Omri Assenheim

The Israeli series Fauda (Arabic for “chaos”) has been one of the standout television successes of recent years. The story of the so-called mista’arvim – IDF soldiers who go undercover as Arabs – has caught the imagination of the viewing public in Israel and abroad. However, for some combat soldiers, Fauda is far from just a TV drama. Last year Omri Assenheim, a correspondent for the Israeli investigative current affairs program Uvda (the Israeli equivalent of CBS’s 60 Minutes) convinced the real-life mista’arvim – participants in operations on the streets of Gaza, Nablus and Hebron – to stand in front of a camera for the first time and reveal all: What it’s like to go undercover in a bustling city in enemy territory, how it feels to shoot someone from 10 inches away, and what happened on one terrible night, deep in the heart of Gaza, when they got caught up in the worst fauda imaginable. Assenheim will discuss his fascinating encounters with the mista’arvim, accompanied by selected clips from his remarkable report.

It is at the gates of his son’s kindergarten in Kibbutz Eyal that Omri Assenheim, a correspondent for the Israeli investigative current affairs program Uvda, begins the pursuit of two-time widower Shimon Cooper. A chance conversation with one of the mothers sparks Assenheim’s concern regarding the circumstances surrounding the death of one of the kibbutz members. He discovers that another woman, the first wife of the same man, Shimon Cooper, died 15 years earlier in mysterious circumstances. Assenheim embarks on a heart-stopping investigative journey among the women in the two-time widower’s life. Each encounter provides another clue which brings him one step closer to solving the mystery, and each conversation reveals another glimpse into the M.O. of the man who would go on to be convicted of murdering two of his wives.
In a new and fascinating talk which coincides with the release of his new book, Catching a Murderer, Assenheim reveals the shocking details behind a seven-year-long journey to uncover the truth against all odds – from the initial tip outside the kindergarten, and finally to the day in the courtroom, where he sat shaking with emotion as he listened to the judge declare Cooper guilty on two counts of murder.

This is a story of doubts, of the search for justice at all costs, of the women who only wanted love…and of the two who lost their lives as a result.

In 1992, then IDF Chief of Staff Ehud Barak decided to begin drills for a hypothetical military operation: the assassination of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein with precision-guided missiles. For the first time in its history, the IDF’s General Staff Reconnaisance Unit (known in Israel as Sayeret Matkal), began preparing for the assassination of the leader of an enemy nation. The dramatic preparations for the operation culminated in the most infamous training incident in the history of the state. The IDF lost more than just five of its best fighters in the incident; it also lost public faith in the judgment of its top brass, in the brotherhood between fighters, in the reliability of its inquiries and in the justness of the sacrifice of the victims. Omri Assenheim, the best-selling author of Tze’elim: The Trauma of Sayeret Matkal, opened the top-secret files behind the incident and interviewed the senior officials who had never spoken about it before. He uses clips from a special feature he produced on the subject, analyzing, together with the audience, the decision-making process behind the incident that rocked the nation, and examining how a terrible training accident became a traumatic and difficult public case.