Israeli UFC Fighter Explains HAMAS ｜ Natan Levy
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
167.66963
Summary
Natan Levy is a rising star in the UFC, and his most important fight yet might still await him in his home country of Israel. Since he was a teenager, Israeli-American Natan Levy has trained to fight first in kung fu, then karate. Now, he s a rising middle-school martial arts champion.
Transcript
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Since he was a teenager, Israeli-American Natan Levy has trained to fight.
00:00:44.880
Now he's a rising star in the UFC, and his most important fight yet might still await him in his home country of Israel.
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I sat down with Natan to get his thoughts on the emerging conflict.
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You were not all that far from the Hamas attack when it first started, and you've been there for the last week or more.
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Over here, you know, I'm lucky enough to be far enough, which is about 20 miles away from where the real atrocities happened.
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Where I'm staying, it's sirens, rockets, the usual Israeli stuff.
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But what happened pretty close to here was pretty scary.
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It's amazing for you to say, you know, luckily I'm far away, relatively far away from where all the atrocities happened.
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It just drives home for people how small this country really is.
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And out here, it's the difference between life and death.
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So, people, I know, friends of mine who live in Israel are being called up for military service, especially as the war expands.
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You know, now it's expanded from southern Lebanon.
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How much of the population is being called up for military service?
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So, we have 3,000, 300,000 military reserves that have been called up.
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So, more people than got called showed up for the reserve.
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People who did not get called showed up to defend their country because they really understand right now this is our, you know, a new era independence war.
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If we don't win this one big time, there will be no Israel.
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I mean, in terms of the next week, two weeks, month, how long are people in Israel expecting this war to go on?
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Do you think the objective is going to be just obliterate Hamas?
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Is the objective going to be regime change in Iran?
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You know, I can't tell you what the military strategy is, but I can tell you the people's sentiment.
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We don't want to stop this war until we have at least anybody that's held captive and still alive.
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You know, I see people tweeting about de-escalation.
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Do you want us to send them a gift card as well?
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You killed, confirmed 1,300 people, injured 3,000 people, kidnapped more than 200 people.
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And we're going to obliterate Hamas and see from there.
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They're the enemies of the modern world, of Israel and of the U.S.
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And, you know, any free nation on the planet, they want us gone.
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They want something completely different in the world.
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You know, people are walking around it, walking around it.
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And we shouldn't be scared to defend our country and to defend our values, our modern values, you know, of freedom.
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So, you know, obviously the attack from the south comes from Hamas.
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But Hezbollah then starts attacking from the north.
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Will the war expand to obliterate Hezbollah as well?
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Look, what happened with Hamas for years, again, because Israel is a modern country, we don't want a war.
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Of course, the world and everybody on Twitter would criticize Israel.
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And from there, you know, not because of that, but just because Israel wants to preserve life.
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The moment they would offer a truce, we would say, yeah, sure, truce.
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If you guys don't want to kill us, then we don't want to kill you.
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But what happened is the whole time, every time they asked for truce, they rearmed themselves.
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They've been training for this attack for two years.
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While we were letting them, you know, live peacefully.
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And so Hezbollah now, I don't want us to do the same mistake.
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Right now, they're throwing rockets at us, but it's like they're throwing little rocks.
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And if we don't attack, if we don't do anything, they're going to go to bigger stones until they find a way to kill it.
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So I don't want us to do the same mistake we did with Hamas by saying, oh, it's not big rockets.
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They're like a kid that's throwing a tantrum, right?
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But actually, if you show weakness, you know, in the Middle East, it's kill or be killed.
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If you show weakness, the shark smells the blood in the water, and they're going to come to kill us.
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And if they keep coming at us, we've got to strike hard.
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I'm not saying open war with the whole planet, but when somebody is testing us, we need to show them, you know, we need to cut it at the butt.
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If it were me, I'd probably take the first flight out if I could.
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But, you know, do you intend to stay for the foreseeable future?
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When it started, you know, I was already supposed to be back.
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I was supposed to be for this week for our cousin's wedding, and it got canceled.
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I want to see if they need the citizens to fight.
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But if they need us to defend our country, if they need the citizens to actively do it, then I'm here to do it.
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I can imagine it would be pretty scary if you were a Hamas terrorist to see not just an ordinary soldier, but also a fairly famous UFC fighter coming at you.
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There is, you know, kind of an irony about that because, as you say, you're not a soldier.
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What do you think the likelihood is that the citizenry and the civilians would be called up?
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Right now I feel it's not likely with the days going by.
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Citizens fought for their, you know, for their homes.
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Because when the terrorist attack on Saturday, October 7th, it took the military hours to get together.
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And thank God, you know, in America, you have the Second Amendment.
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And in Israel, we don't have the same amendment, but we can carry arms with a license.
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And people who live around Gaza, many of them have a gun.
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But, and you know, those terrorists, they're not, I don't call them fighters, because if they would aim for soldiers, to kill soldiers, then you can say that's an act of war.
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They were going after teenagers that are raised.
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And I'm very happy that some civilians had weapons and shot them down.