Day 327 - Country welcomes back rescued Bedouin hostage

[Music] hi welcome to the times of Israel's Daily Briefing it's Wednesday August 28th and I'm Jessica Steinberg I'm speaking today with Arab Affairs reporter Jan Luca pakani and political correspondent Sam soal hi to you both good morning Jessica morning hi there it is day 327 of the war the IDF expects a major ongoing West Bank operation to last several days as it raids the Kum area where a recent Tel Aviv bomb attack is thought to have originated we'll talk about the rescue of Hostage faran aladi on Tuesday a bedwin worker from Rahat who was taken from a kibutz where he was working that morning on October 7th as well as the Kamas propaganda machine we'll also look at the bruhaha over the government's planned October 7th Memorial ceremony and what political plans are possibly in motion for opposition leader yair lapid we'll talk about all of those headlines after a quick [Music] break okay Luca let's start with you theage who was rescued yesterday frahan aladi 52 years old bedwin was rescued Yesterday by IDF troops from a tunnel in South Gaza after being taken hostage on October 7th from kood smen where he worked as a guard for a packing plant uh that is part of the kibuts industry he's one of the eight bedin who were taken hostage two of whom were freed at the end of November another one who was killed accidentally by IDF troops along with two other hostages in a botched raid earlier this year what do we know about akadi we know of course right now that he is essentially in good health has possession of all his faculties was able to smile a little bit was reunited with his 11 kids but what do we actually know about aladi his family over the last 11 months what were the details or anything that was unveiled or revealed as far as you know so we actually don't know very much um most of the bedroom families refused to speak with the Press I only got to speak with two members from the zadan family who had four members taken captive but alad's family refused since October 7th to speak with the press and so did um the other um families of the B hostages we know that he comes from probably in a recognized Village outside of Rahat that he has two wives and 11 children but yesterday we weren't even sure how to spell his name because the version that the Hebrew press was given was not correct and eventually we had to wait for the Arab press to to publish his name to make sure how it was spelled so I mean it's that level of of like discretion that the family kept around the story in November I spoke with a beduin social worker and psychologist and said there's cultural aspects to this bedrooms in general don't like to share moments of of uh mourning and like to keep it private and really care about their privacy and we see with all the bed where they kept a very low profile whereas some of the Jewish hostages especially those that had um double citizenship and could actually campaign abroad for the you know for the governments to to put pressure on on on Hamas the bad that really no one to to count on Muslim countries didn't really um support them and they didn't want their hostages to be high profile and to become prized hostages and also they weren't really sure how Hamas was were going to treat them you know because a lot of the bedrooms are seen as collaborators because they serve in the IDF so we didn't really know much about um these families and about the personal stories of these hostages luuka on the other hand of course the Bing community in Israel or certainly that the community that lives down south and was incredibly involved and affected by October 7th of course there were the heroes the the stories of bwin drivers who came and rescued people from the Nova party there are the bere families whose loved ones served as you said in the IDF were killed in this ongoing War there were bin who were killed on October 7th so that also plays a part of it in some ways there feels like there's more of a connection between Israel and the Bing Community because of October 7th and yet that hasn't you're saying turned into any kind of more public connection and not to be expected from what you're saying yeah I think there's a lot that's happening behind the scenes as you said there's over 20 beds that were killed on October 7th beside those that were taken hostages and a lot of them as you said were rescue workers a lot of them were killed in direct hits from by missiles from Gaza and I spoke with the mayor of rahad the largest bedin city for that report in November and he said that he we hope that this will become a turning moment that the state of Israel will actually pay more attention to some of the plights that affect the bedwin community which is the lowest in terms of like so economic level in Israel and we start paying attention for instance to the fact that a lot of these communities don't have shelters because they're not recognized and so they don't have any infrastructure they're not covered by the Iron Dome things like this not much has happened to be honest the IDF said that they would be included in the areas covered by the iron do but for instance there's no shelters being placed by the government in The unrecognized Villages where about 100,000 of these bedom live and Civil Society has done more to help them so yeah uh it remains to be seen whether this will really be a turning points there'll be a lot more coming out on our pages on our site about alad I'm sure as the days unfold and as he hopefully returns home very soon okay let's turn to another piece that you worked on an analysis that's up on the site right now about the Kamas propaganda machine you really give a very in-depth look about the public relations essentially of Kamas and I was curious before we got into what you uncovered and what you found what led you to write that story right now I used to be a researcher of of radical Islam and what was been fascinated by their propaganda by the visuals the graphics of their posters their public Communications they're very skilled I mean uh even Isis Al-Qaeda not so much but Isis which had like probably like a younger generation of of of militants or terrorists they really put a lot of effort and I think some of that attention for for visual details as transferred to Kamas so um we know that about 10 days ago there was a failed um terror attack in in um in Tel Aviv where a man with explosive in his backpack basic died when the explosive detonated before he could reach his destination in South T Aviv and right after like a few hours after that Hamas started publishing these posters with terrorists with Palestinian cfas waiting for buses and the design of the buses was actually reminding of the 90s and the early 2000s uh the time of the second inata and the idea was to terrorize Israelis and say we're coming you know there's another way of suicide bombings coming and blowing up your buses and they even had poster with um Yash who was called the engineer in the 90s it was behind a lot of these Terror attacks and Israeli buses so you can see like the psychology behind this it's not just a terror attack it's it's giving a clear message to the Israeli public and also to the Palestinian public you know something's coming so I spoke with a couple of experts who study hamas's propaganda and they reveal some very interesting things this is not just uh this it's not a new thing it's since the early days of Hamas since basically when the movement was founded during the first intifa in the late 80s they had a founding Charter and two articles in the founding chart that talked about the importance of Outreach of uh public relations of communications of rallying the Islamic world but also the Western World to the the cause of Hamas over time as technology evolved they also developed themselves and they they started opening uh websites online uh news websites uh propaganda websites most of them don't have the Hamas logo on them but if you read them you will see that they're totally aligned with Hamas and they're operated by Hamas people and then they have they have uh a bunch of spokesmen there's the abua who the official spokesman of the the armed wing of Kamas the kasan brigades but there's also a number of spokesmen for the political movement and the interesting thing is that they all seem to be aligned like doesn't matter which one of them you pick to ask a question they wouldn't talk to the Israeli press but they talk to the international press and to the Arabic press they're always aligned and the thing is um experts say that there's basically the political Bureau decides the messaging there's no personal opinions not in public at least behind K doors they might argue about what they want to say but once they on a message they all go with a party line unlike the Israeli press effort the Israeli public relations effort let's put it that way yeah yeah we know two Jews three opinions and it's this always comes out in public whenever an Israeli officials speak you know uh defense minister Gant often times does not agree withan who does not agree with benir things like that so to the outside it seems like uh Hamas is a lot more cohesive than than Israel also Israel is not investing so much in um public in public diplomacy there's a lot done by Civil Society uh we know but we only have an army spokesman these days who delivers the Israeli message to the world and it's a lot less than what Hamas has been doing Sam I think you wanted to say something about this issue about uh Hamas propaganda and PR yeah it's just a little bit of a Funny Story back when I was a correspondent for the Jewish telegraphic agency I reached out to a Hamas spokesman on WhatsApp who I had dealt with previously and I had asked him for a comment in a story and he goes I'm sorry we don't deal with quote unquote occupation media so I go well actually we're an American Jewish Outlet not not Israeli is is that also occupation in your mind and his response was actually to say oh I apologize I'm sorry for that and I think I might have gotten the only apology that a Jewish Israeli has ever gotten from a official representative of Hamas all right well we will definitely I'm going to go look for that did you write it into the story I don't believe I did I think I did tweet a screenshot though okay all right worth looking for and of course we'll also link to Lucas analysis U at the bottom of the podcast article so have a look at that as well all right we're going to take a quick break when we're back Sam will start us off by talking about Transportation Minister Mary regev and the bruhaha over her running managing the planned government October 7th ceremony so stay with [Music] us okay so Sam one of the repeating headlines pieces of news that's been unfolding over the last couple of weeks is about the official planed State ceremony for October 7th which of course is fast approaching it's being led by Transportation Minister Mary regev a lukud minister who is fairly vilified by a good chunk of the Israeli public but has also been the person organizing other state ceremonies including the Memorial Day Independence Day ceremony that takes place in May she's been doing that for like basically the P the 10 years that she's been in office now she's running this show and many of the morning members of the public are livid will refusing to take part and tell us about it tell us what's been unfolding about this whole story well the hostage families residents of the South members of the political opposition have all been very very against uh the way that the government is handling the one-year anniversary of October 7th specifically the official state ceremony for a number of reasons the first is obviously as you mentioned the role of Mary regev who has long been a very strong partisan for prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu who many Israelis especially residents of the South and the hostage families blame for for October 7th and there's a significant resentment for the fact that Netanyahu has not visited these communities on the Gaza border and has not taken personal responsibility for what has happened so the fact that regev who is his uh very Fierce partisan and Defender has been tapped to handle this uh has generated anger as well as the fact that she is planning this as a pre recorded closed event meaning that the public is not going to be uh invited it's not going to be televised live it feels to a lot of the critics like this is something that's being done to minimize criticism of whatever culpability the government may have and whatever protests might come out from people affected by October 7th which would be embarrassing or upsetting to the government which is why many of the uh Kut on the Gaza border have said that they are going to uh boycott or hold altern alternative ceremonies uh especially when members of these communities are still being held in Gaza and uh that criticism is really spread and pushing back against that regev basically dismissed all the criticism she called it noise something which the critics did not take kindly to she compared uh alter options from marking October 7th to controversial Israeli Palestinian joint Memorial Day ceremonies and she even not criticized president Herzog who came out with a public statement saying you know as a compromise why don't we hold it at the president's residence because the president is you know as the presidency as an institution is much less uh partisan and politicized but she has accused the media of distorting what she said she's criticized the uh hostage families and the other critics and even the president so what we're coming to now is a situation in which there's going to be an official state event in ofakim in the South which I was goingon to say by the way ofakim is a town city that is pretty loyal to Netanyahu and to leud and and presumably Tamir reav correct well fakim is more of a Le good stronghold while the other communities that were affected many of them uh directly uh on the Gaza border have traditionally been much on the left so we're we're seeing that Dynamic play out as well as the fact that uh you know these communities which were hardest H are upset because it's sort of like they're being cut out of the process you know they feel that they're uh their tragedy has been co-opted so we're going to see this official state of end NOA Keem there's expected to be a huge alternative ceremony being held in Tel Aviv and you know the message that the government wanted to try to promote try to uh Advance is one of national Unity but by the very fact of doing things the way they're doing and seeing this proliferation of smaller events the big event in Tel aiv you know this just shows sort of the atomization the splintering of Israeli Society post October 7th I think it's a better illustration than most of just what's happened to us socially uh that that initial wave of together were going to win you know quickly gave way to uh infighting recriminations anger between different sectors and different political sides you even had the F actor uh amedi who who was injured fighting in Gaza also making a public statement asking regev and the government not to do it this way along with obviously the president you know are are Sweden are neutral our neutral politician in a sense and clearly none of those demands or requests are being listened to the truth is that even people on the right even people on netanyahu's side have you know raised concerns MK Moses from leud who nobody will accuse of being uh anything other than right-wing has said maybe we should start listening to the critics uh maybe you know there's something here so I I think a lot of this comes down to the government's uh you know this this is a very stubborn government it thinks it's right it sticks with what it want what what it does and especially Mary regev she's someone who you know sort of always sticks the course right okay so switching to the other side of uh of the government team let's put it that way um you and David harvit our boss interviewed opposition leader yeter Leed last week um David and I spoke a little bit about that interview uh earlier in the week just looking at leed's pretty positive outlook for the future uh hopeful maybe we should put it that way but can we talk a little bit about he refers a lot to political plans and what will come could you bring it down to sort of the more nitty-gritty what does that actually mean in terms of what he thinks will play out and what that could look like because obviously the knesset is still in its prolonged summer break right now so what are you hearing and what did you hear of course at the interview before I mention uh Le I'd like to pull back for a second and just uh mention that the the backdrop to what Leed has been saying and what gives him this optimism is that there's been a lot of infighting within the government uh you've seen benir and smotrich from the far right uh udit and religious Zionism parties repeatedly threatened to take down the government over hostage deal you've seen benir fighting with the ultra Orthodox and United totor Judaism and Shas you've seen leud MKS to basically torpedoing legislation important to the ultra Orthodox uh and Ultra Orthodox politicians saying that they no longer are trust in the government and that brings us to what Leed was saying which was he recently predicted that the government would fall by the end of the year and when I was sitting with Leed with and David last week I asked him I I said you know you predicted that by the end of the year we're going to have elections but you know speaking with Coalition people including a senior Coalition leader uh I've been told you know no matter how bad it is we're not leaving there's there's a sense among some that no matter how much tension there is in the Coalition a lot of the parties know they're not going to get a better deal and the next chance to come back in the government might be uh you know might be in quite a while so they're sticking it out and I asked him about this and his basic response was do you know when coalitions are falling apart when these kinds of conversations are happening between journalists and Senior politicians the fact that we're discussing whether it will survive means it won't and what he predicted was that we're going to see the American elections on November 5th on December 2nd less than a month later BB is supposed to take the stand in his ongoing corruption trial and within that month something is going to happen polling does show that the opposition is getting stronger and I think Le's uh comments definitely reflect both the growing dissatisfaction with Netanyahu and the fact that uh the return of Bennett could potentially with a lot of asterisks be be a game changer really interesting stuff Sam okay uh we're going to close out this Daily Briefing but thank you so much Luca and Sam for being with me on today's Daily Brief it's been really good to hear what you have to say Thank you Jessica thanks for having me and thanks to all of you for listening to the times visuals Daily Briefing we'll be back again tomorrow with another installment this episode was produced by Ben wallik if you have comments about this episode or any others always feel free to email us at podcast at timesofisrael.com and always of course feel free to recommend us wherever you find your podcasts until next time take care be well we'll see you tomorrow [Music]