Day 609 - 10 truths about the Gaza war, 20 months in

The Times of Israel Daily Briefing

The Times of Israel

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4.4 • 864 Ratings

🗓️ 6 June 2025

⏱️ 50 minutes

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Summary

Welcome to The Times of Israel's newest podcast series, Friday Focus. Each Friday, join diplomatic reporter Lazar Berman and host deputy editor Amanda Borschel-Dan for a deep dive into what's behind the news that spins the globe.

Just back from reserve duty, Berman has written an in-depth look at the war in Gaza and the questions it raises in Israeli society.

For today's episode, we take a look at Berman's op-ed, "For now, victory is still within reach: 10 truths about the Gaza war, 20 months in," and discuss each point one by one.

In a free-flowing conversation, we hear Berman assess the war's successes and failures and learn about the burning existential issues that Israelis have yet to address.

Friday Focus can be found on all podcast platforms. This episode was produced by the Pod-Waves and the video was edited by Thomas Girsch.

IMAGE: IDF troops of the Nahal Brigade operate in the Gaza Strip, in images released on June 5, 2025. (Israel Defense Forces)

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Times of Israel's Friday Focus. I'm your host, Amanda Borschal Dan, here with our
0:07.5	diplomatic reporter, Laser Bearman, this Friday, June 6. Laser, thank you so much for coming back
0:14.4	from Reserve Duty. I've missed you so. Thank you. I've missed you as well. And it always was my
0:19.2	intention to come back, so I'm happy that it worked out like that.
0:22.5	We all are, laser. And obviously, you had a lot of time on your hands because you've come back and written this massive piece about 10 truths of the Gaza War for 20 months.
0:35.3	So I'm sure you were charting it out as you're standing doing guard duty or whatever you're
0:39.3	doing inside Gaza.
0:40.4	Can you tell us anything about what you're doing inside Gaza?
0:43.4	Yeah, I absolutely do not stand and do guard duty, thank God.
0:47.3	I am part of a new unit, which is much more offensively minded, really created out of the
0:54.0	lessons of the war and lessons
0:57.0	in terms of some things that we're missing in terms of contested urban combat environments,
1:03.0	which Gaza Strip is really the leading example in the world right now.
1:07.8	So it's anything but guard duty.
1:10.1	At the same time, given that we're based in
1:13.9	Raffach, in Tel Siltan, but given that the focus of the reserve brigades there started moving
1:20.5	and then moved very quickly toward this very complex mission of securing the Gaza Humanitarian Fund distribution sites.
1:29.3	There really was not a lot of bandwidth by the end of the period for real offensive missions,
1:34.2	so it was much less in terms of what I hoped for in terms of missions.
1:39.1	But we did some interesting things.
1:41.5	But hopefully next time there will be more bandwidth to approve some of the new things that the IDF needs to be doing.
1:50.0	Okay, that was a quasi-answer in what you're doing in Gaza, and I didn't mean to offend your honor by saying it was guard duty.
	...

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