HOST: JENNIFER (00:01):
Welcome to the Going for Greatness show. Episode number 37. Today, I had an opportunity to speak with a man named Gaal, who survived the October 7th Hamas terrorist attack. Gaal lives in Israel, very close to the Gaza border. He, by his description, is a very humanistic, left-wing, progressive man who has spent his life trying to help the Gazen people. This story will shock you. The rising antisemitism and violent extremism that's happening across the world is frightening. Here are a few highlights of my conversation with Gal.

GUEST: GAL (00:47):
They terrorize the Palestinians in Palestine and Gaza. They don't only want to work in free Palestine. That's not the story. The story is about ruining the West, ruining the United States, winning England, taking over France, taking over those places, and wreaking havoc. Animal. They didn't fight the army. They didn't go and fight army against army soldiers, against soldiers. They came into houses, and that is not scary. It's terrifying. The ones that got hurt the most in Israel on the 7th of October were the most progressive left-wing people, loving humanist people in all of Israel. Those are the people that wished well for the Palestinians. All the good people in Gaza, and there is good people in Gaza, are hostage.

HOST: JENNIFER (01:41):
What was your experience with October 7th? What was that like for you? What happened?

GUEST: GAL (01:45):
I live in a kibbutz, village, or small town, maybe 2 kilometers from the  Gaza border. And we are neighboring a bunch of other small villages. My story starts the day before.  There is a difference between the day before and the day after.   It's crazy. 'cause the day before, we had one of the best days in our community, in my kibbutz, almost ever.  It was the end of Sukkot at the beginning of Simcha Torah. We have a ritual for Simcha Torah, where we camp outside the kibbutz and in an olive Orchard.  It's at a small, tiny corner outside of the kibbutz but close to the fenceline of the kibbutz. It's usually for all families with young kids.

GUEST: GAL (02:46):
And we make food together, and there's a campfire and guitars, and we play and sing. The kids have a lot of fun and stay over to sleep in tents outside the kibbutz. And it's a special occasion. It's something the kids like. This year, on Friday, October 6, my family- my wife, son, and mom- decided not to stay over and not sleep in a tent but to go to our house.  So, on the morning of October 7, we woke up in our home.. We started our story the same way as all the rest....at around 6:30 am—a lot of missiles and rockets. And hearing the alerts, we can listen to them from all around us.

GUEST: GAL (03:43):
 And it kept going and going and going.  I don't have a safe room in my house. I'm on the second floor. And I live just above my mother. So I took my son and wife and went to her safe room. And we stayed in the safe room for maybe 15 minutes. We realized after 15 minutes that there was likely not a ceasefire but between missiles and rockets. And it was a little bit more quiet.  I decided to run up the stairs and go back to the second floor and get a couple of necessities because I understood it was not a short-term situation. It seemed like something more than the usual rockets.

GUEST: GAL (04:35):
So I went up to the second floor and took some things. And when I went to the second floor, I started hearing the shooting. It was a sporadic shooting. And I thought it was from the usual fence with Gaza, far away, and nothing to be worried about. We hear guns shooting some from time to time, small arms, or stuff like that. It's not normal, but it happens. So I kept hearing it. I took some food. I took some water. I took my phone and chargers and everything. Then, I went to the kitchen. And from the second floor, I started hearing the bullets whistling.   I got used to knowing when I was in the Army. That's how you know the bullets are close to you.

GUEST: GAL (05:22):
I dropped to the floor and started crawling around the apartment, put my head down, and crawled back downstairs to the safe room. And when I went down the stairs, I saw the first responders, the people in charge of our safety and security inside.   They are volunteers. 40, 50, and 60-year-olds, sometimes 30 years old,.  They are not very skilled and not well-armed. But I saw two of them outside of my house. And they screamed at me to go down, stay in the safe room, close all doors, and never leave the safe room. They seemed nervous. And I kept hearing a lot more firearms. I heard more guns shooting from different places.

GUEST: GAL (06:14):
 And they were near. And I heard one from the main gate, one from behind me. And then I started hearing hand grenades and bombs and small RPG missiles.  And I was beginning to understand the situation because I recognized the voices. I started hearing things from other places and other times in the army.  And I understood the situation was different and crazy. And I went to the safe room, closed all the doors, shut down all the windows. And in the safe room, we have a computer. We started seeing videos.  We saw the attack on the police department. We saw the Toyota pickup truck with terrorists from Hamas inside Sderot (inside Israel). And we realized that there's an invasion, a terrorist invasion.

GUEST: GAL (07:07):
I started realizing Hamas was close. We understood that they were near our house and coming for us. We know that things are not regular. They're serious. After half an hour, one of the soldiers came to us and opened the safe room window that we didn't know you could open from the outside. We never needed to open or close it. I didn't realize that it wasn't locked. We were surprised. And he told us, you have to come with me. Take everything out, everybody out, and we'll take you to a house nearby. That's my cousin. We live near the block, just on the same street as us, but a little bit farther from the border with the fence of the kibbutz. And we went out in the middle of all of it, and the soldier protecting us and looking out with weapons and everything prepared.

GUEST: GAL (08:05):
And we keep hearing, shooting all around us. And we went to my cousins, my aunt, and my uncle. We knocked on the door. We went into their shelter with them. We were ten people, maybe in a tiny shelter for four more hours without electricity. With electricity. So we kept hearing WhatsApp groups about terrorists coming into houses and getting inside the kibbutz. We heard about the head of the municipality in the Negev getting killed. We heard about everything that was happening outside the kibbutz.  I heard people talking about it on WhatsApp, the web, and WhatsApp. We heard almost everything that happened to this point. And then the electricity went out. For about eight more hours, we were without any electricity and in a dark, safe room, waiting for something to happen, listening to everything that was happening around us.

GUEST: GAL (09:16):
At around two, we heard a helicopter coming. And a lot of shootings started happening. We understood that the helicopter was the one that was shooting. Understood that. We thought that everything was going back to that. The army is here, and they're taking care of everything. And it's OK to go out. And we started to figure out if we could go out or not if it's safe. We went to our house. We came back to our house and the safe room that we left. And we just piled up the car. We took my son and put him in the car with my mother and everything. Put everything that we could arrange in like 20, 25 minutes. I took my bike to look for my sister and brother in the kibbutz.

GUEST: GAL (10:08):
And they didn't answer from seven in the morning. And they were with older kids. They are in the tent outside of the kibbutz. And we were afraid they didn't have enough time to return to the kibbutz. And we were thinking about the worst. We felt that they got killed outside of the kibbutz by Hamas. We were so afraid for them.  Later, we found out they ran into the kibbutz with cars while people were shooting all around. And they managed to escape. And they went to a shelter. And from the shelter, they ran straight home. And it was crazy. And they blocked the doors with the piano and everything.   And at about 5:00 PM, we decided to run for it. I took the car and said, okay, we're not staying here. Too dangerous. It's better if we take the car and leave the kibbutz.

GUEST: GAL (11:03):
And we got the news from the head of security that there's a lot of shooting still around the kibbutz. And there's a lot of dead people and dead bodies. Cars burned, and everything outside was still happening. We went to the main entrance of the kibbutz. On the way there, we saw three neighbors' cars coming back, saying go back home. Crying, of course. Panicked. Saying, okay, go back. Go back. You can't go outside. They're still shooting. There are terrorists all over. Go back. Stay in the safe room. Don't leave the kibbutz. And we were, of course, so scared and panicked. We did a U-turn, returned to our house, and stayed in the safe room for a bit more. And when it became a little bit darker, we said, we're gonna try again. We went to the main entrance of the kibbutz.

GUEST: GAL (11:55):
We saw the head of security and one more soldier. And we understood, okay, that's the time to run for it. Whatever happens, happens. I told my mother, son, and wife to keep their heads underneath the window lines. And I just made a run for it. I took the car and drove about three and a half kilometers, maybe a bit more, towards the road, which was one of the most dangerous. I didn't know that then, but it was one of the most dangerous crossings in our area. A lot of people died there. And on the road at the entrance to the kibbutz, I saw a lot of dead bodies. I saw the fight that was happening there. That happened in the morning. I don't think I can even understand what I saw because it was so fast.

GUEST: GAL (12:49):
But it was a lot of motorcycles and Toyota cars for Hamas terrorist all over. And they were flipped and burning and everything. And I made a run for it. I drove about a kilometer and a half on the road. I saw sites that were horrible, things that I had only seen in movies. I'm a cinema teacher, and even in the worst movies, war movies, and horror movies, I didn't even notice what I saw on October 7.  And I couldn't even imagine the sites that were on the road. I saw a tank burning in the middle of the crossing with soldiers dead on it on the road. I saw a terrorist car that was in one of them, I thought there were terrorists inside. And I drove by it so fast that they couldn't respond. And luckily, they didn't shoot at us. I went about three or four kilometers and got to a safer place.

GUEST: GAL (13:45):
There were a lot of police cars and many first responders. So I felt safe. Everybody in my family picked their heads up. We left and went to my aunt. We realized what we escaped from when I got to my aunt's house in the middle of Israel. We started hearing stories from our neighbors. And we understood that the kibbutz was invaded. It was invaded from three or four places. They hijacked foreign workers from Thailand inside our cow corral. They entered all the areas where the students in my kibbutz lived. Young people. They tried to get to the head of the securities house and other places, but they couldn't. First responders killed about four or five terrorists inside the kibbutz, maybe 10 in the entrance to the kibbutz. And on the other side of the southern border of the kibbutz.

GUEST: GAL (14:47):
They killed about four or five more, but they fought like hell. Only now, when we were in a hotel for about a month, did we realize all the other stories and whatever happened in the kibbutz. We understood that the Hamas terrorists knew everything about us. They knew where we were, who we were, where the generators were, who lived where, who had guns, who had dogs. Every information that they wanted, they had. And it was planned like a special op operation. And they were armed. They had rockets, missiles, 15 grenades for each terrorist. They were armed to the teeth. They had chargers from many, many varieties. And there were 300 terrorists ready to take over the kibbutz. We were lucky because they couldn't open the gate and come in with guns and cars. They could enter the kibbutz with the motorcycles and the pickup truck if they did come. Our fate would've been the same Kibbutz Be eri.  I guess.  

HOST: JENNIFER (15:46):
What a nightmare.

GUEST: GAL (15:47):
It was.

HOST: JENNIFER (15:48):
I mean, this is just a bloody horror story. I wanna try to unpack a few things that you said. 

GUEST: GAL (15:54):
Don't get it wrong. We talk about it day and night here in the hotel. All my friends sit every night with bottles of beer and sometimes other things and talk endlessly, trying to figure out how they knew everything. And we know they knew because they caught the dead bodies and other dead bodies. They had maps and plans. And they had a map of the kibbutz. And they circled the house of the head of security. They circled another home of a very, very important personality in Israel. I don't know if I can say his name, but he is very important.  The Hamas terrorists knew everyone with guns. They circled it. They knew where to attack and how to attack. They had a complete plan for everyone and everything. 

GUEST: GAL (16:47):
They tried to take a forklift and blockade the main gate after they entered. Everything was planned like a military operation. And I guess my belief, my personal belief is that they had inside information. It's not even that hard if you ask me. We built many new houses. 'cause a lot of people came to the kibbutz to live in the nest in the last four years. It almost doubled the number of kibbutz people. The number of kibbutz members almost doubled in the previous four years. And in the four years that I'm talking about, a lot of Arab workers came in from the Gaza Strip also. 'cause we give them jobs, we give them work. I don't even think it's that hard to interrogate them when they come back to Gaza and get them to say everything.

GUEST: GAL (17:36):
'cause they knew the people that work in the kibbutz. They knew everything. They knew better than us who lived where and who had what they entered all our houses. I have someone in Gaza who is like my family. I grew up knowing him. I grew up knowing his family. We donated money to him. We gave him lots of items. And we sent his whole family's clothes and shoes. And we, over the years, donated so much money for this person and his family living in Gaza. And that's because we felt he was like a family to us. And I believe that he is not a bad person. He was just interrogated by bad people and terror groups that gave him the license to work in Israel if he agreed or it doesn't matter if he decides if he, if he is interrogated when he is coming back.

GUEST: GAL (18:30):
He gave them all the information, and I bet that he didn't have any choice about giving them that information. And that's what happened. And he's the one that supplied them with most of the data. And every kibbutz in the near Gaza region has that person, that worker who lives in the kibbutz and has worked there for 30, or 40 years and is like a family member. All my other kibbutz teams, all the other kibbutz teams around us, have the same guys. I bet those are the ones that gave the information to Hamas. And they probably listen to our phones. And who knows, maybe they read our WhatsApp, or there's a lot of open information for them to gather.  

HOST: JENNIFER (19:08):
You are one of the lucky ones. How many people in your close circle had an encounter with a terrorist on October 7th?

GUEST: GAL (19:18):
So many.  I'm a teacher in high school. I teach many kids around and I have taught for 15 years.  There's a neighborhood called Young Generation Neighborhood. It's like where all the young people are after the army, and where they're in the military, that's where they go to live. And that's the one that got hurt the most. But two twin brothers were kidnapped in Gaza. There were students of mine. There's a young girl, 18 years old, when she, she's uh, in the senior class. She is in Gaza, kidnapped. There's a lot of my students that got killed. My best friend, who married me and my wife, was in Beri. And luckily, he came out fine. But his family got killed.   And all around, we're close, close, close area. Everybody in the area knows everybody.  

HOST: JENNIFER (20:29):
Gal. Will you return and stay in your community, your kibbutz, and your home?

GUEST: GAL (20:33):
That's the $1 million question, I guess. Good question. I don't know if I can answer it right now. I want to go back, that's for sure. My grandma is one of the founders of the kibbutz. She came from Argentina to build the kibbutz. And she knew back then that she was making it right by Gaza. My grandfather fought for this place. My father, born in the kibbutz, fought for this place. I'm a third-generation member of this kibbutz. I don't see myself living in any other place, but I don't think I can do that to my son and my wife to live in a place that is, it's not human being. It's not freedom fighters. It's it's terrorists, but the worst kind of terrorism. It's animals. They didn't fight the army. They didn't go and fight army against army,  soldiers against soldiers. They came into houses. And that is not just scary. It's terrifying. And to say that I will be back is, I don't know. It's false. I need the security and the feeling that I'm safe and not just saying it, not just telling me another illusion because we were definitely living in an illusion.

HOST: JENNIFER (21:47):
You see what's going on with the antisemitism around the entire world. This is a very divisive time. What's the message you could give to people who do not understand what Hamas is about and are falsely siding with Hamas over Israel?

GUEST: GAL (22:06):
My message is straightforward. Don't live in a progressive new age illusion. I was there before the 7th of October. I said, give them food. Give them work. Free Palestine from terrorism and provide them with hope to live better. And there will be peace. I believe the people in Gaza wanted peace. And I think that they're human beings there. And they want to live happily and and be like us. But don't be mistaken. It's not just Israel's problem. Israel is just the least of the issues. Terrorism and extreme religious fundamentalism is something that happens across the world. If you live in the United States, Australia, England, or wherever, don't live in a false lie and illusion that that will not happen to you. They don't care about Jews, Christians, or Muslims even. They only want bloodshed and to ruin the West. They don't speak the same language as we do. They don't only want to work in free Palestine. That's not the story. The story is about ruining the West, ruining the United States, ruining England, taking over France, taking over those places, and wreaking havoc. And if you want to believe in a lie, fine. But don't say we didn't warn you.  It's gonna haunt you wherever you are.  

HOST: JENNIFER (23:36):
I share your frustration because I see it. I live in America, and I see these college students siding with psychopaths like Osama bin Laden now.

GUEST: GAL (23:49):
Oh my God, that's crazy. 

HOST: JENNIFER (23:50):
It's like an alternative universe. I think it's interesting that you called yourself a progressive on October 6th.

GUEST: GAL (24:01):
That's what we were.  I'm saying it, and I'll keep saying it. The ones that got hurt the most in Israel on the 7th of October were the most progressive left-wing people, loving humanist people in all of Israel. Those are the people who wished well for Palestine. We were living with a school program and dealt with meeting other students in Gaza, for instance, a couple of years ago. We talked to people in Gaza, and we wanted to have a connection with the Gaza people, to people, not the government. We believed all those things. We believe that all we need is peace, quiet, and prosperity. We thought in 2005, when we left the Gaza region, we gave up the Gaza Strip. We thought everything was gonna be quiet.

GUEST: GAL (24:54):
We thought they would seize the day and build Gaza to become more prosperous, with hotels and beaches. And we could come in and out like it was in the eighties and the nineties. But it's not; it's a terror group that terrorized all the Palestinian people that live in Gaza. They don't free Palestine. They terrorize the Palestinians in Palestine and Gaza. It's like a hostage situation. They take them hostage. All the good people in Gaza, and there are good people in Gaza, are hostages. It's a hostage situation. They're telling them what to wear, telling them what to do. They can't go wherever they want. If they don't do what Hamas tells them. They kill them in the streets. It's not just us. Hamas hates their people. They don't care about the lives of their people.

GUEST: GAL (25:49):
So why would they care about people in America? Why would they care about me? Why would they care about you? And the kids in America are crazy about progressive thinking. What do you think? They will mercy you because you supported them. Are you crazy? They will not ask you a question or not talk to you. They'll give you a bullet to the head the minute they see you, and they don't care what you think, who you support, and who you are. That's the main bottom line of all of it. And if you want to live in an illusion, it will hurt you in your universities, and then it'll be too late to understand. That's the fact.

HOST: JENNIFER (26:26):
I'm afraid that in America and other places like you point out, France and the UK have to go through something as horrific as October 7th that Israel just went through to maybe begin to understand the threat. But it's a severe threat. You're right—a two-state solution.

GUEST: GAL (26:47):
I would say maybe it's because we still like to believe in people. I don't know if the two-state solution is completely dead because I don't see another solution but peaceful life with the Palestinian people. But it will take reeducation and changing the ways of thinking that are educating small kids in the West Bank and Gaza to believe we are the enemy. And all you need to do they learn in school; they learn in kindergarten how to kill and slaughter all Jews. If that doesn't stop and that doesn't change, we're not gonna get to any peaceful situation between us and the Palestinians. And I'm saying it, and it pains me to say, but as long as they believe in an unpeaceful solution and they think violence and violence is gonna stop or, or win, or I don't know.

GUEST: GAL (27:58):
There's no violent solution to this situation. There's only the hope of being able to live together. And I drew hope from what happened between England and Ireland. I draw hope from other cases in history that people do. They can live together and manage to cope in some way. I don't know how, 'cause now it seems so far away, but it seems like a joke. You're right. It looks like a joke to live together. But I think if we don't clean up Gaza from terrorism and we don't clean the West Bank from terrorism, and once and for all, we say to the world, terrorism is not an option. Holding arms and fighting us and trying to kill us and threatening us. And the Palestinian community is not a solution. It will lead you to only the destruction and deportation of all Palestinians. That's what it would lead you to. If you choose that road, you will end up like Gaza --- flat, no houses ruined, nothing left, no food, no electricity, no running water. Because if you choose violence, it will bring only violence back at you. That's what I believe in.

HOST: JENNIFER (29:18):
Are you worried about support in the rest of the world for Israel as the vision and the images of Palestinian kids bloodied and people suffering in Gaza? Do you worry you're not gonna get the support that Israel so desperately needs in the world?

GUEST: GAL (29:36):
Oh, for sure. The most problematic thing right now is that if the world, I don't know if they can, but if the world tells Israel, stop right now what you're doing to Gaza, that will be a horrific mistake. And that will be something the whole world is gonna regret because we need to stand together with Israel and make a stand—a line in the sand. If you do this and act like this, there will be no forgiveness. There will be no mercy. And I'm sorry, I feel sad. Really. I feel for the kids in Gaza; I feel for the ordinary regular people, good people of Gaza. But unfortunately, Hamas took them hostage. And in hostage situations, sometimes people die in Germany. There's an excellent video in which I saw Britain killed more German people in World War II when they tried to conquer Munich and Berlin.

GUEST: GAL (30:32):
Are they terrorists? The UK terrorists because they retaliated and took over Berlin. It took many people, many civilians in Germany, dead because of it. That's precisely what happens now. There's a terror group that needs to be demolished. They cannot sit in our borders near our houses. 'cause we see what happens when we do it. We see what happens when we look the other way. We saw what happened when we said, okay, they wanna leave quietly. They will not hurt us. So what if they send missiles and rockets and gather arms and practice and find out many, many ways to hurt us? They're not gonna do it. They know who we are. They're afraid of us. They're not gonna do it. That's false lies and false hopes. And now we know it. So please don't stop us. 'cause the world we're doing for the whole world, not just for Israel. And that's the message. We're not doing it for us; we're doing it for everyone.

HOST: JENNIFER (31:34):
You're the one taking the blows right now. We didn't even talk about Iran. We didn't talk about Hezbollah. So we'll speak again. Gal. I'm happy your family is safe. I think you're a powerful, impressive man. Thank you. Especially since you were, as you say, a progressive and you wanted to believe so profoundly in the Palestinian people and in, I know you're very disappointed in every single aspect of how this went down. But keep strong; America is behind you. I will stay in touch with you.

GUEST: GAL (32:07):
Thank you very much, Jennifer. 

HOST: JENNIFER (32:09):
Thank you for listening to episode number 37 of the Going for Greatness Show. Gal's insight into how to not live in an illusion was essential for me to remember. If you found value in this episode, please share it with a few friends and post it on your social media. I'm Jennifer Weissman. Thank you for listening to the Going for Greatness Show.