Rejuvenation: Casting for the Iron Dome

[Music] hi everybody in here rejuvenation on the land israel network i am recording this on august 31st 2020 the 11th day of 57.80 for many people the last day of summer specifically because hopefully the children are starting school tomorrow so that i know a lot of people are looking forward to all over the world and i certainly hope that it goes well i'm not in that particular basket anymore but i certainly feel for those of you who are but i'm delighted to have with me today and if you're watching on youtube you can see him not who is a very well-known producer director and we'll talk about what that means uh here in israel and i just finished watching an excellent show uh three-parter that he produced and uh and i guess directed to um on the iron dome and that'll be available to all of you i think on izzy on israel's new news station so i interviewed someone from izzy a few weeks ago for those of you remember so nazi thank you so much for joining me on this one thank you thank you very hot i hope you're staying in air conditioning of course today in israel whoa we're really we really got there so tell us a little bit about yourself and uh and your newest project um okay um as you said i'm not dinar i'm 50 years old most of my uh career was on commercial television in israel i started in 1993 when commercial television was introduced in israel as a kid growing up a few years in the states uh commercial television was uh trivial for me i you know you have tv shows and there's commercials in them but in israel back in 93 there was no such thing the only place we saw commercials were it wasn't cinema and i had i was lucky enough to get into keshet which is the leading operator in israel broadcasting television and work in the sales department i was selling airtime um and it was like um [Music] like a luna park for like i was i was uh an amusement park yes my first job i was doing well um i was dealing with the sums of money i couldn't even dream dream about uh and and i was working for television and television is something i loved since i was a kid and from there on for about 20 years i've been different roles surrounding commercial television i stepped out uh to an advertising agency but came back to television and eight years ago i left uh my position as vice president of uh channel 10 one of the two commercial television stations and decided i want to try to move to the content side because i was always in marketing i did research i did the promotion i never did content on tv so i had this idea of making a film about the savannah hijacking in 1972. um but only the idea i didn't even know how films are getting produced and i started you know shopping to see who wants to buy my idea for for a film about this amazing story um that was in 2012 and in 2015 uh savannah hijacking was ready and it aired on television it had great ratings it was a big success and i was asked by keshet let's do another one and that's how i find myself making films uh in a very strange position um i'm not a director and i'm not a writer but i did create this these films i did uh did the research bring out the story and hire the director professional director um and made savannah then we made rescue bus 300 i made a film about the 1980 hostage situation situation in kibbutz music was supposed to launch this uh passover uh it was exactly 40 years to date but corona stopped the cinema so it's waiting to be launched and as you said just a week and a half ago um my documentary series about the iron dome was aired on israeli uh israeli public television khan with great uh reviews and um and we were very happy with the with the final results one it would show that people really uh understood what we were trying to say so what were you trying to say well we actually um i i remember three years ago uh after sabana i was talking to people and someone mentioned i already remember who mentioned uh there's an amazing story the iron dome is amazing story uh there's this guy danny gold he he's the one who came up with the idea of making this uh system that rockets will hit rockets in the sky so i dove in and tried to find out what the story is about i met danny gold and he's really an impressive person and i set out to try to tell this story to the world only to find out that it's not just a one-man amazing success story it's it's many people took several years and and i said okay now we have to explore this more and i pitched the idea to khan uh they loved the idea and we started off trying to tell the story of how this system was brought to life and on the way we found out we're going to tell probably a slightly different story so one of the end this is not a spoiler alert because it's still a show that needs to be watched um one of the things that really caught my eye when i was watching this actually there's a few things one of them of course is any time you're dealing with big budgets anytime you're going to deal with the government and the military branch things that need to be secret to some degree because you don't want this technology getting out anywhere else so do you hire an israeli firm to do this do we have an outside company coming in there were so many complications here and of course you can never take away the politics and the different ministries that come in and elections that happen in the middle and jobs that were changed so there was that angle of it but the other angle that i thought was the most important thing that you did is that you wove in the personal side this wasn't just um like a colder show if you will about the process of bringing to fruition a missile that has ultimately stayed many many lives here in israel has really created some kind of safe dome whether that's a good thing or a bad thing we can discuss that actually in a few minutes i'd love your opinion on that but what you did is something that has not been done enough and you brought in the people who live in state which is the area that has most often been hit by these missiles the people who've lost loved ones so the backdrop of developing this are the stories of you know the mother the sister the wife uh talking about that day where the missile didn't get shot out of the sky and destroyed their world and um was that were you planning on doing that from the very beginning or that that's one of those things that kind of came as we're saying we were talk today like kind of in the middle of the whole process so so that that's that's a really interesting story and this is what happens probably to a lot of people who do the documentary you know this is my first documentary um and i did start as you said this is amazing story about these engineers making some kind of uh weapon that eventually saved lives and and that's a story i wanted to tell and we started researching and you find out that well there's a lot of politics and there's a lot of bureaucracy in it and this story is becoming it's becoming interesting but i don't know how people on television when they see it how the viewers are gonna uh get attached to these people who are you know making decisions based on their uh position or interest and where is the emotional side luck would have it i read an article in a paper about this new uh documentary series on netflix called the vietnam war now it was it was at a period where i didn't have anything to watch on netflix i watched the shows i wat i wanted to i had nothing so i said well if everybody is talking about the vietnam war let's check it out and uh it's a documentary about the vietnam war done by ken burns um i watched the first episode i watched the second episode and then it clicked and i said look this is he's telling a war story with amazing uh archive material but he's also always going back to the families of soldiers who participated in the war and i said this is this is the true story of the war it's not about who's killing who it's about these people who are staying home and and their kids are going off to war or their relatives are going off to war and um and i said this this is what we should do and i went to my director and i said look you got to watch vietnam because i think this is the reference of what we want to do we you know this this should be uh our vision for for the creative side of what we're telling the story he watched it and then we made another uh interesting thing we took the ken burns master class it's a 13 um um part what yeah he's he's teaching the elements of how he made vietnam and we just watched all of it and understood we can't tell the iron dome story if we don't tell the story of the people affected by it and then we went down to the south and we interviewed the first three people who lost uh their loved ones to rockets right uh the first one was uh who her son four-year-old uh is the first death casualty from a rocket um and just sitting interviewing her in front of the camera the whole team behind this project understood okay this is the right story to say this is what we want to do we want to tell uh a historic uh a it's a historic uh documentary but for a personal point of view and i think eventually we succeeded and that what makes it interesting gives an emotional side um and something uh viewers can relate to uh more than just uh engineers finding ways how to make a cheap rocket the um as a viewer and is an israeli as someone who's lived here for a long time um i found myself very emotional watching the show um well grief i mean i cried more than once you listen to somebody a single mother brought a child into the world and at four years old he's killed you can't help but have your heart ripped out and remember when it happened also and wavering between that that was juxtaposed with tremendous anger against the powers that be for allowing this to go on and the the tremendous uh there's really no other word for it heroism of the people in steroid for staying there even knowing that what they call the drizzle which is really a terrible thing to call rocket fire it really is um to minimize it like that could happen at any moment in any time and that they stayed there and you there's pictures there also of people during the sirens people who don't end up getting physically hurt but the terrible panic of you have 15 seconds to find a safe place and old people shaking and people in hysteria panic so were you intending for that for that to happen also for us to feel that kind of anger and helplessness um or or is that was that kind of just a natural byproduct of what ends up happening well um i think there was there is no way avoiding this because uh it really happens you know whatever i think anyone who would tell this story uh would have to would tackle this and see that people there are traumatized for years from from uh the way they live uh but we did want to um put an emphasis on it and in the series and for somebody who watches the series you you can see a difference that in episode one um every time a rocket hits um uh in the episode we don't put there is no siren there's no warning no it's just you know her mother taking her kid near the kindergarten and boom and that's how it was since the road and and there was no warning and once we introduce uh uh color red which is the code for the siren of uh incoming rockets then we put that in and and then then it's mostly in episode two and you see uh you hear the the color red sirens and you see people running but it doesn't take a lot of time and the rocket falls and we did try to uh bring in that feeling and this and that stress uh um maybe to the viewers um and we have debates and and the people at khan said well why do you want to put those rockets falling and have them so much uh it could scare the viewers and we always said you know if we scare the viewers a little it doesn't even come near to how real scary it is to the people there so if we can just you know a little bit have the viewer get that feeling of saying what what happened uh okay it's just it's just a boom on television but for the people is the road they go what happened and they understand a rocket fell and maybe somebody got hurt so we did do that that intentionally and we try to uh move up the the security level uh i think in episode three once iron dome is introduced we show how people are uh um not running away but whether either they're going out and trying to shoot uh and and you know catch on the phone right the rocket fired in the sky that's the difference that happened between how people were scared of rockets and how how people are are seeing the the iron dome as a protector and like a nice show in the sky for them to watch right there there's also the inevitable from the visual the difference between steven let's say tel aviv as the years go on and the hamas is able to get longer range missiles going in and be able to hit places further away from the gaza strip there also seems to be like this we can't allow this to happen in tel aviv you know you've got the skyscrapers you've got modern israel you know tel aviv very well as opposed to stay hot which is a little development town many people who came here in the 1950s from the countries in the middle east around us when they were thrown out and you know definitely not a higher level society as you know tel aviv and there there seemed there's a there's a there's a message here that's not so subtle and it's also been spoken about very openly here in israel you know if this was happening in tel aviv every day it would have been a long time ago as opposed to the people in the south who maybe are a little bit farther away from the political plate and uh are willing to put up with this um that was that also an intentional or that just happened because that's what happened again this is this is how it happened here in israel this is how it got treated and and it's it's all the decision you know the director and i uh how do we bring that into to our our documentary how do we make people understand that uh as long as the problem was surrounding gaza and the road it was dealt like it it's something far away and when it hits close to home and and again you know emil pellets who became uh minister of defense um is is the resident of the art that's right they try and take it out and and it and i think that is the big change when it hit him close to home when his uh uh bodyguard got hit by a rocket is like his legs were amputated that's when your parrots you know felt this is this is something i have to deal with uh because this is this is hitting my home and i think decision makers uh when the sirens um were heard in tel aviv and and they were running into shelters i think they understood okay this is something we have to take care of and and you might question you know again you said the beginning iron dome um maybe stop that from happening maybe the decision makers now in tel aviv are thinking well even if they fire tel aviv we're protected you know so we don't have to make quick decisions i'll tell you something i i learned from the series and and i even approached a minister uh in israel and i said look this is i think you have to pass a new bill of law and saying that when a rocket is fired toward israel and it doesn't matter where in israel sirens have to has to be heard in all of not just where the rocket is gonna fall because uh uh when that happens i think by the second rockets we'll make sure that there's no rocket at all because the sirens became today uh the biggest problems the kids living in south of uh israel around gaza they get scared from the sirens they're not they don't understand if the rockets or the rockets you know sometimes they hit and do damage they barely kill uh they know about iron though so they think but but when you hear this uh siren and you understand you have to run to shelter um and it and for for and i met you know i met people 20 years old who have this trauma they're carrying from 14 years ago they fear this town and they get scared they hear of a big motorcycle make noise they get scared and this is not a way to live a life it's not a way to bring up children and that's something decision makers don't even actually they don't even know about yeah you know they don't see they don't see the scared uh youth in the zombies that are afraid of noise and always need to think is there shelter nearby is there shelter nearby we don't have that but there are many many many people that's right in the south of israel that's how they live their day by day the constant adrenaline surge that happens which is also creating a toll on their physical health the the rate of miscarriage and mental health issues and panic and trauma that are in the south or way above the levels that you're seeing anywhere else even in the north which has also had its issues and even i would say like in judea and some area which also has its issues i know that i myself from the years of the terrorism still if i hear more than one ambulance at once i start to shake because it's not two women going to the hospital at the same time to have triplets something just happens and uh and that's me who did not does not live in st often that's a very minor point of this um what i very much appreciated about this show is that you take everybody out of every possible comfort zone that there is in terms of do we really care about the other people in our country as you just said now it's happening i'm not hearing the siren so it's happening somewhere else incidentally i had an app on my phone for a long time that did exactly what you just said i could take off where i wanted it where the rock where there was a siren what i wanted to hear obviously initially i had it where my children live so that i would know if something was going on you have a daughter in tel aviv even if i wasn't there but you could technically know if you wanted anytime a siren went on and i know people who kept it on all the time and not just journalists because they wanted a feel for the people in the country so a do we have that with our politicians is our mere parents only got involved because they were targeting his house like it should be that if you're a politician anybody's house that's targeted you should care about so that's one and i have to add that who comes off as a magnificent caring person is the mayor of steroids who from the very beginning is completely freaking out at everybody for not taking this seriously and says people are going to die even before people died he said we should not just let this go yes uh unfortunately uh ali moyal who was for many years the mayor of uh steroid passed away i think five or six months ago yeah we were shocked he was i think 74 years old we really really really were expecting uh to to premiere the series and have him be there and and and tell his story and by the way uh we got a lot of feedback from members of his family and people who knew him said that that this series uh finally brought to attention how this person was really uh fighting this fight and and you know he he had a big part he didn't do anything for for for the uh red alert uh sirens and nothing for building the shelters or nothing to do with irendo but his voice is what moved everything moved [Music] and without um giving up spoilers you know he is the big hero of episode one but he does come back in episode three to sum up to sum up the the iron dome experience and and we found out he was he's a great interviewer i followed him for many years and i um i really wanted him to to we want i wanted to interview him for the show i didn't know he was going to be um that good for us right so and and i'm very very happy that you know uh it happened and this series for the people of the road but i think for the whole citizen of israel eventually so in addition to interviewing people who lost loved ones and also people who were involved in the development of iron domes you know danny gold and others some of the engineers you also interviewed some politicians as we said how did you decide whom to interview and whom to not interview maybe that's even more important question um well uh in the research process where we went to do to find out the story and how to tell it we talked with about i think maybe over 100 people from all sides um and and again i wanted to to make a multiple point of view serious i've done that also with savannah and rescue bus friend 300 it's probably the only way i can tell a story um i don't follow one uh one person one story i try to find the middle truth of what uh we gather from from multiple point of views and um we we we talked with a lot of people we interviewed uh i must say this is this is you know part of how you making how you make films um you can't interview everybody you want because some people don't want to be interviewed self-selection and some of them are are occupied and you know and interviewing uh politicians it depends when when you catch them uh when we barack uh wasn't that hard because today he's uh he's been no real position he he was i think when we did it he was he wasn't into politics i think it was even before he decided to run for the second election um so he didn't even know he was going to go into politics um i think i think the director ribron even asked him at the end of the interview he said okay and what's now are you going to politics and it was just a few months before he decided he is coming back um with the meal parents it was it was easier because the real parents um i'm sure wouldn't have missed the opportunity to be interviewed with benny guns you know we wanted betty guns because we knew the that he was the american connection and we can talk about that in the future um so we really wanted him but betty gunts decided that he's going to be israel's prime minister and he's all into these elections and then between elections one and two and it's funny that we say that but you know in israel we have three elections like within a year yeah so people i don't know if our viewers understand what i mean between elections it was like a few weeks but what happened is after the elections uh uh even though uh benny guns got uh more uh mandates and netanyahu was the one trying to uh form his coalition so benny like was uh sorry i called betty mister okay he had free time so that's when we caught him and said can you come for the interview and you know we were interviewing somebody who could be in two months prime minister right and if you see me on the uh somebody tell me this after watching the series he said when did you interview benny guns because he seemed like uh this is before very relaxed yeah yes i noticed that also yeah yeah as they call him benihota and uh and um so that's how we got to him um we didn't uh want to interview we wanted ministers of defense we didn't want to interview prime ministers uh so we didn't interview on camera or even though we talked with him um or netanyahu you didn't interview either i don't know did he not have anything to do with it i know it seems strange that netanyahu was not there but we got to remember this netanyahu came into office in 2009. the the decision-making of iron dome has been done before him it was done in 2007 between amir perez and el barak when ullmelt was prime minister the money was already allocated the work is being done and 2009 there was only um a race against the clock yeah they they promised to deliver within three years and they started it uh at 2008. it was just a race against the clock that the engineers and raphael and the other companies would make it in time so i i'm not even sure and i talked with somebody this week about it uh i'm not even sure netanyahu had known anything about iron dome because it's just one of those projects done by the military and and it's not that important and nobody knew what's going to happen if it's going to succeed or not um and the first time the rocket was successful is in 2011 i think that's the first time netanyahu comes over and sees what the ira dome is and i think you even in in the episode three you can see that when he comes to the uh uh press meeting at near the iron dome battery right after the first successful uh shoot down i think you can see on his face that this is this is new to him right um and again he wasn't involved in the fundraising that that's all uh in uh barack's time and again we're we were living in different times of israeli politics back then if there was something that had to be done with the army or weapons that's the job of the minister of defense prime minister doesn't deal with that today in the past five years we're used to there's nothing happening in israel that netanyahu is not involved as prime minister so we think hey how come netanyahu was he wasn't doing dealing with that you know if the minister of transportation wants to open a new road someplace yeah the prime minister has nothing to do with it but in the past five years there was no road opening ceremony that the prime minister isn't there to cut the tape so yeah i think he wasn't i think that's an important point i think he wasn't involved back then uh he didn't have to be involved um and it was mostly done by the ministers of defense uh and barack was still minister of defense in 2011. that's that's a reason um and you know the relationship between netanyahu and barack i don't know if all the viewers know this it's not lovey-dovey but now yeah it started but it started back in s is uh is the head of the sale of makkah and bibi is an officer and just to mention the point and to plug my film sabana hijacking they're both uh there again small units storming the plane um and so so they have a very very long relationship of working together in in the army or knowing each other from where they were very young by the way sabana hijacking is also going to be uneasy so people who come here you can watch the band as well there you go two for the price of one now the decision to also involve interviewing someone from gaza was that like an obvious or you'd i mean how does it work when it comes to balance this is kind of a bigger question because clearly you're an israeli you're doing shows about very israeli things you know i mean you might have watched the vietnam documentary in order to get an idea of how to do it but your focus is on events and issues that are very israeli oriented how do you you know do you need do you feel you need to be politically wrecked and put in balance you also have somebody in there who's against the iron dome a pretty big wig who's until this day thinks i don't know he thinks all the films are being photoshopped which is like where does it end where you say okay these are the different perspectives we're going to put in but like until this otherwise this is maybe this is uh maybe that's that's me in making film and maybe because i wasn't um i wasn't taught in film school and so my way i i feel i feel i want to be objective to a story i talk to people and it's not right to question their uh point of view uh why would they you know even even if they're lying that's their point of view right so so i think in all my films uh i decided if anyone who's relevant to the story and wants to tell me his side of the story i want to hear it then then when i have this big puzzle of information i can probably find the middle truth um of of what really happened or if if there is a debate on the truth i will leave both sides telling it and leave it to the viewer to understand the the full picture but you cannot tell a story well you can but they'll be missing tell a story about this conflict and rocket war between gaza and israel without hearing the gaza side now having that said you could ask me well why is only one person telling the story of the gaza side and the answer is we couldn't find anyone else um at this but we can't go into gaza and interview people uh we can find only people who uh lived in gaza but are now in uh honors and somewhere else right right and and even that uh we did find people who we could have interviewed and and maybe enhance the the the gaza side but they didn't want to because once you participate in an israeli show you're on hamas's list right and that's dangerous and once somebody told me that uh and we did have somebody we wanted to interview and he almost had a shooting day and then somebody came here and said look he's not sure uh because he's afraid that the hamas he doesn't know how the series is going to come out is he afraid the hamas is going to say and i said well forget it if he has a one percent fear that this is going to do something hurtful to his life i don't want him in the show i don't want it on me that shooting day will have a different kind of meaning for him right exactly so so um i i'm happy we had uh the gaza side in there we met we told the story of the gaza site even if we didn't have uh a lot of interviews we but we were glad we had one that you know and one that lived there in the beginning of of this whole uh everything that happens hamas taking over gaza right how the shooting starts how how uh us uh closing down the um the the crossing points rising points yeah israel and shutting and closing gaza and and you know jailing it within the fences uh how big effect that it has on why they fire rockets it's just it's not that they wake up in the morning and say hey let's do something today usually there's a reason for them to find firing rockets and it's usually uh something to do with what happens between israel or sahal with gaza so my daughter was the tatspatanit she was one of the girls who's looking through the cameras and making sure you know to see what's upcoming events like someone's about to shoot something on near gaza about 10 years ago probably and so it was very interesting also to hear her perspective i mean obviously the mother of the soldier has a very different way of looking at it and and she was in danger more than one time but uh but it was also true you know to hear her tell us some things that weren't going to be on the news about what was happening and specifically um how the hamas was keeping their own people from getting to work in israel shooting at their own people from getting into work in israel and bombing things which necessitated israel closing it down because people are getting hurt on both sides it's a lot more complicated a lot more complicated than than people will think it is but i don't want to get into that whole political discussion i just do want to ask you though if you don't mind sharing did this change your opinions in any way did speaking to people did hearing interviews did getting much more information than you had before you started filming this um did it did it or it was pretty much where you were you ended is where you had started uh well i i don't think the opinion is the thing that changed i think the knowledge changed a lot um a lot you and it depends on you know you hear the different interviewers um you hear elimo the full interview and and something i think it would it would do something i don't know if it changes people's minds but it will do something to everybody but you understand you understand that uh that decisions are made um in jerusalem where the politicians are and they're made based on on seeing this uh wide picture with all kinds of interest but a lot of it is personal and i think that's interweaved in in the series you've you see that you know emil perez and el barak their decision making is not detached from where they want wanna what their goals are the personal goals are in politics and and um and and then you find this different this this wide wide uh gap between where they are and where the citizens are and um you know if if if i learned something um is you know it's very relevant to our times now we have this corona you know pandemic health crisis whatever yes but it's an enemy yeah it's an enemy and we think the government's not doing anything because they're telling us you know stay at home go this open that mixed messages we don't know that the denny golds are right now in the labs working very hard to find ways to protect us whether it's uh to find an immune system or or or to find ways to protect us with with all kinds of uh vaccines or physical technologies or buildings iron dome against uh corona we don't know that's happening and nobody's gonna tell us that's happening and maybe in six months or one year we'll hear headline news uh items saying you know there's a cure and and and will say well why have you waited for two years no they have they're not waiting we just no don't know that and the politicians in the meantime they can say look we're working on something it might be effective and no that's not what they they have to tell us look now for now you have to stay at home for now you can't fly to this country right um so so does you know it makes you more knowledgeable and how things work um i uh you know they're everything's complex decision is making is complex uh and the people who make decisions pay a price uh amir pellets you know made his last decision maybe was was uh um you know getting iron dome um started paying the first payment but but a few months later a month later i think he was out of a job right because he paid the price of the lebanon war so um you do understand that a lot of people maybe most of us in the world we make decisions on based on where our position at where how we see the world where our goals and interests are um and when you understand that station we understand how complex things is and how it's uh difficult to solve uh the the gaza israel conflict uh because the people in the way are not the people living in gaza or the people living in israel the people in the way are the ones making decisions and their decisions have to take into uh and to play a lot of things some way very very personal yeah and if we end up having to go in there and getting rid of hamas soldiers will die so there's always that sitting i'm sure sitting on the head of the politicians always always always but what you just said about corona so you don't you have your next documentary series the rating in your mind going into some of the labs now seeing what's happening so that you catch the process so when whatever happens happens which we don't you know yet will it be plasma will it be a vaccine will it be i don't know what you've got some of the documentation of the process before we got there that isn't in your head it could be in my head i believe others already uh got access to the right places and followed him there's a lot of documentaries out there i do know i had to talk with danny gold um a few months ago and if if people don't know i'm saying getting gold if everybody knows them people will watch iron dome will know who danny gold is i think he's he's a living superhero you know you know we don't really have superheroes who can shoot fire out of their hands yeah people like danny gold are are living superheroes what they can do um with their time with their mind is amazing and i know right when corona started he the same thing he did with the rockets one once he saw the threat once he saw the first kid as a casualty he said it's my job to find the solution it's his job it's really his job and today it's his job to find ways to protect citizens from corona um they are they did you know they are testing now uh um a breath um it's a breath analyzer yes yes they can so they can tell you in 30 seconds if you have corona or not um so so there is somebody you know i'm sure there's there will be a documentary about how uh what we did with corona and if i were to put money uh on it i would say the uh solution for corona going to come out of israel i'm almost sure of that we are here we know we know how to deal with uh uh with uh crisis who threaten our country and our citizens and they're we have great people with great minds and they're willing to work uh around the clock to find a solution to say that's the story of iron dome i'm sure that's gonna be the story of corona as well yeah the country where when somebody says no it can't be done then the answer is it can be we'll just figure it out yeah and you know amazing place to live and let and and and let's give credit where credit is due i think it has a lot to do with uh shimon peres our former president who since the first day of the establishment of israel um and i think you know i've researched a little bit about him he couldn't say no to ben goryon so he had to find solutions for everything and and that's the mentality um that started israel and that's our startup nation it's people who are as a friend of mine wrote a book unstoppable yeah you can tell them no and and and you know me doing filmmaking is is not high tech but i felt i felt what it meant and you get a lot of no's when you want to make film a lot of knows um and depends on what you hear if you hear a no is a no then you have a problem if you hear no as a not yet then you know you can solve that problem well i think just the fact that you're here in israel says a lot because there's some very talented israeli producers and directors who've left israel and gone on to the bigger stage and here you are focused but you're focused here on this little country and on the things my films are now going to be presented on easy yeah tell us a little bit about that how do people get to see that easy is what we call the netflix of israel we want this platform to be uh the the uh showcase window for israeli content and creators uh you know we hear some of great titles getting to netflix or getting to uh to disney or to hbo or whatever but it's very few it's very very few and there's so much talent in israel in the film industry in the tv industry and so much great stories they tell the true story of israel not what people around the world find in the news and i think there's no better way to experience israel than through israel's content and easy is a platform that set out to do exactly that for israeli lovers or people are interested in israel they can have a front row seat to israel to the israeli story or the story of israel and um and i think that's that's what um that's all we need we got great great great talent nobody is really working to export this talent to the world and tell the story of israel and you're right that some great creators in israel would be taken away from israel brought to hollywood and you find them making um hollywood television or hollywood films and and they've let go of telling the story of israel but we have a lot of them here we don't have just one or two we have a lot of them and i think with with uh easy uh as a platform growing fast getting to the right uh audience and later on getting to to a wider audience we can export the story of israel um i think better than any other um any other platform whether it's you know news or or or foreign affairs right content is king and and israel is very very very very much of talented people who want to tell their stories it's because it's a lot of stories there isn't just one israel's story as many people are here that's and have lived here and have already passed away that's how many stories there are and i think especially as we're moving into sadly but unfortunately more of a virtual world because travel is going to apparently be limited and for quite a long time and also there's budgetary issues about coming here we're far from many places that it's a way of bringing israel out to other people and to just to jump into the confusion that we all live this is not a simple place it's not a simple story stories and to really see the content from a lot of different perspectives you may not form an opinion but you'll understand how complex the story is and that in itself is hugely important this is not simple this is not black and white and uh and iron dome i think shows that as well so your heart breaks for the people who've lost loved ones but you also understand where the politicians are coming from and you can't just jump in and you know and then where the people who are developing the protective weapons are coming from too this wasn't just a job for them this was protecting israelis and you see very much the 24 7 the eight month pregnancy woman out there who's just doing whatever they can because this is bigger than who they are and they find themselves an incredibly important part of history and they want to do more than just their little piece of it and that is that is well it makes me very proud but it's also makes you understand the complexities and to some degree will make you sad because some things have no solutions in a world where uh they tell us everything should either bleed blue or red or as we say in israel um they're trying to make this world or trying to tell us that there's only black and white and i think we need literally just storytelling uh to show that the world and and that's the marvel storytelling the world is complex uh issues are complex you can't see them as black and white uh you can't see your side is right and the other side is wrong yeah um um you can act that way if you have your reasons but you know that's what i think filmmakers try to show you that you know you're not you're not getting the whole picture you you dive into a a good film or a good documentary you'll get knowledged and you'll understand things are complex and when things are complex the solutions are complex yeah and it may make you upset but that's okay too because if we're not upset and if we're not saying these things have to be fixed then we're not passionate about anything and uh you know you can't just live life numb a lot of people try and do that uh you really have to whatever it is make your emotional bandwidth stretch it as much as it hurts and we do that here all the time and so i want to thank you nazi dinar for everything that you're doing here and i hope that people uh subscribe to izzy and definitely watch iron dome and some of the other films that you have done and that uh that you continue to do that and and keep us aware and awake of the things that are going on so thank you so much for joining us let's just let them know that easy is i z why because they're nice to see why they're very easy they won't find it and i hope they enjoy iron dome and the rest of the films and and our stuff films on easy and uh we love to hear back from viewers any feedback you know that's part of what easy is here for we want to connect the creators with the viewers so they can reach out and ask these questions directly okay and thank you very much for having me and pleasure let's hope for safe days and safe times amen on all levels i just want to thank tabitha and ben for getting this show out uh eve harrow rejuvenation on the land of israel network take care everybody really take care [Music] goodbye [Music] you