Welcome to the Times of Israel's Friday Focus. I'm your host, Amanda Borchelle Dan, here with Laser Barman.

Today is Friday, May 9th, day 581 of the war. Hi, Laser. Thank you so much for joining me today.

Hi, Amanda, good to be here. It is good to have you. Well, we can because unfortunately, I understand you're going into reserve

duty, unfortunately for me, because I need to find other people for the Friday focus, but fortunately

for our country, obviously. So, Laser, how long will you be away from us?

It's hard to know because there's a lot of variables that are going to happen in the big world of

diplomacy and politics that we can't predict yet. But as of now, it's three weeks. So,

God willing, I'll be back by the end of the month. And we have plenty of very eloquent and capable

times if we're reporters to fill in, but hope to be talking to our many listeners.

Three weeks' time, we can talk about what I've seen,

and we can talk about some more of the issues that we've been delving into.

Well, we'll definitely miss you and take care of yourself, obviously.

And in light of this upcoming reserve duty for you,

and also because Israel appears to be at a crossroads,

I would like to discuss with you today the Gaza War past, present, and potentially the future. So we were going to do this

when we're back.

I'm Amanda Borschell Dan here with our diplomatic reporter, Laser Bearman.

Laser, ahead of your reserve duty, I would like to just start with the idea that Israel fights its wars based on not a standing army, but on a reserve army.

So this is something that's somewhat unique in a way, especially if you consider Israel's prowess,

because unlike countries such as the United States, we don't have a professional army,

and instead we have a smaller standing army filled with, well, my children, actually, three of them, and other people's children, and et cetera, et cetera. But also we bolster these forces always in times of need with reservists. So tell us a little bit about this concept and how it came to be. Yeah, so I would go back to the early days of the state, David Ben-Gurion, the first prime minister.

In the early 50s, showed incredible vision and leadership and went to stay Bocair to his house out in the desert and sat and did a personal learning process to take stock of what Israel's security challenges are,

...