The incredible story behind Israel's 'Band of Brothers'

It is the epic dramatisation of the Yom Kippur War which has enthralled viewers in Israel.

Now Valley Of Tears, the biggest-ever budget Israeli series, is set to grip British audiences starting from tonight. Mixing compellingly realistic battlefield scenes with emotionally wrenching drama in the manner of hit HBO series Band Of Brothers, the ten-part drama is based on the experience of real-life figures during the 1973 war in which Israel fought for its very survival. At the centre of the action is the Valley Of Tears tank battle in which Israeli soldiers held out against almost overwhelmingly greater numbers of Syrian troops.

The IDF unit was on the brink of collapse after four days of fighting when they saw the enemy retreat after suffering heavy losses.

Writer and producer Ron Leshem told the JC: “Each character is a combination of two or three real characters. Almost every single moment there is faithful to the real events and people.”

Explaining why the programme makers created fictional character to tell the real stories, Mr Leshem explained: “We realised that four people who served in a tank together remember four different versions to it. We didn’t feel it would be right to use a real name of one and choose his point of view and interpretation. One story, the female officer, was geographically transported from Sinai to the Golan, and inspired by three women.”

One veteran paratrooper, Yankale Rotem, spoke to an Israeli news programme about his experiences as “the real-life inspiration” for Valley Of Tears.

Remembering the battle, he said: “There were thousands of Syrian tanks, and we had only 150 tanks to stop them. The Syrian artillery was constantly firing at us.

“They controlled Mount Hermon at the time, which meant they could point their cannons towards us. There were times we were lying down in a ditch with nothing to protect us, as we were under heavy bombardment.”

Rotem and his comrades came within a hair’s breadth of the enemy. “We got so close to the positions we could hear them speaking Arabic between them. We were only 20 metres away from them,” he recalled. “When the command said to open fire we killed many of their guys.”

Mr Leshem — also known for hit teen drama Euphoria — created Valley Of Tears with Yaron Zilberman and Amit Cohen, whose father served as an intelligence officer at the time the series is set. He is the inspiration for a fictional intelligence officer, Avinoam, who tells his superiors repeatedly that he believes war is coming but is ignored — just as the warnings of Mr Cohen’s father were.

In a country where shoestring budgets are more usually the norm, Valley of Tears enjoyed a budget of $1million an episode. Major investment went into filming on location in the Golan Heights and into creating the most realistic war scenes possible.

“The Syrian border is not an easy territory and we had to put the filming on hold after rockets were fired from the border as the civil war went on,” said Mr Leshem during the JCC Manhattan Film Festival. “It was complicated for so many reasons.”

The show delivers a realistic version of battles and military exploits but also puts human stories front and centre from a wide spectrum in Israeli society.

The writers include a female officer who gets pushed around by her superiors, and also tackle Israel’s ethnic divides. Three tank crewmen are Sephardi and members of the radical Black Panthers organisation that was fighting for equality for their community. The creators of the show are proud to have put the Yom Kippur War back on the agenda, with some veterans feeling their stories have been overlooked as many Israelis try to forget a chaotic and traumatic conflict.

“Lots of people abroad think Israelis are constantly reliving wars and talking about our wars but it’s not true, we have forgotten wars,” said Mr Leshem.

“We had only had one novel and one film describing the Yom Kippur War, which is the biggest trauma we ever had. There are issues that were never touched and the Yom Kippur War was one of these. There are people who, only now, cry and tell the grandkids about it.”