Media & Film
The One: fifty years later, Israel was ready to tell the story
Fifty years after the Yom Kippur War, the pilots of the Air Force's legendary 201 Squadron finally told their own story of surprise, loss, and recovery. The documentary aired one day before history echoed on October 7, 2023.
Courtesy of Kan 11
History is not always written when it happens. Sometimes it takes an entire generation before the people who lived through it are ready to tell the story. That is what makes The One (HaAchat) so remarkable.
Fifty years after serving together, the pilots return not as public figures, but as comrades, reflecting honestly on the experiences that shaped their lives.
Co-produced by Carol and Joey Low with Kastina Communications and broadcast by Kan 11 in September 2023, exactly fifty years after the Yom Kippur War, the four-part documentary tells the story of the Israeli Air Force's 201 Squadron: the legendary Phantom unit known simply as The One. More than a military history, it is an intimate account of surprise, failure, sacrifice, and recovery, told by the pilots and navigators who lived it.
More than a squadron
The story of Squadron 201 is extraordinary. During the Yom Kippur War it suffered the heaviest losses of any Phantom squadron in the Israeli Air Force: seven of its pilots and navigators were killed, fourteen were taken prisoner, and many aircraft were destroyed or badly damaged. And yet, despite those losses, the squadron flew hundreds of combat sorties and shot down more enemy aircraft than any other Phantom unit in the war.
What makes The One singular, though, is not the military record. It is the people.
Many of the young pilots in the film went on to shape modern Israel in ways no one could have imagined in 1973. Among them: Dan Halutz, later Chief of Staff of the IDF; Ron Huldai, the long-serving mayor of Tel Aviv; Eitan Ben Eliyahu, who went on to command the Air Force; and Gil Regev, who became a senior Air Force general and head of the IDF Personnel Directorate. The interviews are led by Sima Kadmon, the squadron's operations sergeant during the war and later one of Israel's leading political journalists.
The right story at the right time
Timing gave the series a deeper meaning. The One premiered in September 2023, marking the fiftieth anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, a conflict remembered both for Israel's extraordinary military recovery and for the intelligence and strategic failures that let Egypt and Syria launch their surprise attack on October 6, 1973.
Viewers could not have known that only weeks later, history would echo in the most painful way imaginable. On October 7, 2023, fifty years and one day after the Yom Kippur War began, Hamas launched its own surprise attack, exposing another devastating failure before the country again showed extraordinary resilience.
The coincidence turned The One from a historical documentary into something far more immediate. Its themes, complacency, preparedness, leadership, sacrifice, and national recovery, suddenly belonged to Israel's present as much as its past.
Created by Sima Kadmon and Amnon Rabi, directed by Gilad Tokatly, and executive produced by Joey and Carol Low, The One became Kan 11's most-watched documentary since the founding of Israel's Public Broadcasting Corporation, and swept every major documentary prize at the Israeli Television Academy Awards. The recognition reached beyond television: Sima Kadmon, who created the series and led its interviews, was awarded the Sokolov Prize, one of Israel's most respected journalism honors, with the judges singling out the film's investigative depth and intimate interviews.
Courtesy of Kan 11
