It's 7 o'clock p.m. on Wednesday, December 26th in New York City, the second night of Hanukkah.

It's Thursday, December 27th, at 3 o'clock a.m. in Israel as Israelis turn to a new day and soon to their

third night of Hanukkah. It is customary during major holidays for most of the podcast hosts

in your feed to take a break. Rather than record a new episode, these podcast hosts and their producers replay a

previous episode, one of their favorites.

And we here at the Call Me Back team must alert you, our loyal listeners and our community,

that we too are mere mortals.

We too are succumbing to a replay during the holidays.

Of course, we'll break in with an emergency episode if it is needed.

But for now, this week, we are posting a replay.

But in searching for one of our favorite episodes from the archive to replay,

we stumbled upon something much more important.

A previous episode that is extremely relevant, even eerily relevant, to today.

It was a conversation I had with Havivret de Gour during the fourth day of the pause in fighting

during the last hostage deal, actually the only hostage deal, while hostages were

being returned to Israel back in November 23. I still remember how uplifted we all were as the

images rolled across our screens of Israelis welcoming home hostages, family members,

reuniting with their loved ones, loved ones that had been

stolen. As Haviv put it in this conversation, you're about to hear, it was the first time since

October 7th that he felt he could breathe. It's a feeling that, God willing, will be alive again

soon.

This conversation with Haviv centered on the lessons Israel and the West should take from what made that hostage release deal possible.

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