A few weeks ago, a team of Free Press producers and reporters arrived at Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv. The energy was somber and still, almost like the country and its people were frozen in time. As one mother of a hostage told us, “Every single second of our lives is trauma.” And as the journalist Gadi Taub told us, “People don’t even begin to understand the extent of this earthquake and how it will change Israel.”
Since the earliest hours of October 7, we’ve been reporting on the war in Israel. We’ve published no fewer than seventy articles about it, and more than ten Honestly episodes. In other words: when we arrived in Israel, we thought we already knew all about what happened that day. But there is a difference between knowing something intellectually, and actually standing in a killing field.
The events of October 7—and the ongoing war between Israel, Hamas, and other Iranian proxies—isn’t just about another war in another faraway place. This is about the difference between democracy and tyranny, between freedom and unfreedom—in a world that seems to have lost the ability to make a distinction between the two.
As one reservist told us, “We’re doing this for the world. Hamas is an idea. It looks at you in L.A. as the enemy, not just us in Israel. We just happen to be their neighbors.”
So over the next few episodes, we’re going to bring you The FP in Israel: a special limited series about our time reporting on the ground. We hope you listen. And for more of our content from Israel, subscribe to The Free Press at thefp.com, and check out our YouTube channel, where you will find additional videos and documentaries.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Your interview with Lucy was spot on. Her Palestinian father made her go to school and face her Jewish friends after the terrorist bombings. As a result she “refused to be a victim”. She is an Israeli citizen - that happens to be Arab Palestinian. She is strong and resilient
Your interview should be a prerequisite, reading/listening, for graduation at all universities.
Just finished the second episode of this excellent, insightful series. But I must quibble with something in the first episode.
In setting up the pre-October 7 Israel, to help the listener better understand what it was like before that horrible day, Bari talks with a range of citizens. She spends an inordinate amount of time dwelling on the political “crisis” that centered on the government’s attempts to… do what exactly? It’s not explained.
Additionally, I find it unusual for Honestly, which prides itself on balanced coverage, to so completely ignore the government position that the people seem to have spent every Saturday evening demonstrating against. I’m sure it would’ve been quite easy to find a spokesman for the Prime Minister Netanyahu who would have gladly explained what it is they are trying to achieve.
Instead, we are treated to a series of one-sided views and name-calling from one Israeli after another. It’s not why I come to Honestly and the Free Press. I come for the full story, a balanced story.