100 books I've learned recently, more than 100 books written in Hebrew about October 7th. And we're not even two years from that week. And it still is the only book, the only account to be written by guys or people that were fighting there.

Not victims or journalists, but actually people that were fighting there and putting it out. For me, this is so important. And for me, too. I think it's critical that you didn't just bring your own story, that you interviewed other people as well and presented not a first draft of history, but primary source material that in future when people look back and try to...

to understand what happened on that horrific day, this is your testimony. This is your account of what happened and what you saw. And it's interesting that you say that, you know, you had to tease it out of these people and they're trying to pixelate it in their minds and put it in a box. It also tells us as a society why it's so important that a real inquiry, a real investigation, a state commission of inquiry,

happen as soon as possible because otherwise people will forget. People will forget, people will repress, people will pixelate their memories and put them in a box and we have to address it while it's still fresh. And that doesn't bring us to the end of this episode because my conversation with Guy ran on for so long, we've decided to split this into two episodes. We thought we wouldn't do justice to his story of heroism if we tried to edit it down and

And it would be a lot to take in. It's very heavy to continue and produce the whole episode. So we're defining it into two. Douglas Murray is the only other guest who's had the honor of an episode split into two. And we'll do the same with Guy M to discuss his stories of heroism on October 7th.

As always, if you enjoy this podcast and to make sure you're the first to hear about the next episode coming out, do subscribe on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts. Like us on social media, share the link with friends you think will be enlightened by the stories that you are hearing here, fresh from the horse's mouth. I'm Elon Levy, and see you next time.