Speaker 1: Hi, and welcome back to the Carol Marco Show on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: My guest today is Guy M.
Speaker 1: Guy is the semi anonymous author of The Rescue October
Speaker 1: seventh Through the Eyes of Israel's Power Rescue Commandos.
Speaker 2: So nice to have you on, Guy.
Speaker 3: Thank you for having me Carol on your amazing show.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: I loved your book. I really found it so amazing.
Speaker 1: You know, a lot of the time, I think, especially Jews,
Speaker 1: like we tell and retell the stories. And I even
Speaker 1: you know, I got to where my kids, my teenager
Speaker 1: who reads a lot, would be like, no more Holocaust books.
Speaker 1: But it's important to retell the stories so that people
Speaker 1: know what really happened. And I feel like that was
Speaker 1: the point for you in writing this.
Speaker 2: Book, right.
Speaker 3: So originally it's kind of hard to really point out
Speaker 3: what was the purpose of writing the book, because we
Speaker 3: were in the middle of war, literally rescuing casualties from
Speaker 3: Aza from Lebanon after and in this mid war situation,
Speaker 3: and me and the guys that were together on October
Speaker 3: seventh on the first team to leave six six nine,
Speaker 3: which is Israel's special Forces rescue unit, we found ourselves
Speaker 3: on that day in the two or three days afterwards
Speaker 3: in the communities, we were witnessing the most horrible scenes
Speaker 3: no one could even imagine. And then no closure, nothing
Speaker 3: like ceremony that kinds of wraps it up. One day
Speaker 3: we're just at base preparing for war, and then we're
Speaker 3: in war doing our jobs. I'm a paramedic, I was
Speaker 3: trained for three years to do this job. I'm in
Speaker 3: med school now. I haven't been on duty, like actual
Speaker 3: war duty since by mandatory service back then from twenty
Speaker 3: thirteen to twenty eighteen, and there was no closure. And
Speaker 3: this is also the experience of so many soldiers talking
Speaker 3: to maybe thousands, because it's not like the whole Israeli
Speaker 3: army was there on October seventh, but for thousands of
Speaker 3: us that were there, we just continued into this full
Speaker 3: blown war. And you're absolutely right. There are so many
Speaker 3: events happening right after each other, and it's we're living
Speaker 3: in times that it's even hard to grasp the magnitude
Speaker 3: of each event as itself. Remember, we're so shocked when
Speaker 3: the deeper operation that was our board as a rescue
Speaker 3: unit for the beginning of the war, of eliminating the
Speaker 3: threat from Lebanon from up North, and then we're still
Speaker 3: kind of trying to grasp that magnitude. And then we're
Speaker 3: at this point after one of the most brilliant operations
Speaker 3: I guess in modern war. The how President Trump call
Speaker 3: it was they war with Iran. So for us, it's
Speaker 3: even hard to point out what was the purpose, But
Speaker 3: if I tried to kind of put it into an essence,
Speaker 3: we needed to put a closure to that event. So
Speaker 3: we started writing it and it was amazing for me
Speaker 3: to see what the guys, with the soldiers that were
Speaker 3: worth me bolks from the things that we saw, from
Speaker 3: the gunshots with the terrorists, with treating casualties, mass casualty,
Speaker 3: incident horrors, the bodies and chunks of the timeline were missing,
Speaker 3: and it was putting it together was as itself an amazing,
Speaker 3: amazing act for me to witness this, and it broughtmotion
Speaker 3: to the guys because for soldiers, rescue soldiers in general,
Speaker 3: for soldiers, we understand mission, we know missions, so when
Speaker 3: we need to do a mission, we know what to do.
Speaker 3: Emotions not really, that's part part of the equation is harder.
Speaker 3: If you ask a twenty one and wear a rescue
Speaker 3: soldier from six sixth night to jump out of the
Speaker 3: helicopter in the middle of the ocean. Doesn't even know
Speaker 3: it's waiting. While he's jumping into the water, you won't
Speaker 3: even blink. If you can ask him to talk about
Speaker 3: how is he feeling, then you're going to see this
Speaker 3: torturous face on him. So even Dad for itself, to
Speaker 3: see the guys bringing it together, it was amazing. And
Speaker 3: until today, you know, I'm not a psychologist, but they
Speaker 3: think it's so clear. Why until today there's more than
Speaker 3: we're not even two years from Actober seventh. There's more
Speaker 3: than one hundred books in Hebrew about October seventh, one
Speaker 3: hundred and many maybe in English or not many, but
Speaker 3: there will be. And still this is the rescue, and
Speaker 3: how it's called in Hebrew, it's called I'll say it
Speaker 3: in Hebrew, not waiting for call. So it's the only
Speaker 3: book written by soldiers who actually fought there and not
Speaker 3: by journalists or testimonies are victims.
Speaker 2: It's such an interesting point.
Speaker 1: I don't think people realize how much how little firsthand
Speaker 1: account is in the books.
Speaker 2: Like a lot of people will.
Speaker 1: Have takes we as we say, and they'll have perspective,
Speaker 1: but your story is actually the one from the ground.
Speaker 1: What do people not know about that day that they'll
Speaker 1: learn in your book.
Speaker 3: One of the things that we did want to emphasize,
Speaker 3: not intentionally, but as we were talking and the guys
Speaker 3: were describing, is, for one, how little we knew. If
Speaker 3: I will tell you today Carol, that tomorrow there's going
Speaker 3: to be aliens land in Washington and President Trump talking
Speaker 3: to him about I don't know, life in another universe.
Speaker 3: You're gonna look at me like I smoked something or something.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I might believe you after.
Speaker 3: This, Okay, So I'm gonna try to think about it's
Speaker 3: something more bizarre, man, Okay, And this is from I
Speaker 3: guess that's what we're talking about. Most people they were like, well,
Speaker 3: most likely that's not going to happen, right. We couldn't
Speaker 3: imagine in our worst nightmares what happened on October seventh.
Speaker 3: It was so so far fetched. When we're going down
Speaker 3: and we're driving down south on October seventh morning in
Speaker 3: a pickup truck, we thought to ourselves, what we could imagine.
Speaker 3: There's a group of terrorists dozen twenty that infiltrated through
Speaker 3: a tunnel to Israeli grounds and that they're holding hostages
Speaker 3: in one of the communities. We couldn't imagine three thousand
Speaker 3: people looking to butcher Israelis. It's not in our capability
Speaker 3: today looking back, as Israel's society is very critical of
Speaker 3: course on the army and intelligence in the government, as soldiers,
Speaker 3: as the ones and I'm civilian. It is not my
Speaker 3: daily job. And this is also some sort of thing
Speaker 3: that is very hard to explain. We had no clue
Speaker 3: and we tried, you know, to emphasize that in the book.
Speaker 3: Through the story itself, we were just a group of
Speaker 3: guys going down, trying to do our best in the
Speaker 3: circumstances that are just just unreasonable to judge and also,
Speaker 3: if I may say, also are We didn't want it
Speaker 3: to be a testimony. We wanted the reader to get
Speaker 3: caught in the web of the book, not because he
Speaker 3: wants to know about October seventh, but rather he's reading
Speaker 3: a thriller that he has to know how it ends.
Speaker 3: You want caught inside the web of the book. That
Speaker 3: was very important for us, right.
Speaker 1: I felt like that like where you you know you're
Speaker 1: worrying about the protagonist, even though I know you know
Speaker 1: you live to write the book. But you were an
Speaker 1: active danger more than one time on that day.
Speaker 2: What do you remember about it?
Speaker 3: I think when I look back, and even for me,
Speaker 3: it's so hard to even imagine that it actually happened.
Speaker 3: And I remember that this is a mechanism that everyone,
Speaker 3: we all use it, but rescue soldiers in our mission,
Speaker 3: we always do that. We kind of downgrade the situation
Speaker 3: to gain back control, because if you're gonna actually try
Speaker 3: to grasp that you're in this situation, that your life
Speaker 3: is in danger, you're trying to rescue someone that won't survive,
Speaker 3: and the whole gratitude of responsibility is just so hard
Speaker 3: to function. So we always do this degradation. And if
Speaker 3: to give an example, what guys after the pipeline, after
Speaker 3: they finished what year and a half training at the unit,
Speaker 3: the first rescue missions, when they go back and report
Speaker 3: and do the briefing, they say like they felt in
Speaker 3: a drill in the pipeline. They thought the casualty there
Speaker 3: was actually injured soldier or civilian or even a minitarian mission.
Speaker 3: And still they say, we felt like we're in the
Speaker 3: simulator at the unit, treating a mannequin like a doll,
Speaker 3: like that's the feeling. So we're always doing this degradation.
Speaker 3: So I remember him driving down south on October seventh
Speaker 3: and Noga back then my fiance and now I won't
Speaker 3: tell the end of the story, and she's texting me, guy,
Speaker 3: this is serious, be careful, and they're like, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: she's always too serious. She always takes stuff too serious.
Speaker 3: She's you know, he's a lawyer. Of course he has
Speaker 3: to be serious. I couldn't. It was just decordating until
Speaker 3: at some point, you know, we're driving down and someone
Speaker 3: there's open fire from from so many directions, and we're
Speaker 3: trying to what the heck is going on, and then.
Speaker 2: It hits you, this is real.
Speaker 3: It's not even real. It's just the beginning. And when
Speaker 3: we think, okay, we got to the most chaotic scene
Speaker 3: when we reached the Nova Festival and then we're sent
Speaker 3: to liberate a commute. Liberate it's like that's the word.
Speaker 3: It's under the control of an organization, terrorist organization, and
Speaker 3: we're trying to liberate it. These are terms that we've
Speaker 3: never we've never experienced, ever talked in the rescue unit.
Speaker 3: We're always preparing for the worst. We're always training ourself
Speaker 3: to the worst scenario. Try to imagine the most worst
Speaker 3: scenario that could happen on this special operation or on
Speaker 3: this rescuation. That's why we're prepared. This was never, never,
Speaker 3: nothing we prepared for was even close to what we
Speaker 3: saw in witness or experienced there.
Speaker 1: When you get to the kibbutz to liberate it, what
Speaker 1: do you see?
Speaker 3: First thing that comes to my mind is how I
Speaker 3: feel because I grew up in a kibbutz and in
Speaker 3: a community in northern Israel, a rural community, and I
Speaker 3: feel it suddenly, I feel like I'm back home at
Speaker 3: the community where I grew up. It feels. And this
Speaker 3: is the second that I kind of give that emotion
Speaker 3: a place and it freaks me out. I mean, it
Speaker 3: looks like the houses of my neighbors and that no,
Speaker 3: you're not there. You're in a mission and they need
Speaker 3: to go back into the zone to gain that control.
Speaker 3: And then the second thing I remember I see is
Speaker 3: there's so many bodies everywhere, mostly of terrorists. Emergency team
Speaker 3: which Kibuzz responder was there. That was the first keyboats
Speaker 3: we arrived, our squad or the three of us that
Speaker 3: were sent down south that day. First Keyboots. We arriveds
Speaker 3: and the guys there, the team, the first responders of
Speaker 3: the keyboats, guys for the Kibootz families. Not only guys,
Speaker 3: so girls, women that have rifles and our first responder
Speaker 3: was there for an event like this. They gave a
Speaker 3: hell of a fight. They were ten maybe fifteen call
Speaker 3: by surprise, and there were dozens of terrorists storming well equipped.
Speaker 3: I see bodies of terrorists on the floor with immunition,
Speaker 3: like they're going to conquer the whole country, with food,
Speaker 3: with medicine, everything. And they gave a hell of a fight.
Speaker 3: That's the first thing that I saw, and it kind
Speaker 3: of gave me a boost of confidence to see that happening.
Speaker 3: And then of course we were caught into a gun
Speaker 3: fight as terrorists open fired at us.
Speaker 2: What was that like?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 2: What did you what do you think in that moment?
Speaker 1: You're you're there to liberate the Kibbutz and you're under fire.
Speaker 1: I mean, do you are you feeling like this is
Speaker 1: it for me? Or do you have the kind of
Speaker 1: training where you're like, oh no, I'm going to walk
Speaker 1: out of here.
Speaker 3: This in some sort of a point of view, is
Speaker 3: the essence of being a soldier. If it's it doesn't
Speaker 3: matter even where. At some point you cannot think it's
Speaker 3: only about function. You do not think, because if you
Speaker 3: think there's nothing nothing logical about that situation, you gotta
Speaker 3: be functional. And for me, when I hear gunshots, when
Speaker 3: I see a situation that there are casualties, I'm all
Speaker 3: may whole one hundred percent of my body. And I'm
Speaker 3: just one example of many combat paramedics in the army
Speaker 3: and very few or many rescue soldiers at the unit.
Speaker 3: It's all about where is a person who needs my help?
Speaker 3: Because there's always going to be that scream I need
Speaker 3: a paramedic. There's always going to be that scream of
Speaker 3: someone that is shot, and you're always your senses are
Speaker 3: just looking for that because that's your cart. That's where
Speaker 3: you get into action. So this is what you feel.
Speaker 3: Of course, you look around if there's a threat, so
Speaker 3: you're with your rifle. That's the first thing you do.
Speaker 3: And dan you're alert to listen to where someone Where
Speaker 3: is that person that is screaming? And I need to
Speaker 3: do whatever it takes to get to him. So those
Speaker 3: are the animal instincts that are brought up in years
Speaker 3: of training and into active duty, and it's just an instinct.
Speaker 3: I was honestly, honestly, honestly, it was of course never
Speaker 3: imagined I'll be in a situation like that, But how
Speaker 3: it kicks in those.
Speaker 2: Instance, it's amazing.
Speaker 1: So when somebody reads the Rescue, what's the thing that
Speaker 1: you want them to take away from it?
Speaker 3: I want them to understand and try to understand Fudhism,
Speaker 3: not through what the figures are saying, because we vote
Speaker 3: it from where a bunch of guys are sat together
Speaker 3: and revote it from the different angles. One of the
Speaker 3: stories that unfolds is of Ron that he wakes up
Speaker 3: at ky Boots with Tomorrow and they find themselves fighting
Speaker 3: over their homes. Their parents are in, their sister and
Speaker 3: their whole family and this is this is it. If
Speaker 3: they don't fight, everybody's slaughtered. They understand it at some point,
Speaker 3: not at the beginning. And when there's Matan is on
Speaker 3: a helicopter on a way to a rescue mission and
Speaker 3: he doesn't know what's what he's going to find, and
Speaker 3: it hits him only after he lands at the hospital
Speaker 3: and he sees what's going on television. And for us,
Speaker 3: you know, I'm texting Nooga, Yes, the writ my helmet
Speaker 3: on and I'm like sitting there, you know what the heck?
Speaker 3: You know what's the big deal? We didn't know. That's
Speaker 3: the first thing, and second of all for soldiers, And
Speaker 3: this is a very it's not a it's not a
Speaker 3: unique perspective as it's not as it's only for us.
Speaker 3: This is for thousands of soldiers that went down. We
Speaker 3: tried our best, we tried, we had no clue, and
Speaker 3: many of us didn't make it back. And history, as
Speaker 3: it remembers those days, it's going to remember it in
Speaker 3: a critical point of view. It's going to judge all
Speaker 3: those who had responsibility that things like this don't happen.
Speaker 3: But we want history also to remember what those circumstances
Speaker 3: were as we tried our best to do whatever we
Speaker 3: can and the toll was so high. So those are
Speaker 3: the main messages that we tried to convey through the stories,
Speaker 3: not by saying it, but through the feelings, through the
Speaker 3: guts of the reader. And also also also and even
Speaker 3: maybe the most important, we insisted on finishing the book
Speaker 3: with you know or optimistic, if they might say, that
Speaker 3: was crucial for us as we were working on the book.
Speaker 2: So you are optimistic, yes.
Speaker 3: Of course, definitely. Now if they might say, yeah.
Speaker 1: It's a good time right now, it's a good recording.
Speaker 1: This shortly after the Iran operation and the ceasefire between
Speaker 1: Iran and Israel.
Speaker 3: We managed, as me it was sorry, not we as
Speaker 3: a unit, we as a nation, as people on a
Speaker 3: multi front ward we're talking. I think it was eight fronts,
Speaker 3: including anti Semitism. Waring Rorying got sorry from my accent.
Speaker 3: This is a multi front of war. And in our
Speaker 3: best scenarios, the most optimistic scenarios, we haven't. We never
Speaker 3: imagined what we managed to do in northern Israelila. We
Speaker 3: were training for years for the day we start a
Speaker 3: war with them, and we were training for the consequences
Speaker 3: to be huge. Thousands of Israelis will be killed. Right,
Speaker 3: going to be embassy is blowing up. In what we did,
Speaker 3: when we managed to do together with America and Iran,
Speaker 3: it's beyond the biggest, most optimistic scenarios. And here we are.
Speaker 3: So why won't the future be as well?
Speaker 2: I like that, Yeah, what do you worry about?
Speaker 3: I worry that at some point I'm going to look
Speaker 3: back and I'm gonna regret things they haven't done. It's
Speaker 3: not a good thing to be worried about because sometimes
Speaker 3: it drives are crazy in the good essence, it just
Speaker 3: makes you sometimes like you're jumping into a pool and
Speaker 3: it's you know it's going to be cold inside, and
Speaker 3: then you're kind of procrastinating. You're just never mean, yeah,
Speaker 3: maybe it's not a good day. So it helps you
Speaker 3: not to dip a toe, but to just jump and
Speaker 3: just say, what the heck is gonna be freezing, but
Speaker 3: what the heck.
Speaker 1: It's funny because you seem like you've done quite a lot.
Speaker 1: It doesn't seem like you've missed out on that much.
Speaker 3: I hope, I hope not. Maybe that is the drive.
Speaker 3: So at the end of the day, I guess it
Speaker 3: helps accomplish more in less time because they're always afraid
Speaker 3: it's going to end soon. And this also, I guess,
Speaker 3: is all maybe part of a burden, that this the
Speaker 3: toll of being a rescue soldier or being with this
Speaker 3: responsibility from a young age from nineteen years old. It's
Speaker 3: maybe it's even an attitude, but I think that that
Speaker 3: is one of the things I kind of contemplate a lot.
Speaker 3: If I'm not going to do it? Am I going
Speaker 3: to look back and regret not doing it?
Speaker 1: So if yes, yeah, you just have to push my Well,
Speaker 1: speaking of looking back and maybe having any regrets, what
Speaker 1: would you tell your sixteen year old self?
Speaker 2: What is sixteen year old guy I need to know?
Speaker 3: Would tell guy sixteen years old in Israel? I think
Speaker 3: it's a not seniors even right, It's like freshman, what
Speaker 3: is it? It's a sophomore. So I would tell them
Speaker 3: everybody is struggling. I remember myself as a teenager. I
Speaker 3: didn't have the confidence. I had a lot. I was
Speaker 3: showing off with a lot of confidence, but inside I
Speaker 3: was terrified of my own shade. And he felt like
Speaker 3: everybody around me it's full of confidence. And they're like,
Speaker 3: you know, everybody's a peacock and I'm the only one
Speaker 3: that is an impostor. And I will go back and say,
Speaker 3: look at them, they're all phonies. They're all like you're
Speaker 3: just you're just too young to talk about it.
Speaker 2: Sixteen is pretty young to have imposter syndrome.
Speaker 1: I feel like that's something that develops when you get
Speaker 1: older and you think that you know, you're the only
Speaker 1: one feeling like you can't do stuff, and everybody else
Speaker 1: seems to be, you know, powering up ahead.
Speaker 3: I think that what changes to the imposter her syndrome
Speaker 3: that we have as we become grown ups. Once someone
Speaker 3: told me that the difference between child or a teenager
Speaker 3: to a grown up is when you become cynical about things.
Speaker 3: So I think it's that tipping point is when you
Speaker 3: you become an impostor of not who you think you are,
Speaker 3: but who others think you are. Because when you when
Speaker 3: you're sixteen, you're kind of this, You're like a gush
Speaker 3: of paintings that don't have like any color, and.
Speaker 2: Then you evolvest a good way to put it.
Speaker 3: You're not sure that your colors are bright. You're like,
Speaker 3: well everybody thinks the callors are bright, but they're not.
Speaker 3: So I think that point of cynical to become of
Speaker 3: sixteen seventeen and becoming eighteen and they're like everything likes
Speaker 3: like a party. We need to kind of see that
Speaker 3: moment and say, everybody is struggling.
Speaker 1: We're going to take a quick break and be right
Speaker 1: back on the Carol Marcowitch Show. Well, I've enjoyed this
Speaker 1: conversation so much. I really think you're such an interesting person.
Speaker 1: I hope you write more books. I hope that we
Speaker 1: get to see more of your ideas and your writing,
Speaker 1: maybe outside of terrible events in our you know, shared history.
Speaker 1: But leave us here with your best tip for my
Speaker 1: listeners on how they can improve their lives.
Speaker 3: When I was in ninth grade, I joined my father.
Speaker 3: He had a karate club in the rural, tiny community
Speaker 3: that we lived in, and he gave me this responsibility
Speaker 3: to be the main instructor. I was very young and
Speaker 3: there were four groups twice a week, and I hated it.
Speaker 3: I was I was like, I didn't hate the karate
Speaker 3: garden is great. I liked it and even paid me
Speaker 3: some penn you know, a few pennies. That was like makeshop.
Speaker 3: But the responsibility, because I was terrified, what if no
Speaker 3: one shows up? You know, maybe they hate me, maybe
Speaker 3: they think the best the worst instructor ever. And the
Speaker 3: responsibility from week to week it was I was struggling
Speaker 3: with it. It was even so sometimes I was afraid. And
Speaker 3: then at some point I was talking about evolving. I
Speaker 3: kind of got used to the to this feeling that
Speaker 3: there's no one else, Like if I don't do good enough,
Speaker 3: no one can help me, like no one's going to
Speaker 3: show up for the next lesson, And then it evolved
Speaker 3: those those feelings into the army and becoming a rescue soldier,
Speaker 3: and it was like a synergy because that's the whole essence.
Speaker 3: You're the lot last call when everybody failed, like all
Speaker 3: the civilian ems, police, everybody tried, so if they tried
Speaker 3: and failed, they call you. And then if you failed,
Speaker 3: there's no one else to call. So I think at
Speaker 3: some point when when we all struggle with it, when
Speaker 3: we kind of well, if this goes wrong, when I'm
Speaker 3: who am I going to blame? What am I going
Speaker 3: to call it? But once you get used to that
Speaker 3: feeling and you kind of get not comfortable but less
Speaker 3: terrified of it, you can kind of find out that
Speaker 3: you're capable of so much more.
Speaker 1: I love that be the last line of defense. That's
Speaker 1: really it's a great piece of advice. The book is
Speaker 1: called The Rescue October seventh, Through the Eyes of Israel's
Speaker 1: Para rescue Commandos. Get it on Amazon or anywhere you
Speaker 1: buy books. Thank you so much for coming on guy.
Speaker 3: You cal