What I Saw on Oct. 7: Leadership and Israel’s Greatest Generation
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Every Jew and Israeli remembers where he was on Oct. 7, 2023.
My day started shortly after 6:30 a.m., when Tzachi Braverman, the prime minister’s chief of staff, called me and said, “Get up! Come to the Kirya immediately,” referring to our military headquarters. I got dressed within minutes and rushed downstairs to wake my 19- and 21-year-old sons. I told them, “We’re at war. Get to your units.” My eldest asked, “Hezbollah or Hamas?” “Hamas,” I said. “OK,” he replied in what sounded like a sigh of relief.
As I walked out the door, I passed my younger son, who was sitting in the living room waiting to be called up. “Don’t worry, it’s going to be a long war. You’ll get your chance,” I told him. He did get his chance and much more.
I got in my car at about 7 a.m. I drove past my neighbor, an Air Force squadron commander, who was getting into his car. “Avner, are all your pilots coming?” I asked.
“They will all come,” he said.
“This isn’t another round. This time we need to go all the way,” I warned.
“Absolutely,” Avner shouted in agreement.
I arrived at the Kirya shortly after 8 a.m. when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was receiving updates on the unfolding attack. Horrific photos and videos of wounded and dead Israelis overwhelmed WhatsApp. Some showed Israeli civilians being slaughtered in their kibbutz homes and on the streets of Sderot.
Shortly after 9:30 a.m., Mr. Netanyahu entered the situation room to receive a briefing from the military chiefs. “It’s going to be a long war,” the prime minister told me on the way to the meeting. Mr. Netanyahu, the Israel Defense Forces chief of staff, several other officials and I huddled around a small table. You could have heard a pin drop.
In the room, the prime minister was briefed that “we were somewhat surprised” that “there are still a number of skirmishes and a large number of casualties.” He was told that “the situation should be under control before nightfall,” but that “we need to call up 100,000 reservists.” Mr. Netanyahu interjected: “Call up 300,000 troops immediately.” After intense questioning, he summarized, “Verify that, as I instructed this morning, a division was sent to the North and is holding a strong defense. Prevent the crossing of anyone back to Gaza . This is not another round of fighting. This is war.”
At about 11:30 a.m., the prime minister addressed the public. “We are at war. Not an operation, not another round—at war.” He soon formalized the declaration of war and the war’s objectives in a meeting with the security cabinet.
France’s President Emmanuel Macron was the first foreign leader to call. He urged diplomacy and offered to mediate. “Hamas is ISIS,” Mr. Netanyahu replied. “If it is not dismantled in Gaza, you will meet it in Paris.” The prime minister also emphasized that he didn’t want Mr. Macron to convey any message from him to anyone. “Hamas will soon get the message,” Mr. Netanyahu said.
The next call came from then-President Joe Biden. “How can I help, Bibi?” he asked. Mr. Netanyahu said, “Hamas is worse than ISIS. They need to be dismantled.” He asked Mr. Biden to send two U.S. aircraft carriers toward Lebanon’s shores and to warn Iran and its Hezbollah proxy not to join the war. Mr. Biden promised he would. He gave the “Don’t” speech several days later, warning Iran and its proxies against escalation.
As that fateful day ended, Israel’s enemies thought the Jewish state would collapse. Mr. Netanyahu’s rivals believed he was finished. Both were mistaken.
On Oct. 9, the prime minister met with community leaders in southern Israel. “I ask that you stand steadfast because we are going to change the map of the Middle East,” he told the group.
Three years later, Mr. Netanyahu has been proved right. Hamas has been decimated in Gaza, Palestinian terror infrastructure has been uprooted in Judea and Samaria, Hezbollah is on its knees, and Yemen’s Houthis have been hit like never before. Bashar al-Assad’s army in Syria is gone and, most important, the weakened Iranian regime will never assert the same power.
After 1,096 days of fighting a war of redemption across seven fronts, Israel and its American ally are stronger than ever. Mr. Netanyahu has emerged as our greatest wartime leader, and the young soldiers of Oct. 7 are proving to be Israel’s Greatest Generation.
Mr. Falk is foreign-policy adviser to Prime Minister Netanyahu.
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I dont question the factual accuracy of anything in this article. But I post it as a good example of nationalistic propaganda.
#Boy George, #October 7
I think I have said that I met BiBi in the 70's and it's safe to say he was an ass then and now. The last few paragraphs could have been written by Hegseth as propaganda.
History will still relish the people who stood up to Britain and Egypt in the late 40's and early 50's as the Greatest Generation.
Mr. Falk is too close to the trees ( and Bibi ) to see the forest.
I wonder how many people reading that know what you are referring to?
bibi needs to transition from elected office to the courtroom, and then to prison, for his corruption in office. at this point, he has done more harm than good for the safe future of israel and it's citizens. it'll be interesting to see how israel's elections shake out with the recent revelations that bibi disregarded prior warnings of the 10/7 attack from a few arab nations. I expect a violent act of desperation on bibi's part to escalate the war before their election day in less than 3 weeks. too bad some house democrat put a hold on trump's $2.8 billion "sale" of 60K two thousand pound bombs to bibi ...
I would have to agree with you about that,
I have visited Israel several times and there are many things about the country that are uniquely positive,
But I am not a big fan of Bibi Netanyu.
On one trip I flew to Egypt as a tourist-- then flew back to Israel, But I have one regret-- I could've taken a bus tour back---that tour included Gaza-- I wish I had taken that!
So you consider it to be factually accurate nationalistic propaganda (as opposed to factually inaccurate propaganda)?
I consider the way Michael Moore went about things to be propaganda, but there is little untrue in Bowling For Columbine. Propaganda is neither true or false factually, it is a way of presenting information that has a viewpoint toward said facts and can be very one sided, or false.
Propaganda is neither true or false factually, it is a way of presenting information that has a viewpoint toward said facts and can be very one sided, or false.
Much of what goes on on NT is political discussion, and very opinionated. Do you think that makes it false? Or is most of what goes here "propaganda"?
Bowling For Columbine (if you have seen the movie) could accurately be described as propaganda. It is not a "false" movie.
The US produced propaganda media during world war 2. Do you think it was all false, or even all misleading?
Propaganda generally involves information deliberately designed to influence attitudes or behavior toward a particular objective. It can contain false information, but it does not have to. A message can contain accurate facts while selectively presenting them to persuade an audience. can propaganda be factual - Search
By that definition-- all commercial advertising might be considered to be Propaganda!
I have seen some U.S. propaganda from WWII but I don't remember much about it. I know there was other stuff but most of what I remember was urging Americans to support the war effort: growing Victory Gardens, taking used food cans to have that steel recycled tobe used to support the war effort, etc.
Propaganda?
Propaganda?
His explanations re: current events hsve been very insightful lately!
I have some Israeli cousins. Our grandfathers were brothers and came from a small village in Belarus. My grandfather came to the U.S. in about 1910 and their grandfather went to live on a kibbutz in British Palestine, now Israel, just a couple of years before the Nazis invaded their village and killed the rest of the family. I am in contact with one of the cousins. Has has visited a couple of times, once when he was young and the second time just before Covid. He is a great guy, in his 40s and in the Israeli Army Reserves. He told me that after the attack on October 7 he was in their headquarters by the afternoon at work getting ready. It reminds me of the men mentioned in the article. He has also told me stories about how often the family had to run to the air raid shelters and that one time when he was in his car and an air raid alert went off, they had to get out and lie on the ground next to the car for protection.
Like I said, I am not claiming that the article is not factual. I am commenting on the obvious propaganda nature of some of the article.
"Propaganda" by definition cannot be accurate and unbiased.
Propaganda is not unbiased, but it can be factual.
If you think the seeded article cannot be propaganda because it is factual you are wrong.
This is what Chat GPT says about the seeded article -
Yes — I would characterize this as strongly propagandistic or advocacy-oriented, although that doesn't mean every factual statement in it is false.
The key distinction is between reporting what happened and constructing a persuasive political narrative about what those events mean. This passage does a lot of the latter.
Why it reads as propaganda
Several features stand out:
It is written from an explicitly partisan perspective.
The narrator repeatedly uses “we,” “our,” “our enemies,” and “our greatest wartime leader.” The ending makes the author's allegiance unmistakable:
That's political advocacy, not neutral historical reporting.
It uses emotionally loaded language.
Phrases such as:
aren't merely describing events. They encourage the reader toward a particular emotional and political interpretation.
It creates a heroic narrative around Netanyahu.
The story is structured almost like a leadership drama:
surprise attack → decisive Netanyahu → massive mobilization → confrontation with enemies → Israel survives → Netanyahu transforms the Middle East → Netanyahu becomes “our greatest wartime leader.”
That's a classic political persuasion structure.
It presents contested conclusions as settled facts.
For example:
Proved right about what? That's an interpretation. Whether Netanyahu successfully achieved his objectives, whether Gaza has been “decimated,” whether Hezbollah is “on its knees,” and whether Iran “will never assert the same power” are all matters that require evidence and, in several cases, involve considerable disagreement.
It has a highly selective perspective.
The passage gives extensive attention to Israeli suffering, Israeli decision-making and Israeli military achievements, but virtually no Palestinian civilian perspective, Palestinian casualties, humanitarian consequences, Israeli political controversy, or competing interpretations of the war.
That's particularly important. Propaganda doesn't have to invent facts. Selective omission can be enough to create a propagandistic narrative.
It uses retrospective victory language.
The final paragraph essentially compresses an extraordinarily complicated three-year conflict into a triumphalist conclusion:
That's a very broad geopolitical claim presented without supporting evidence.
But there's an important caveat
I wouldn't automatically label the entire article “propaganda” simply because it is pro-Israel or pro-Netanyahu.
The first several paragraphs could contain genuine first-person eyewitness testimony. Specific conversations, times, meetings, and decisions can potentially be independently verified. A source can accurately recount real events while simultaneously using those events to promote a political worldview.
I'd therefore classify the passage roughly like this:
The biggest giveaway
The last paragraph is much more revealing than the opening.
A conventional historical account might conclude with something like:
This author instead concludes:
That's not simply telling the reader what happened. It's telling the reader whom to admire, how to interpret the war, and what political conclusion to draw.
So my answer is: yes, I would call it propaganda in the broad sense of persuasive political communication—but I would not conclude that the underlying factual claims are therefore false. It's better described as strongly pro-Israel/pro-Netanyahu advocacy presented through a first-person historical narrative.
. Mr. Netanyahu has emerged as our greatest wartime leader, and the young soldiers of Oct. 7 are proving to be Israel’s Greatest Generation.
Undoubtedly true, though Bibi probably needlessly sacrificed too many soldiers trying to fight as humane a war as possible against terrorists who don't follow any of the rules of warfare.
The killing of tens of thousands of civilians will be a stain on Israel for many decades to come.
Israel will be "stained" as much as America or England was for bombing German civilians during WWII (not at all). And Israel went out of their way to lessen civilian casualties much more than the allies did during WWII.
Hamas apologists or those who always, always take the side side of any position against Israel will always see a stain literally no matter what Israel does. The same people who were calling for a ceasefire on October 8th and who've robbed the word genocide of all meaning will always see a stain.
Germany was an existential threat to nations, which is proved by the number of countries occupied (with laws changed) by Germany. If it was up to Hitler there would be no more Poland, Slovakia, Belgium , Netherlands, or France, or Russia.
There is just no comparison between Gaza and Nazi Germany.
And if it was up to Hamas there would be no Israel.
The Firebombing of Dresden:
Do you know what actually happened on that October 7th?
It wasn't just that Hamas and its allies merely breached the border, went into Israel and attacked. It was very unusual in several ways.
Most people have no idea what actually happened.
When Hamas terrorists entered Israel they were aware of what they were going to do. Much of which were considered to be "war crimes". And that would eventually be discovered-- so it would seem obvious they would try to cover that up.
But in fact the opposite was true. In fact most of them wore Go Pros and wanted people to know what they did. And made sure people saw what they did . . .
(If you understand why they did that you will begin to understand what actually happened on October 7th).
Looks like apparently most people here don't know what happened that October 7th?
(Or perhaps they don't care . . . ?
I do know what happened on Oct 7th. Hamas entered Israeli territory and massacred a lot of people and took hostages.
I dont know how you conclude that that justifies all of Israel's later actions.
They did a lot more than massacre them. There was widespread use of deliberately barbaric tortures....
Which they deliberately documented by filming on Go-Pros as they happened.
And them made sure the Israelis saw them!!!