PRODUCER | FILMMAKER | AUTHOR
Silent Waters, A Novel
The Things They Carried meets Fauda
In the elite ranks of Shayetet 13, Israel’s Navy SEALs, Yoav faces not only the unrelenting demands of war but also the challenge of keeping his relationships alive in the shadow of conflict. This is not simply a story about war—it’s a war story about love. While every mission and training exercise pushes sensitive and idealistic Yoav past his limits, his deepest battles are fought far from the battlefield. After Yoav’s charismatic best friend, Goldberg, is killed, he begins dating Goldberg’s fiancé, Rona, a sharp-witted intelligence officer, forcing him to confront his guilt over his friend’s death and the fear that he might merely be a consolation prize. Based on real-life training and covert military operations in Gaza and Lebanon, this blend of fiction and autobiography offers a rare, intimate look at Israeli special forces and the young men and women who live, fight, and love in one of the world’s most complex war zones.
Author's Note
I don’t think I suffer from PTSD. I definitely experienced traumas during my five-year service in Shayetet 13, the Israeli Navy SEALs, but these traumas—which mirror the journey of Yoav, the protagonist in this novel—didn’t evolve into post-traumas. I believe that’s because I write. I’ve been writing about the military experience for the past twenty years—mostly in screenplays, essays, and short stories, now in this novel that took more than a decade to complete. I often wonder how these traumas would have manifested had I not had writing as an outlet. Maybe writing about the military for twenty years is the post-trauma. Or, more accurately, a form of processing trauma. Perhaps writing saved my life; there’s no way to know for sure. But therein lies the power of writing, and why I love it so much.
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I hesitate to label this book as strictly autobiographical, as that would be misleading. But dismissing it as pure fiction would be equally inaccurate. Ultimately, this world is one I know deeply because I lived it—and continued to live it long after my service ended.
Almost everything in this novel is rooted in reality. Every mission described in these pages really happened, and every soldier characterized in the novel is someone I know, to varying degrees. Some events happened to me, some to people I know, some to people I don’t, and, yes, some are purely made up. After more than a decade of writing and rewriting, I sometimes struggle to distinguish between what truly happened and what has been shaped by memory and imagination. There are moments I’m 90% certain happened to me, yet there’s a lingering 10% that wonders if I only feel like they happened. Ultimately, that uncertainty doesn’t matter because that feeling is what counts. The emotional truth. I have felt every single word and sentence in this book. As Tim O’Brien observes in The Things They Carried, the feeling of what happened can sometimes be more true than what actually happened.
This novel aims to be free of political noise. Yoav embodies my journey of growing up, falling in love with my country, and striving to serve it. He grapples with relationships shaped by the demands of war and military life. Like me, Yoav’s motivations are not political; he simply wants to do right by his country, his parents, his teammates, his friends, and the women who love him. He wants to do well and not disappoint those who care about him. Perhaps his greatest fear is that he’ll fail—a feeling that loomed over me in the lead-up to my enlistment, during my training, and even throughout my service. It’s a terrible thing to be afraid, and it has taken me a long time to overcome that fear.
My hope is that I’ve captured this time truthfully and represented my experiences and those of others accurately, and that this novel makes the Israeli experience more accessible to those who read it.