Ex- Hostage's Chilling Details of Captivity, Rare Tour of Holy Sites & the Future of Israel

0:07What's incredible about the Holy Land is that it is the Holy Land. It is the center, in some sense, of the modern world. All of our history is built around the stories of the Bible, and you are literally walking in the steps that Jesus walked when you are in Jerusalem. To me, what it looks like, especially when I'm here, and that's why I'm feeling it so strongly right now, it feels like what it's done is basically taken all of you and this entire country and taken coal, and it just keeps grinding it and grinding it, you know, condensing it and condensing it, and it's left a diamond here. I met with an incredible young lady whose name is Maran.

0:39My name is Juan Serena, and I'm 41 years old. Being held captive for 54 days. You know, at one point, I had to entertain them for over 13 hours. I had to play with them cards, make them happy, make them laugh, you know, and I'm hungry. I think one of the real through lines is they have very little pity for themselves. They don't walk around in pity. They just don't. It's like some bad s*** happened and then they move on. It's really incredible. When you talk to people who actually are just living it. Yeah, that might have been my most enjoyable conversation so far. What does the country and region look like post-war?

1:17Well, that's the million-dollar question. What does this place look like post-war? Well, first off, I think we're getting there.

1:27How many times have you been to Israel? So this was actually my sixth trip to Israel. I was first there in 1997. When I was 21, I was there again in 99. My sister married an Israeli in the old city of Yaffa in 2012 or so. And then this was my third time in the last three years, actually. We had started, we had gone there three years ago to do a documentary about a strong country that was fighting for its life and doing it well. We had shot that documentary. We were about to put it up. And then October 7th happened. So we didn't put up that documentary. I went back once a few months after October 7th.

2:10And then this was my sixth trip about two years, almost two years post-October 7th. So it's been, I would say those six trips have been wildly, wildly different, which probably makes a lot of sense if you understand the history of the land. How were you feeling going to this trip, having been to it for multiple times? What was different about this one than the previous ones that you were on? This was probably the most impactful trip to me even before I got there, probably for a few reasons. I mean, the first time I went, I knew that Israel is an important place and an important history and all of those things.

2:44But I was a 21-year-old kid. And then, as I said, I went back a few years after that. And, you know, another time I went for my sister's wedding. So that was a celebration. And then when we went for that first documentary, I was taking my whole team for the first time. So it was kind of fun. And, again, it was before October 7th. So it was just kind of like a good time to be there and travel the country and everything else. Then the time after October 7th, because it was still so raw and there were so many hostages still there, and there are still hostages now as we're taping this right now, almost two years later.

3:14But it was really like it was focused on, wow, like this unbelievably, unimaginably horrific, barbaric thing had happened. And that kind of encapsulated the whole trip. I'm at Kibbutz Kafaras in southern Israel. This is one of the communities that was hit the hardest on October 7th. All right, we're at the site of the Nova Music Festival. I mean, this is truly horrific beyond imagination. Today's been an extremely emotional day. We started the morning by watching the 47-minute video compilation that Israel has put together of the October 7th events. And for all of you that have seen some of these videos, and everyone has at this point, we've shown some on the show.

3:58Whatever you've seen, it's worse. We managed to have some good times, too, and that's part of the magic of the country. But that really was the feeling. This time was a little bit different because we're post-October 7th, obviously. The country's moving on, and yet there's at least 20 hostages that are still there. There is a war going on in Gaza. They were being hit with rockets from Yemen, and they basically took Hezbollah out in Lebanon. But there was the looming threat of Iran, and I guess ironically or luckily or whatever you want to say, Maybe it had something to do with the guy up above.

4:30We ended up leaving three days before the Iran war broke out. I actually had kind of wanted to stay for a few extra days and I would have been stuck there like everybody else. And that in some sense, once it started, I was like, wow, maybe I should have stayed just to have seen that as kind of horrific as it is. But what you see there, especially at a time when rockets are falling, because there were a couple of rockets that fell, even though it was before the Iran situation, while we were there, what you see is this unbelievable dichotomy between life and death constantly. And in some sense, that's the energy of the country.

5:03So, you know, right before we did my show in Tel Aviv, you know, we have a couple hundred people at a comedy club and I'm in the green room and I didn't even hear it. But a rocket alarm went off. Wait, was there an actual siren, like you heard a siren, or it was just the alerts? I didn't hear a siren. Yeah, they said there was a siren. The local guy said that there was a mist or whatever, and I think he said he announced it. So you hear it outside until the big sirens, and everyone on their phone gets an alert. I was in the green room. I didn't even have my phone on me. I didn't even know what happened.

5:31Just as I walk out on stage, someone says, well, you know, this is kind of funny because everyone is here. And it turned out that the comedy club itself was underground and was a bomb shelter. And that was a great way to start the show. Not the first time I've ever started a show with a bomb threat. But then you see that sense of life. Like a bomb alert, people kind of freak out or they don't because they're kind of used to it. And then like a minute later, they're at a comedy club laughing or they're at a club dancing or they're doing whatever else they do. And that tension between, you know, the unspeakable horrors of life and then the desire to just put that aside and live, that's an incredible tightrope to be walking.

6:13And the whole country is walking on that all the time. And in some sense, that strikes me as the secret of their success. Do you want to tell me a little bit about your story first? Do you want to wait till we get inside? Do you want to use this hour and then we will go out and I'll tell you the story below. Do you want to see the side of the family? Okay. You know that in two hours, this whole square is so packed with people. And then the families are starting to speak. It's usually after Shabbat is like when it really is busy. This is the main rally. Yeah. So in here, you should stop filming.

6:50Okay. And...

6:57This was my second time going to Hostage Square, which is where the hostages, where their families and their friends and loved ones, where they meet up literally every single day since October 7th. And then on Saturday nights after Shabbat, that's when they usually have like the big weekly rally. But there are people there 24 hours a day every day now for almost two years. and some of the survivors who have gotten out of Gaza show up. You know, you've got family members who lost their children or their husbands or wives or whatever it might be. You have people who still have hostages that are there.

7:33It's just this extraordinary, like, emotional mix and you really, really can feel it. Like, you know, there's people in tears, crying and upset, and then there's people laughing, sharing stories about loved ones. Like there's all this incredible mix of things happening. It's a very small space, the square itself. Tel Aviv's a pretty small city, actually, and Israel's a tiny country. But I met with an incredible young lady whose name is Maran. My name is Juan Salaman, and I'm 41 years old currently. And I was kidnapped from the Nova Festival, being held captive for 54 days. And she was a hostage for 50 some odd days.

8:16she, I mean, when you hear the stories and to stand with her for, I don't know, we stood for maybe an hour or so and walked around a bit, to stand there, you know, you could see the pain in her eyes and holding back tears, which eventually came out a little bit at the end, even though she's told the story a million times and talking about her legs being broken. The terrorist was right behind me, holding an iron pipe, like about to beat me up in my head. and I didn't have no other point. I had to jump from a high place and I jumped and I hit my leg and he jumped after me. He was about to beat me up and he took an iron pipe down and he said, okay, enough.

8:56But then he took things from my pockets and he told me to go on the mountain and I didn't realize I had two broken legs at that point. And it's like you don't feel the pain. It's mind over body. a fight or flight. It's mine. If it's not mine, that you're not surviving this situation. Shots being fired and getting one capful of water a day. Capful, not a bottle. A capful of water a day to survive while they were, the Hamas guys, were making her cook food for them. Do you know how much water I had in those days? 20 milliliters of salty water. But she told me that that's the budget for the next two days.

9:38So I need to calculate the water that I drink. So I told the other hostage, trying to, you know, showing her, you know, I'm strong. We will survive this situation. Don't worry. We will drink one cap. One cap. You know, at one point I had to entertain them for over 13 hours. I had to play with them cards, make them happy, make them laugh, you know, and I'm hungry. And trying to, telling the story of trying to be strong for the other girl that was in the room with her and lice and getting bitten by bugs and all of them being beaten and all of these things to the backdrop of seeing her friends be shot at the Nova Festival and everything else.

10:19And then there she is telling her story. I mean, man, that'll put your shit behind you pretty quickly when you realize what the real bad stuff is out there that exists. And it is real and it does really exist. And I think a lot of people in some sense in the Western world were so comforted by so many modern things, we don't realize that there really are bad people out there. There really are bad ideas that want to upend all of this and end all of this. So to be there was, there almost aren't words for it, actually. You feel like you're sort of, it's like you're between the mortal world and heaven, something like that, because there's something much deeper than just what goes on in a human way on a day-to-day basis.

11:08And those people, they just want their family members home. I mean, it's as simple as that. And the fact that Hamas is even holding dead bodies as leverage, like, they know that the Israelis, because the Israelis care about life, they want even the dead bodies back, and that they're using that as leverage is just an unimaginable evil. But that's what they're up against every day, and they're not quitting, I can tell you that.

11:44I mean, first of all, we saw entire houses that were burnt. I've been there. It's just unbelievable. I remember walking, so I went there afterwards to see it again, and I remember seeing the houses now that are burnt down to the ground. I remember them burning with bodies burnt either inside or people tried to run away and you could see that they I guess lost it like their consciousness and just died on the way out and families that were in their safe rooms with their father executed and left in their safe room and in like houses that nobody's left like entire families that were butchered tortured and and killed I have horrible pictures on my phone that we took so that we'll have evidence afterwards and photos that I'm not allowed to publish.

12:31Like I don't mind showing you, but I'm not allowed to publish them because the IDF doesn't let us publish. Just horrific things until about 7 p.m. We were on our way to a mass hostage situation. I was leading my team. I was in the front of my team. I'm running towards a house in front of me to clear hostages from inside. We get shot from the right side where I lose the tip of my finger, which is why it's just like cut off there. Just a bullet goes through the top part. The leaders of our team, three guys, we managed to kill that terrorist. We continue back towards the house. I get to like the first step and the terrorist just takes his gun out of the window right on top of me and shoots an entire magazine at both me and my number two guy, David.

13:18We both get hit, fall to the floor. we both crawl into cover and get back into fighting mode. Like I remember we'd crawl into cover and turn around, guns ahead of us. I guess my conclusion was that they'd do what I would do, is go after your enemy. So they would probably come out and try to finish the job, and I wanted to be prepared. They didn't come out because, I mean, their advantage was that they're in that house, bunkered up, guns out, and nobody can get close. And there was a full hour that we were under that house, me and David, with terrorists surrounding us completely, shooting all over around us, a little bit coming towards us, but mostly coming at my team, which was still in the house that we came from.

14:01Yeah. Are you communicating with anyone at this point? Yeah, I have my radio. Yeah. At this point, I don't know where my left arm is. Wow. So I tell them on my radio that I lost my left arm and that I have a bullet in my chest. That's what I knew. David knew he had a bullet in his stomach, chest, left arm, and back. So that was what we told them. They tried to come to us. Three other soldiers were injured on the rescue mission. It failed. Again, they got bombarded by terrorists coming at them from all sides. These are about nine soldiers left healthy with, I'd say, around at this point, 60, 70, 80 terrorists just coming at them from all sides.

14:40And so for an hour, we're communicating, we're talking until they managed to get a tank into that house to cover fire them. four guys from my team crawled under that house four beasts crawl under my house got to me and david managed to pull us out as other soldiers conquered the house on top of us like they did it simultaneously yeah it was unbelievable so they went in they went under they pulled us out they went in the house there were about 15 terrorists in that house on top of us and they managed to pull me and david out give us medical treatment and send us off to the hospital on the away to the hospital, David died from blood loss.

15:24David is married and he has a son, seven month old son back then. Now he's a little over two. And he was hit by 10 bullets altogether. You were in the ambulance with him? I was in the helicopter. Yeah, we flew together. I was hit by four bullets. So three in my arm, shoulder and chest, a bullet here and two bullets in my chest plate that saved my life that stopped. and then yeah and then from there on to the hospital and I woke up found out basically everything that's going on. So that chat with Yadin was absolutely incredible you know it the crazy part about this is that everyone here has some kind of story like that his story happens to be a story of rescuing people and you know I think he said shot seven times I actually at the end when I was giving him a hug I felt his bicep I mean he literally has no bicep he has said it was all this nerve damage and a bunch of other stuff but I asked him what's the most challenging part now for his life going forward and he says it's just that he can't be out there with his brothers fighting and saving people I mean it's really it's really just beyond imagination I mean that to the backdrop of chatting yesterday with some of the hostages or former hostages thankfully but maybe Joey can pan and just look out the window for a second.

16:41And you really can just see life goes on here. It's crazy. There's a war happening. Like it's not that many miles down south. This is a tiny country the size of New Jersey. And there's a war and there's 20 people being hidden on top of, I think there's about 58 probably dead bodies that they're keeping hostage, which is also completely psychotic. And it could all, as Yedin said, it could all end right now. It could end while we are in this bus right now. If they would just release those people, the war will be over. So the people that are accusing Israel of genocide and all of these things that are a complete lie, they could end it.

17:16It's the only case in human history of people who are quote-unquote being genocided, who have the power to stop the war, not stopping the war. And that's why it's tough to fight a death cult. And when I talk to him about going to these college campuses and seeing the reaction, you know, what could possibly be more just than a nation saving its citizens? Everyone, end the war, end the war. Okay, so leave 20 people there. Leave their ability to do it again. Leave their ability to shoot rockets into your country. Leave 20 people. I mean, imagine if you took the scale of, you know, the size of these countries and the populations, it would be like America leaving thousands of citizens in Mexico and just being like, all right, the war's over.

18:03we'll just leave you there. That means the war is over, as if that means that something good has come of the ending of all of this. All they have to do is release the hostages, but they're obviously not going to do that, and the war will go on until they do, and there'll be a lot of death and destruction, and it's up to them. But when you see heroes like this, and then to the backdrop of life going on here, it's really incredible, and that's, you know, one of the incredible things about Israel, especially when we get to Jerusalem, will see is that you know you can dig down and see history and then they build up and you see the future so you see this incredible historical place that's on the forefront of technology so you see the you see like the past and the future at the exact same time and it's like a slightly different version here in Tel Aviv because you see this unbelievably robust city with joy and endless partying and incredible food and music and culture and all of those things and then it's to the backdrop of probably virtually every guy that's over 18 on this beach was probably fighting in the war and how many survivors are out here or family members or everything else.

19:07So it's really extraordinary. And we're going to go to the Carmel market now and eat some meat. So that's good too. The last trip that we did post-October 7th, even though we were able to kind of go out at night, and as everyone in Israel says, Tel Aviv is a bubble, so there still is nightlife and all that stuff. It was still so raw at the time. And there really was a feeling still of like, oh, is this country going to continue? And are they going to win this war and all of that? Now that we went back this time, which was, you know, only about a year later. And again, it was before the just a few days before the Iran war.

19:40There was a real feeling like, oh, they beat Hezbollah. They're beating Hamas. Eventually they will get the hostages back. There was also a feeling, even though it wasn't like talked about that much, that like the Iran thing was going to be solved one way or another. Like, it was like, you know, there was a feeling of, oh, we will get through this. Where the last time I was there, there was a feeling of like, oh, are we at the end of the road here? Killed for absolutely nothing. But that's what Hamas wants. Dead people, destruction. If this was a place that was made for life, it's not supposed to be this way.

20:11I think we're quite literally millions and millions of people all over the world have woken up to over the past few months is that evil is real. Not everyone thinks as we think. Not everyone believes the same things that we believe in. But then you go out, whether it's in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem or any of the other cities, and there's an unbelievable nightlife. The food scene is incredible. We ate some of the best food that I've ever eaten in my entire life. And there's also a feeling that, like, everyone's in on it together. Meaning, like, you go out and every single waiter or bartender that we talked to became our friend over the meal.

20:49Like we did shots with everybody. Like if I ordered shots for my team, they were like, I'll have a shot with you. And that happened time and time again. And then they would chat with us and tell us, you know, every meal that we went to, I didn't even order off a menu. I would just say, hey, whatever you think is the best. And they were so proud to bring the food there and share a rock is their is their basically their national drink. And and there's just this strange it's I guess in some sense, it's not strange. It seems like it's strange. Wait a minute. They're trying to kill you all the time.

21:18You should be hiding and afraid and everything else. We're so afraid in our modern lives of everything. Everyone's afraid. And COVID, we're afraid of going out and someone might sneeze on you and all these things. And here they are. They have real people trying to kill them all the time. And basically, they're like, fuck that. We're going to live. And that's why, you know, every year they come out with this poll all over the world of the happiest countries. And Israel is always in the top 10 despite all of the crazy things that happened. So it was particularly, I guess, it was particularly moving to be there post-October 7th and see that the sense of hope is probably greater than ever.

21:56You've traveled quite a bit in your lifetime. You've traveled to a lot of different countries. Can you talk about Israel's natural beauty and actually the architecture for someone who's never been there? What's it like to be there? What does it look like to someone who's never been? What's incredible about the Holy Land is that it is the Holy Land. It is the center, in some sense, of the modern world. All of our history is built around the stories of the Bible, and you are literally walking in the steps that Jesus walked when you are in Jerusalem. And we walked from the holiest site in Judaism, which is the Western Wall, to the holiest site in Christianity, which is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and you walk through the quarters, and these are the very same stones that our civilization was built upon.

22:39All right, so we just entered the walls of the old city of Jerusalem. I mean, this is one of the most, possibly the most historically and religiously important places on planet Earth. We enter the Jaffa Gate over here, and we're going towards the Western Wall, which of course is the holiest site in Judaism. It's actually the retaining wall of the original Jewish temple, which has been destroyed twice. and then the Dome of the Rock was built on top of it so Jews technically can't even pray really really like once a year a few people can at their holiest site they so Jews pray at the at the wall beneath it because I mean it's just an annoying truth the Muslims don't want the Jews praying up there that's just how it is but their Church of the Holy Sepulchre is here just within minutes of the Western Wall so we're gonna take a walk and we'll shoot something walking from the holiest site in Christianity to the holiest site in Judaism.

23:36And what you'll see here is Orthodox Jews walking right next to women in full Muslim garb and, you know, large coexistence. And yes, there is the Muslim quarter and the Armenian quarter and the Jewish quarter, and everyone coexists and no one's forced to stay in their quarter, although probably not as safe for a public person or certain people wearing certain things, depending on what quarter you're in. But it's an absolutely beautiful day here and we're gonna go shoot the show right in front of the Western Wall and we'll go from there. Alright.

24:15Now that is a view ladies and gentlemen. Look at that.

24:28This literally might be the most important piece of real estate in the entire world, what you're seeing right here.

24:54Man, this is like reverse doom scrolling. We spend all our days scrolling that thing. This is whatever the 180 absolute reverse of that is. That's what this is.