122: Chuck Freilich: Catastrophe in Israel. What now as Hamas shows the world its true intentions?

Israel is heartbroken, the house of Israel is heartbroken. Israel is at war again fighting genocide.

It’s resilient people are traumatised by shock, horror and grief.

A quiet Shabbat morning, also the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah where Jews celebrate finishing reading the Torah and then start to read it again, “In the Beginning”, was shattered by a mass invasion of Hamas terrorists, smashing through the concrete border wall, paragliding into Israel, before rampaging through a music festival killing 364, machine gunning people at the bus stop and in their own homes in Sderot and on kibbutzim.

Gruesome videos and pictures swiftly circulated on X, horror one can never unsee.

The elderly and babies slaughtered, women raped, bodies taken in to Gaza paraded and desecrated, mothers with children in their arms abducted are all now hostages in Gaza’s terror tunnels and tower blocks.

Depravity and barbarism reminiscent of the European Holocaust and Russian pogroms. How did Israel’s famed security services miss this evil plan fermenting?

Can Israel contain this war to just one front? Or when Benjamin Netanyahu says retaliation will change the Middle East does that mean going to the source of this terror, Tehran?

Is the long anticipated attack from Hezbollah about to happen? And what catastrophe would this wrought on Israel’s towns and cities?

Hundreds of Israeli hostages were taken on October 7th.

Is a ground invasion the answer? How will Israel prevail?

These are questions for Israel’s former deputy national security adviser, Chuck Freilich, author of "Israeli National Security: A New Strategy for an Era of Change" and his latest, "Israel and the Cyber Threat: How the Startup Nation Became a Global Cyber Power." This episode also includes moving testimony from Michal Maayan, speaking in New York as Israel's permanent deputy representative. Let’s take a step back here, with someone I’ve come to know over the last couple of years, Chuck Freilich.

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