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I haven’t seen the movie and therefore I’m not going to argue about it. But amid all the storm surrounding it, it’s important to me to say something as someone who was there. I was there. We were there. On October 7th, we saw evil that’s hard to describe in words. We moved between the houses, saw the results up close, and lost people. No movie will truly manage to convey what was there. Three weeks later, we entered Gaza. There, we were required to fight an enemy that doesn’t play by any rules we know. An enemy that doesn’t always stand before you in uniform, that operates from within civilian spaces and exploits the blending of fighters and civilians to make it harder for us to fight it. And within this impossible reality, we remained human beings. Even after October 7th, even after our friends were killed, and even after weeks and months of fighting. As a platoon commander, I was there when the decisions were made. I know how much effort we made to minimize harm to non-combatants. You can’t tell the story of Gaza without October 7th. You can’t talk about the results of the war without talking about the enemy we fought against and the way it chose to fight. A discourse that presents only one side of the reality is not a brave or complex discourse. It’s a biased discourse. And when it’s presented to the world as the whole truth, it harms the State of Israel and the fighters who were sent to defend it. I was there. I know the price. I know the complexity. And above all, I know my fighters, and I’m proud of the way we fought and of the human beings we remained. SHAHAR VARON