GREGORY: Good evening, dear viewers. This is An Hour of Interview. I’m Gregory Antimony, and it’s my great pleasure to introduce today’s guest. His name is Sergey Grankin. He is a military correspondent for Israel’s Channel 9. Did I get everything right?
SERGEY: Yes, absolutely correct.

GREGORY: I initially thought Channel 9 was a state broadcaster and wanted to ask how public television in Israel differs from privately owned television. But, as I’ve just learned from speaking with you, this is not a state channel but a private one. So I assume the system of regulations and limitations is different.
SERGEY: Nevertheless, I do have an answer to that question. I’ve worked with the state broadcaster more than once — Israel’s Channel 11. It’s great… they feed you better.
Or let me give you a simple example. When I go out on assignment — say, to the Gaza border — I choose the location myself. I’m the producer, I decide what to shoot, which means I’m also the director. I set up the camera and film — so I’m the cameraman. I adjust the sound and lighting, set up the satellite connection — that makes me the technician as well. And, of course, the driver.
Then I step in front of the camera and, for a short while, become the military correspondent of Channel 9.
Meanwhile, next to me are the Channel 11 guys — a five-person crew. Each of them performs only one function. And it has to be that way, because they have a union. Even though every TV professional generally knows how to operate a camera or handle sound, the union doesn’t allow it.

SERGEY: Channel 11 has an absolutely remarkable system — I’ve seen it from the inside — and it says a lot about the efficiency of state media. Television used to be shot on film, and in Israel this continued relatively late — almost into the 1980s. And the film canisters…

GREGORY: That was before Betacam…

SERGEY: Yes. The 35-millimeter film boxes were heavy. The union fought to make sure editors didn’t carry them — most editors were women, and they were literally breaking their backs. So a special employee was hired just to carry the film. And he still works at Channel 11 today.
Now the operator arrives, takes out the SIM card or flash drive, hands it to that person, and he carries it to the editing room. If he’s at lunch or on a smoke break, the footage doesn’t get delivered. As a result, the news is slightly delayed. But that’s the state — you can’t fight it.

GREGORY: All right. And since we’re meeting at such joyful days for Israel — and not only for Israel — tell me, how do you personally feel… well, naturally, everyone is happy, including you, about the return…
SERGEY: In principle — yes, of course. I’m so happy that I feel like joking: where am I supposed to earn my living now as a military correspondent? The war is over, all enemies are defeated — time to look for a new profession.
But unfortunately, that really is a joke. Israel still has plenty of enemies, and I’m afraid I’ll have enough military stories to last me a lifetime. Not everything is over, but a great deal is over. This is truly a great victory.

GREGORY: I agree.

​

Sergey Grankin's Program excerpt:  Israel celebrates. Two years of waiting, despair, and hope are finally behind them. All twenty living hostages have returned home. The release, which sparked overwhelming emotions, became possible through an agreement exchanging hostages for Palestinian prisoners. Egypt and Qatar acted as mediators, but the key role was played by the United States and personally by Donald Trump. People gathered in the square do not hide their emotions.

​

GREGORY: Do you really consider this a victory? SERGEY: Absolutely. Yes, without a doubt. This is primarily a psychological, moral victory. Israel defeated itself — it crossed the boundaries it had long imposed on itself.

It’s clear that Gaza could have been reduced to rubble five years ago, in 2014 during Operation Protective Edge, in 2008 during the first operation against Gaza, and in 2007, immediately after Hamas seized power. But we didn’t do that because there was a cautious hope. I shared it to some extent myself — the idea that the wolf could be fed, tamed, and that feeding the wolf would cost less than war. Less financially, and psychologically as well. Killing people is deeply unpleasant, and no one wants that.

But Israel took this step. And for that, it’s not exactly a matter of thanking Hamas, but after October 7, a great deal changed — mainly in people’s minds.

Previously, we thought we had ceasefires. In reality, it was hudna. Hudna is an Arabic term that literally means a temporary ceasefire in order to regroup and attack again. Arafat used this word frequently, and Hamas used it as well. We kept entering into hudnas. And after each one, we were afraid even to chamber a round — afraid of violating the ceasefire, afraid of being accused, afraid of triggering renewed fighting.

As for Gaza, it may still be too early to draw conclusions — it’s a living process, unfolding day by day. But there is a clear example in Lebanon. For nine months now, there has been a ceasefire. Israel maintains five outposts on Lebanese territory. Over these nine months, about 250 militants have been eliminated, including Radwan — Hezbollah’s special forces — as well as political and economic leaders of Hezbollah, not only in southern Lebanon but also in Baalbek, the Bekaa Valley, and even Beirut. Strikes on Beirut — this is what an active ceasefire looks like.

And it’s a completely different feeling. We control the situation. We decide how it develops. We can’t dictate terms to the Lebanese government, but we are an active player in this process. Even from the sidelines, Israeli pressure clearly has weight and influence.

For the first time in history, the Lebanese parliament voted to extend the ceasefire — this happened a couple of months ago. Both Amal, the old Shiite organization, and Hezbollah, a newer but extremely aggressive Shiite force, walked out of the chamber. Normally, parliamentary work in Lebanon would stop at that point. If Hezbollah objects, there’s no point in voting — they have more weapons than the Lebanese army.

But the situation changed. Despite Israel’s tough stance, constant strikes and explosions, including in Beirut, parliament voted to extend the peace. There is strong hope that, in one form or another, a similar development may eventually take place in Gaza.

But that’s not the main point. What matters is something we have always known — and known for a long time — that in the Middle East, alongside universal human values, which Israel has preserved and which most soldiers still share, the right of the strong plays a decisive role. And we demonstrated that strength.

I am a military correspondent. I have seen a lot. But the pager operation — that was sheer brilliance.

​

Program excerpt from Sergey Grankin: 

Beirut, September 17. A series of explosions rocks the city simultaneously. This continues in Lebanon for two consecutive days. Among the injured are Hezbollah militants. More than three thousand wounded.
What caused such an unexpected and massive effect? It turns out to be ordinary messaging devices — pagers, familiar to many since the 1990s. Hezbollah militants actively used them. But how was it possible to quietly replace five thousand pagers? And will other actors adopt this unique method of mass neutralization of the enemy?

​

SERGEY: The story with the radios… and then, a day later, it all turned into some kind of cinematic comedy. People in Lebanon started throwing out irons and electric kettles — they became afraid of any electrical device.
And the first day of the strike on Iran, when the entire military leadership was eliminated using a Telegram channel created by the Mossad — that’s an incredibly elegant detective story. It’s unbelievable. If I saw something like that in a movie, I’d say: “Come on, that’s too much, enough already.”
By the way, there’s an Israeli TV series I recommend to everyone — Tehran. They stopped filming the final season simply because reality turned out to be far more dramatic than the screenwriters’ imagination.

Program excerpt from Sergey Grankin (series quote):
“They’re searching for us — half the guard is after us. You won’t make it. You’re an excellent agent. You paid a terrible price, but it wasn’t in vain. We’re playing a very big game. Who sent you? Trust me. This operation is strictly classified. He must be eliminated.”

SERGEY: When the psychology changed, it turned out that everything became possible. It became possible to strike Doha, Qatar. Formally, they didn’t really do anything bad to us. But no one apologized for the killed policeman — and that is extremely unpleasant. We killed him by accident; the others were not killed by accident. They were clearly shown: you won’t be able to hide anywhere, you’re in our sights, and it’s better to sign.

It was impossible to believe that through force and military pressure it would be possible to rescue those twenty people. No one believed it. And I’ll say this directly: I’m a journalist. My job is to look for mistakes, miscalculations, and to criticize those in power. Because a journalist who praises the authorities is a propagandist — that’s obvious.

No matter how I personally feel about Netanyahu and his government, my primary duty is to identify their failures. But as an objective journalist, I must say this: for the first time in my career — and I’ve been a military journalist for thirty-five years — a politician said something and actually did it. That’s astonishing. It sounds trivial, but I cannot name a single other example where a politician truly fulfilled a promise.

Two years ago, Netanyahu said: “We will free all the hostages by force, and we will crush Hamas by force.” Today there are debates — naturally. That’s part of the Jewish catastrophic mindset: there will always be skeptics saying, “Hamas wasn’t completely destroyed, something remains.” First, there is no such thing as a one-hundred-percent result. Second, the very fact of the rescue on October 13 will go down in history — not only Israeli history, but world history. This is a genuine turning point.

It has always been said that guerrillas cannot be defeated. You can win against a regular army, but fighting guerrilla forces is impossible. The Vietnam War proved it. Afghanistan proved it. Libya proved it. There have been many wars where even the most powerful regular armies — including the American one — failed to defeat guerrillas. But Israel succeeded.

This is, first of all, a source of pride. And second, military textbooks in academies around the world will now be rewritten. A fundamental shift in global military strategy has taken place. I’m not even talking about the “small things” — like the fact that Israel won the first round of “Star Wars.” Few people noticed, but we intercepted a missile in outer space — the first country in the world to do so. And that is truly remarkable. Any fan will tell you: winning “Star Wars” is not easy.

GREGORY: What role did Trump play in this victory?
SERGEY: We were very close to catastrophe. Bibi Netanyahu — the Prime Minister of Israel, for those viewers who might not know, though I doubt there are many — took an enormous risk.

GREGORY: By the way, did you notice how everyone addresses him? In the Knesset they all simply call him Bibi.
SERGEY: Yes, we call him that too. It’s very Israeli — warm, informal, almost family-like.
To me, he behaved like a gambler in a casino: red or black — and he put all the chips on one color.

This was a critical moment, right at the end of the Biden administration. The first year of the war was extremely difficult. At the time, military censors asked me not to disclose certain details, but now I can speak openly.

Israel had an American stockpile of strategic and tactical weapons on its territory. There was an agreement with the United States: if we ever urgently needed these weapons, we could use them and later compensate for them. But in 2022, the entire stockpile was transferred to Ukraine.

As a result, we were left without shells, without missiles, without reserves — and at the same time became engaged in one of the most complex wars in our history. Artillery units were using shells dating back to the Yom Kippur War of 1973. They were inaccurate. Gun barrels could withstand only twenty to thirty shots before needing replacement — and replacement barrels were also running out.

There were only a few hundred precision missiles and aerial bombs available — essentially enough for a couple of weeks of active warfare. That is why, during the first phase of the ground offensive that began in November 2023, we suffered such heavy losses: there was no real air support.

Heavy bombs were used, and they helped to some extent, but they caused an unacceptably high number of civilian casualties — civilians in quotation marks, perhaps, but still not direct combatants. Therefore, their use was severely limited.

The main artillery weapon of battalion-level offensives became mortars. Mortars are excellent weapons. We developed new systems, first deployed in 2023, called “Wasp Sting.” It is a self-guided mortar round whose trajectory can be adjusted mid-flight. It is extraordinarily precise — but its range is one to one and a half kilometers, at most two. We could not keep all of Gaza under fire control.

Then Biden said: “If you enter Rafah, we will halt the delivery of precision-guided aerial bombs.” And yet, under existing agreements, the United States was obligated to supply them — not under a new contract, but under a long-standing agreement. In effect, this was compensation for the stockpile that had been transferred to Ukraine.

But Biden said no: if you enter Rafah, the deliveries stop. There were two responses. One of the generals — not Bibi himself, but clearly with his approval — said: “Fine. If we don’t get precision weapons, we will use non-precision ones. But then every death resulting from that will be on America’s conscience.” During an election campaign, that was a very strong statement.

And the Israeli army entered Rafah.

​

Program excerpt from Sergey Grankin:
“Today Israel is fighting on the front line of civilization. I say to America: give us the tools faster, and we will finish the job faster. The war in Gaza can end tomorrow if Hamas surrenders, lays down its weapons, and returns all the hostages. But if they do not, Israel will fight until we destroy Hamas’s military capabilities, its rule in Gaza, and bring all our hostages home.”

​

GREGORY: Well, I would say that if you weigh the opinions of the rest of humanity, not everyone would agree with that.

SERGEY: Of course not. Of course not. Trump simply hasn’t reached them yet. He will help Ukraine, and I hope that one day — maybe five years from now — a Ukrainian journalist, sitting right where I am now, will say roughly the same words.
Because at the very least we can see that his intentions are sincere. He is genuinely trying to achieve peace in many regions. Yes, so far things have not worked out very well with Ukraine, and the situation with Putin still looks unclear and hardly rational. But I explain this to myself in a simple way: you can’t embrace the infinite.

The concentration of tasks and the number of decisions that had to be made regarding the Middle East were so overwhelming that after the meeting in Alaska, Ukraine and earlier promises were, in a sense, pushed aside. But the Middle East will never be the same again. He is a real demiurge. He reshaped the world.
We used to think that only divine forces were capable of such transformations. It turns out they are not. This is within human hands. You just have to want it badly enough, find the right moment, the right ally, at the right time and in the right place. As the saying goes: give me a point of support, and I will turn the Earth. It seems he had that point of support.

Now I am convinced that on the wave of this extraordinary success, the next move will be Ukraine. I truly hope so. I was there. I filmed this war. I have extremely heavy impressions — I saw a great deal, and it still hurts, both in my soul and in my heart.

I am not Russian, fortunately. My address is not a house or a street — my address is the Soviet Union. I left the Soviet Union, but I left from Leningrad. And in a certain sense, with regard to the Russian Federation… I wouldn’t say I feel responsibility, but I feel deep discomfort. It is painful that the Russian language has become the language of this regime, that because of these people monuments to Pushkin are being dismantled in Odesa — all of this is deeply disturbing.

My only “justification,” if you can call it that, is the award I received from Putin: a 50-year ban on entering Russia, for my reporting from Ukraine. I did the math — my next visit to my beloved Saint Petersburg would be possible when I turn 103. So, in a way, it’s fair.

GREGORY: I see. Well, that’s quite an award, in its own way. But since you’ve already touched on this subject, let me raise an issue that has been troubling me for a long time. I’ve asked almost every Israeli who comes here: why are relations between Israel and Ukraine so complicated? And no one could answer. No one — including Sergei Auslender. No matter how many times people asked for help, the response was always a refusal.

SERGEY: Well, Zelensky recently thanked Israel for the Patriots that Israel supplied. So there were deliveries, after all.
As for myself, I call myself “a microphone with legs” — a bit like the Chukchi saying: what I see, I sing. When I’m in the field, I try not to analyze or generalize events. I simply tell viewers what I saw. What conclusions to draw is up to each individual.

What did I see in Ukraine when I arrived on February 26, 2022, on the second day of the war? I got there fairly quickly and witnessed something remarkable. By that time, my close friend and university classmate from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Misha Brodsky, Israel’s ambassador to Ukraine, had already organized consular operations.

He himself was in Poland, at the border. And at every Ukrainian border crossing — and there are dozens of them — there was an Israeli consul. I’ll explain why this matters. The first thing refugees saw as they left Ukraine was the Israeli flag.

Naturally, consuls first helped Israeli citizens and Jews. But Israelis working, for example, in Lviv — in high-tech companies, joint Israeli-Ukrainian ventures — did something extraordinary. I don’t know how they managed it, who they had to persuade, or what kind of effort it required, but amid the chaos, a system was functioning.

By the second day of the war, buses with refugees were already leaving Lviv. Trains were overcrowded, and there were lines up to 15 kilometers long at the border. Israeli buses, escorted by police or the army, passed without waiting and crossed the border.

Why is this important? Not only because Jews were evacuated — though that in itself matters — but because any member of a Jewish community, any Israeli citizen, could bring an unlimited number of Ukrainian friends and neighbors onto those buses. That is crucial.

The first volunteer kitchen at the Ukrainian-Polish border was organized by Israelis from Rishon LeZion. Max Babitsky, the city’s deputy mayor, assembled a team, brought volunteers, and they began working.

These were the very first days — complete chaos. Ukrainians themselves didn’t fully understand what was happening yet. Israelis, on the other hand, are used to reacting quickly. I have reports from those days — they’re available on my YouTube channel. These are not just words. All of it was filmed.

​

Program excerpt from Sergey Grankin

Tomorrow I’ll be doing a report from Lviv railway station. Tens of thousands of people have gathered there. People are sleeping in underground passages, on platforms. It is physically impossible to enter the station building — it has turned into a massive dormitory.
Many people will spend the night in Lviv out on the street simply because it is impossible to find accommodation — a hotel, a hostel, anywhere at all. If you don’t have acquaintances — and fortunately, I did — you end up on the street. We met people who were saying in despair: “What are we supposed to do? Where do we go?”

You can see the steam coming from people’s mouths. Last night it snowed, it was colder, and now the temperature is around zero and continuing to drop. It will go below zero. How families with children will get through this night outside is hard to imagine. The situation is extremely difficult, including here in Lviv. Although today, at least, there has been no shelling. There was shelling yesterday.

 

SERGEY: All of this, of course, inspired enormous respect. And then I witnessed things that were already beyond anything I had seen before. For example, in Poland — again, somewhere near Misha Brodsky. I won’t go into details, God forbid I compromise a diplomat.
But in a neighboring room there was a unit — straight out of the TV series Fauda. Very similar: their expressions, their mannerisms, the way they walked. You can spot those Israeli “wolves” immediately. They were forming groups, crossing the front line — which at the time was completely unstable — and extracting people based on specific requests.

They were mainly extracting Jews and Israeli citizens, but when necessary, they also took neighbors. People simply don’t talk about this much.

A hospital appeared about a month later — that came much later. By the way, it was in the Lviv region and had nothing to do with Uman. It was a field hospital.
Then several planes landed in Kraków carrying proper Israeli medical equipment, which was installed in regular hospitals. There was no longer any need for tents.

Today, virtually every Ukrainian hospital is, in part, an Israeli hospital — that’s important to understand. That first hospital was essentially a startup. They tested what was needed, what people were suffering from, which specialists were lacking. This is how Israeli military field medicine works.
After that, direct, targeted deliveries were made to specific hospitals. So I’ll repeat it again: hundreds of Israeli medical initiatives are still operating in Ukraine, and Israeli specialists continue to help.

I don’t personally know the doctors, but I can give an example. Grisha Tamar — a close friend of mine, we’ve known each other for 35 years — traveled to Ukraine to train military paramedics. He is a captain in the Israeli army’s medical corps. This was a private initiative. No one paid him for it.
And no one claims these were state-level actions — there were no diplomatic statements about this, for very obvious reasons.

At the time, the Russian army was stationed in Syria. On the Syrian side of the Golan Heights there were posts of Russia’s Chechen military police. S-300 and S-400 systems were watching the sky, waiting for our aircraft.
Yet not a single launcher, not a single soldier, not a single ship stationed in Tartus fired a single shot at Israeli aircraft that were continuously striking targets in Syria.

On the one hand, Israel did not advertise this. On the other hand, we truly acted faster than anyone else and with extreme efficiency. Israel demonstrated remarkable solidarity with the Ukrainian people.
Very few countries sent their retired special forces to rescue people from Russian-occupied territories. That is something probably only Israel could have done.

I still cannot talk about everything. There was military cooperation as well. I have a military censor — Hanan. Once a month we are gathered to discuss, among other things, the war in Ukraine. This is a closed group of military journalists. The army briefs us not for publication, but so that we understand what is actually happening and don’t spread nonsense.

In my view, Israel has the right approach here — it’s important that journalists understand reality. We were told a lot about Ukraine, and I know quite a bit. I think that in a year, two, three — or, as I said, five years — it will become clear that things were not as straightforward as some of my colleagues in Russia claim, especially regarding military assistance.

Although, of course, one always wishes there had been more. And when Netanyahu calls Putin to congratulate him on his birthday — October 7, damn it — it provokes nothing but a gag reflex.

GREGORY: So do you think this coincidence was accidental?

SERGEY: In fact, no — it wasn’t accidental. Hamas has its own chronology. October 6–7 is not only significant today; it also marks the beginning of the Yom Kippur War. And for them, this date is far more important.
In Arab countries — for example, in Egypt and Syria — this day is celebrated as Victory Day, with military parades. This year, by the way, Syria canceled its Victory Day on October 7. And I believe Hamas was guided precisely by this symbolism — the date of a so-called “Muslim victory.” Although, frankly, may they achieve such “victories” every time they decide to go to war with Israel.

If we speak in purely technical terms, the Yom Kippur War was the most difficult war in Israel’s history — even more difficult than the current two-year war. Let me give you the numbers.
Back then, more than 2,200 people were killed. Today, the number is close to 1,900. There were about 300 prisoners of war then; we had 251. So we almost “caught up,” but that war was still slightly bloodier. And since it took place over a much shorter period of time, if you calculate losses per day, they were incomparably higher than anything we’ve seen over the past two years.

That is precisely why Arabs celebrate it as a victory. For them, killing more than two thousand Jews was a reason for celebration. In Egypt, it remains a national holiday to this day. Syria, as I mentioned, canceled it this year. Jordan, let me remind you, did not participate in that war — so they don’t celebrate anything.

So yes, there is a certain karmic coincidence. It is, in a sense, a day of the triumph of evil. And Putin’s birthday fits into this symbolism perfectly.

As for why Netanyahu called Putin — we all more or less understand why. Netanyahu is an experienced politician, and in reality, he may be the last — or perhaps the only — remaining bridge between the Western world and a Russia that is completely isolated. Even Trump’s meeting in Alaska did not break that blockade.
Important messages are passed through Netanyahu. And, by the way, Israel also receives important information via Russia. Just last week, for example, Iran’s Foreign Ministry — specifically a deputy foreign minister — passed a message to Israel through Moscow. We don’t know its content or proposals, but the very fact shows that this channel of communication is extremely important for Israel.

Israel is a very specific country. On the one hand, we are small. On the other hand, we are deeply involved in global processes. That is why this special position in relations with Russia…
Once again, for most Russian-speaking Israelis, it evokes nothing but disgust. It certainly doesn’t bring Netanyahu any additional votes — believe me. But I am convinced that this is not done out of personal sympathy. There must be serious reasons for it.

GREGORY: All right. Let’s leave this topic for now — hopefully not for long. I’m referring to relations between two countries that could be more active and more cooperative. Unfortunately, that hasn’t happened yet.

SERGEY: Do you remember when I told you about the weapons stockpile? In fact, the first wave of the Russian offensive was stopped using Israeli artillery shells.
Yes, no one shouts about it. But it’s true. Moreover, we could have finished the war with Hamas six months earlier if not for the assistance to Ukraine. There are countries — especially in Europe — that loudly advertise their aid. Israel doesn’t. But if we’re being honest, we supplied more shells than Germany.

GREGORY: I won’t take on the role of a judge here, but I do know that Zelensky asked for the Iron Dome, and was told that Israel did not have enough systems for its own needs.

SERGEY: That’s not exactly true. First of all, it was more a figure of speech. The discussion was about air defense systems in general. The Iron Dome is a very specific system. The effective radius of one launcher is about ten kilometers.
Installations are deployed near Ashkelon, Ashdod, and around Tel Aviv. A rocket is launched from Gaza, and the nearest battery intercepts it. The distance from Tel Aviv to the Gaza border is about seventy kilometers. The Ukrainian–Russian front, by contrast, stretches for roughly a thousand kilometers.

When I was in Ukraine, people constantly asked me: “So when will we get the Iron Dome? When will you protect us?” As a joke, we sat down with Ukrainian military officers, spread out a map, and did the math. To even partially cover Ukraine’s airspace against medium-range missiles — not ballistic missiles, which the Iron Dome cannot intercept at all, but even just drones — you would need about ten thousand launchers.

One Tamir interceptor missile costs roughly forty thousand dollars. To shoot down a single drone, it takes anywhere from two to six missiles.
Even if we wanted to bankrupt Ukraine, it would still be impossible — ten thousand launchers simply do not exist. There are probably fewer than a thousand in the entire world.

SERGEY: Why? Because Israel does have a system. Some Iron Dome batteries were transferred to the United States — they were involved in developing these interceptors and are now actively testing them, including in Alaska, refining and upgrading the system. There are also several dozen naval-based launchers.
But even if we imagine that there are, say, a thousand Iron Dome launchers in the world — or let’s be generous and say ten thousand — what then? Even if we gathered all of them and sent them to Ukraine, they would stand there without missiles. There simply isn’t enough money in the world to produce that number of interceptors. Tamir missile production cannot be increased tenfold overnight.

That is why, in reality, Zelensky could not truly expect Iron Dome systems from Israel. Judging by what we saw on the battlefield — at the time the Commander-in-Chief was Zaluzhnyi, an outstanding military leader, one of the best generals of the 21st century, including by Israeli standards — he clearly understood that under Ukrainian conditions this would have been a meaningless toy.
But Patriot systems from Israel did make their way to Ukraine. And Patriots are exactly what Ukraine needs, because they are capable of intercepting ballistic missiles.

GREGORY: There were other moments that remained unclear to me. Do you remember the first year of the war and Zelensky’s very active diplomatic efforts — building relationships with Europe and with many countries he had barely dealt with before? He was welcomed everywhere — except in the Knesset. Do you remember how his speech there failed?

SERGEY: Well, not exactly a failure, but—

GREGORY: It was a failure.

SERGEY: Well, at least they didn’t throw rotten eggs.

GREGORY: They didn’t, but I think about 80 percent of the audience was clearly dissatisfied. People were outraged by the direct analogy drawn between what was happening in Ukraine and the Holocaust.

​

(Film excerpt)
The Second World War began. Along with the rapid advance of the German army, the geography of the Holocaust expanded just as quickly. By the autumn of 1941, the Holocaust had spread across all regions of Europe — east and west, north and south, from Scandinavia to the Balkans.

 

GREGORY: Was that what caused the strongest reaction? I understand what he meant, but given the catastrophic consequences of the Russian intervention, one could perhaps have approached it with a bit more empathy.

SERGEY: Responsibility can be assigned to both sides here. Zelensky’s press office — the people who wrote that speech — could have thought it through more carefully.

GREGORY: About whether it was appropriate or not?

SERGEY: Exactly. It was an unpleasant incident, and in my view, the mistake was mutual. But honestly, you simply cannot speak about the Holocaust in Israel without provoking that kind of reaction.
The Knesset, in essence, had no chance to respond calmly or softly, regardless of who said it. This is a fundamental, deeply painful issue.

We’ve already talked about Trump, and in my view the situation is similar here: you have to judge not by words, but by actions. And I’ve already mentioned some of those actions — in fact, there were more than people usually assume.

There is also an important reverse flow: Ukrainian specialists are training Israelis in the use of drones. Not because Israel didn’t have drones — it did — but they were different: large, complex, expensive, high-precision systems.
The cheap Chinese drones that today are massively destroying advancing infantry were hardly used in Israel before. It turned out that they are one of the most effective tools of modern warfare. And Ukraine is sharing not only technology, but also tactics and practical experience with Israel.

SERGEY: There are instructors who travel not from Israel to Ukraine, but the other way around — from Ukraine to Israel. At the same time, Israeli instructors are also working in Ukraine — I personally know some of them.
So at the military level, things are more or less fine. At the political level — yes, it’s more complicated. But there is another important factor that needs to be understood.

Israel today has a generally difficult relationship with Europe. And Ukraine — through no fault of its own — entered this war at the beginning of a Democratic administration in the United States.
As it happened, Zelensky’s key allies are Biden and, more broadly, left-wing and social-democratic governments in Europe: Spain, France, partly Germany. And if you look not at the battlefield, but at the diplomatic map, we ended up in different camps. That happens. Not because we are enemies, but because that is how the political configuration formed.

Trump says that if he had been president, the war would not have happened. I’m not sure. Putin has proven that he is genuinely unhinged, and the war could have begun under Trump as well.
But if we imagine that the war in Ukraine had started during a Trump administration, paradoxically, relations between Israel and Ukraine would likely have been much warmer — simply because they would have shared the same key ally.

And there is a third, very important point: even America is not infinite. The Pentagon has a strategic map of the world. And every day someone has to decide: does this crate of artillery shells go to Ukraine or to Israel? And what if it’s the last one?
How do Israeli and Ukrainian military officers look at each other when that crate goes to someone else? That does not exactly foster warmth.

The main problem in today’s world is a shortage of artillery shells. I don’t know the exact figures, but I’m certain that some unfortunate logistics officer at the Pentagon makes this decision every single day: Ukraine or Israel.
It so happened that our wars were running in parallel. Thank God our active phase has ended. Regardless of what happens next with Hamas, we no longer need that many shells. And that, incidentally, may lead to a certain warming of relations with Ukraine — because now those crates will go to them.

GREGORY: Let’s hope for that and count on it. I want to ask you something else. Why is it that, despite the large number of intelligent, well-educated people in Israel — journalists, writers, analysts — they are, in essence, hopelessly losing the information war: the battle for opinions, for votes, for people? Why do their positions on this front look, frankly, weak? It’s as if they’re not working with “the street,” even though it’s clear why that street is coming out. Why is this happening? And I’ll even jump ahead: sometimes I find myself thinking — maybe it’s not even worth entering this fight at all, if it’s lost from the outset?

SERGEY: I’ll start with a personal story — my own. It’s obvious that I am a participant in this information war.
On October 7, I was at the border with Gaza. I was one of the very few journalists broadcasting live from there. For quite a long time, I had an absolutely insane number of live hits. Normally, a correspondent goes on air for five minutes, then the studio holds the segment for an hour, maybe one more live update — and that’s it. That wasn’t the case here. I was going live every 10 to 15 minutes.

That was October 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th — and the same pace continued after that. On top of that, I was giving interviews to international channels: foreign, Russian-language, Ukrainian, English-language. I’ll be honest — by the evening my jaw would literally stop moving.

My friend and university classmate, Zhenya Zhukov, who works for Deutsche Welle in the German service, decided to volunteer — they didn’t have that kind of intensity there. He created a YouTube channel where he began uploading all of my reports: not only from Channel 9, but also clips from interviews with international media — in all languages.

By the end of 2024, that channel had several million subscribers. And viewers decided to submit an application to the Guinness Book of Records. Because it turned out that over the course of one year — by October 7, 2024 — I had done about 3,500 live broadcasts from the front line. That’s a real record. I don’t think anyone else in the world has done more. The application would most likely have been accepted — there simply wouldn’t have been any competitors.

But my birthday is September 14. And on September 14, 2024, the channel disappeared. Completely. YouTube simply erased it.
Normally, YouTube sends a first warning, a second, a third — you know how the system works — and then gives you time to save your content. Here, there was nothing. The channel was deleted overnight, on my birthday, without explanations, without traces. And Zhenya, as far as I know, was effectively banned from appearing on YouTube under his own name for life.

It’s obvious that this was the result of complaints from our opponents. I don’t know exactly who — Muslim groups, far-left organizations, or others. But it’s clear that this was an organized campaign. And we’re not talking about ten thousand complaints. To take down a million-subscriber channel, you need hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of reports. And apparently, they were there.

Jokes aside, the dream of making it into the Guinness Book vanished along with the channel.
And this very clearly shows the balance of power on the internet. Active Jews — those who write, read, and work in different languages, not only Hebrew but also English, Russian, and others — number, by various estimates, 25 to 30 million, including sympathizers. Muslims alone — without counting their supporters — number over one billion.

All social media algorithms operate on the principle of large numbers. The more likes you have, the higher you rise. The more complaints, the greater the chance you’ll simply be erased — as I was.
People tried to help me. American lawyers were found, appeals were made to YouTube. Nothing worked.

This is not the only factor, but it is a very important one. There are simply too few of us. Three hundred Spartans. Yes, we fight well. But within these algorithmic systems, we have no chance.

On television — the old system — there is still a chance, and I use it. Every time I’m allowed on air, I go anywhere — to any channel, including Arab ones, even hostile ones — as long as they let me speak. And I try to defend Israel’s position.

There are many people like me — but we are incomparably fewer than our opponents.
And there is one more very simple thing. I was thinking about this even before October 7. I have a shot in one of my reports: a tank driving through Hebron, and a boy of about ten throwing stones at it. He happened to turn toward the camera in profile — a beautiful face, Middle Eastern eyes, long eyelashes. A very appealing child. And next to him — a huge, loud, brutal steel tank.

If you take that image out of context — it doesn’t matter whether it’s Israel or not, Taiwan or Mongolia — the heart of any unbiased viewer will be on the side of that boy.
No one roots for the tank. No one roots for the strong.

SERGEY: That’s how the human psyche works: you sympathize with the weak — and that’s normal. If you root for the tank, then something is wrong with you. No one sympathizes with raw force as such.
And there is a third factor — secondary, of course — but the Israeli authorities cannot be completely absolved of responsibility either. I’m talking about military censorship.

I’ll share a small secret. I officially work under the Military Censorship Law of 1927, signed by King George V. It specifies in detail how telegrams may be sent, what texts are permitted, and when photographs from combat zones may be published. I’m not joking.
I have a personal censor — like Pushkin had the Tsar, except mine is a military censor. I speak with him every day.

I work live on air. And live television is like a running bison — you can’t stop it. I speak, and the censor sees it as well. Imagine him sitting in the control room with a red button in front of him, his hand resting on it like in a quiz show. The moment I say something inappropriate, the button is pressed and I’m simply cut off the air.
For that scenario, we always have a filler ready — a commercial or a video clip — so the broadcast doesn’t drop to black.

And the funniest part is that this applies only to Israeli journalists.
For many years I worked as a military correspondent for RTVI — the channel where, in fact, everything began. The very first RTVI news broadcast opened with my report. RTVI was an American channel with a foreign-media license in Israel.
And for the first twelve years of my television career, I had no idea military censorship even existed. Because Israeli military censorship has no authority over foreign journalists. The only people it can restrict are its own.

It led to absurd situations. For years, I sat next to Borya Shtern in the studio — he was the head of RTVI’s Middle East bureau. I would receive exclusive information and realize the censor would never let me air it. I’d turn to Borya and say:
“Borya, our soldiers were blown up in Rafah.”
He’d say: “Okay.”
And on air I would calmly say: “According to American media, in Rafah…” — and that was it. If I cited a foreign outlet, censorship couldn’t touch me.

GREGORY: An indestructible card.

SERGEY: Exactly.
Here’s another recent example. Ashkelon — more precisely, the industrial zone near Gaza, Zikim Beach. An Iron Dome battery was deployed there.
When there’s no active fighting, it’s an ideal location for a live broadcast. First, there’s always a chance — forgive the cynicism — that shelling might begin during the live shot, and rockets would streak across the background. Television is still about visuals, about spectacle.
Second, this was the first phase of the war, and remnants of terrorists were still roaming the area. I was working alone, as I’ve mentioned, and standing in an open field was, to put it mildly, uncomfortable. The Iron Dome is a military base: guards, observers, soldiers. You feel safer there.

I go live from that location — and my censor, Hanan, presses the button. I’m cut off the air. The studio, however, continues to see the picture: I’m off-air, but the image remains in the control room.

I say to the producer through my earpiece:
“Tell Hanan not to leave. I’m about to show him something.”
I turn the camera and zoom out. And around me — about fifty people with phones. Everyone is filming me and the Iron Dome.
I was shooting a tight shot — my face, the rivets on the interceptor — no geographic reference. They were filming wide shots: Ashkelon’s power station, the coastline, the Gaza border. Enough data for targeting.
Take three or four of those videos, and even basic software can triangulate the battery’s coordinates.

I say to Hanan:
“Hanan, there are fifty people here violating the law. I’m the only one who isn’t. Why are you stopping me and not them?”
And he answers honestly:
“Because you’re the only one I can stop.”
And yes — the law of 1927.

This isn’t the only reason we lose the information war, but it’s a very clear illustration of the conditions we have to work under.

Although I won’t lie — censorship sometimes has its advantages. Hanan might call and say:
“Don’t talk about the soldiers killed in Khan Younis yet. I’ll tell you when you can.”
I reply: “Fine. Just tell me when.”
And then I’m the first to break the story. And you understand how important that is for a journalist.

We’ve learned to use each other. But of course, it would be better if none of this existed at all.

GREGORY: All right. To be honest, this problem still hasn’t become any clearer to me. I understand the situation, but…

SERGEY: It’s a battle that’s lost in advance. We can’t win it here.

GREGORY: So maybe then we should just walk away and stop spending money?

SERGEY: And where would I make my living then? That’s a joke, of course. But seriously — there are still people, and I think there are many of them, who truly need objective information. And they are more likely to get it from me than, say, from Hamas television.

GREGORY: Or from Greta Thunberg.

SERGEY: Yes. And unfortunately, today the media has largely turned into a propaganda apparatus. I’m talking about Israeli media now — with Palestinian media everything is obvious.
In Israel there are left-wing channels and right-wing channels, but there is no channel called “Truthful.” Well, actually there is — Channel 9.
Why are we so honest? Because no one is buying us. We don’t have a “roof” yet. And telling the truth is easy and pleasant: if no one is paying you anyway, you might as well tell the truth.

Of course, this may not last. I understand that perfectly well — you know it yourself: journalism is a dependent profession. There is big money involved, and if someone invests in you, you are forced to play by the rules set by the owner.

GREGORY: Your situation somewhat reminds me of an old joke about a cowboy who can never be caught.
All right. Let’s return to the Middle East — although, in my opinion, we never really left it.
Just the other day I read a phrase — I don’t remember who said it, the name meant nothing to me — that the era of permanent war between Israel and the Arab world has ended. Do you agree with that?

SERGEY: Yes. And it’s astonishing. This is truly a different map of the world.
Formally, one could say the process began earlier: peace with Egypt — Camp David, for which we gave up Sinai; peace with Jordan — in 1994.
But what is happening now is a genuine shift in consciousness. And not in Israel, but among our neighbors. They have begun to relate to us differently.

I’ve seen many publications in Arabic- and English-language media — including outlets published, for example, in London, Lebanese newspapers. The tone has changed completely.
If before Israel was simply cursed there — sometimes almost with obscenities — now it is analyzed, written about seriously, discussed in terms of war and consequences.
The cancellation of Victory Day in Syria speaks volumes on its own.

But perhaps the most important thing is that the Palestinian issue has ceased to be central. And for decades it was inflated by UN bureaucrats, bringing billions of dollars to hundreds of thousands of officials around the world.
A simple example is UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees. Its budget is ten times larger than the budget of the agency that assists all other refugees in the world combined.
Or the fact that Palestinian refugee status is inherited. A person left in 1948 for Canada — his son is a refugee, his grandson is a refugee, his great-grandson is a refugee. Hundreds of descendants, Canadian citizens — and all of them are still “Palestinian refugees.” This is an absolutely absurd situation.

All of this was created so that, under a beautiful humanitarian wrapper, hatred of Israel, antisemitism, and attempts to destroy the Jewish state could be concealed.
The slogan “from the river to the sea” means only one thing: there should be no Jews there. It’s very simple.

And now the Palestinian issue has stopped being the main issue for the Arab and Muslim world. That is precisely what allows the Abraham Accords to develop.
Last week there was a rumor that after the summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, the Prime Minister of Indonesia — the largest Muslim country — would come to Israel. It turned out to be fake, but the very fact that such news didn’t surprise anyone is telling.
Everyone is now eagerly awaiting peace with Saudi Arabia.

This is a completely new reality. The fact that I can fly to Dubai at any moment without a visa still makes my head spin. I can’t quite believe it — but it exists. I haven’t been there yet, by the way; I definitely will go. Just closer to winter — in summer it’s still too hot.

Yes, the world has changed. And условно speaking, on October 13 this page wasn’t just turned — a period was put at the end of it, an illustration was glued on, and Trump’s signature was added.

This is not the end. Hamas will still have to be dealt with. There will be other problems. Israel cannot exist without problems — we’ll tear each other apart. That, by the way, is the biggest danger today.
Once the external enemy disappears, today’s demonstrations will seem like kindergarten.

But we will have to get used to the new reality. Live in it and hope that everything works out.

I’m often asked: “Hamas hasn’t been finished off.”
I respond: Jenin, Hebron, Ramallah were taken in 1967. Operations in Jenin take place twice a week — like an English lawn, it needs constant trimming.
From the very beginning of the war I said: the real task is to bring Gaza to the state of Jenin. Not Zurich, not Geneva, and not the Caribbean islands, as Trump dreams of — but Jenin.

SERGEY: You can live with Jenin. I live in Samaria myself, near Shechem. You can live there like a human being.
But next to Hamas-controlled Gaza, as experience has shown, you cannot.

GREGORY: Well then, let’s believe that we will live like human beings — first and foremost thanks to Israel’s efforts.
I long imagined the Middle East as something like a children’s fairy tale: money from Qatar goes to the right place, Israeli intellectuals contribute their ideas, there’s a colossal labor market — and a new bright life begins, while the United Europe looks on and doesn’t know what to say.

SERGEY: I don’t know if you’ve seen the maps, but projects like an oil pipeline from India to the Mediterranean, or a canal through Israel to the Red Sea — a competitor to the Suez Canal — truly change global geography.
If even part of this is implemented, we will find ourselves in a completely different world. It has already changed — we just haven’t fully realized it yet.

A year ago I would have laughed if someone had told me about peace negotiations with Syria — and without demands to return the Golan or Hermon.
And now I recall the slogan of French students in the 1960s: “Be realistic — demand the impossible.” It turns out it’s quite achievable.

GREGORY: Our time has come to an end. Thank you for a fascinating conversation. You’re actually difficult to interview — one could go have lunch, come back, and you’d still be talking, and it would still be interesting.
I hope we meet again and see how the world changes. One would like to believe — in the right direction. Thank you.

SERGEY: Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak.

GREGORY: And I say goodbye to you, dear viewers. Until next Saturday. All the best.​​​​​​​​