We were there when the russians invaded ukraine. The Front Line each hour is moving. We were in afghanistan after the taliban takeover. Theres no question whos in charge here. Ive reported from lebanon. Protesters are clashing with the garden of Lebanons Parliament from iraq, from across the middle east. Hundreds of palestinians are marching through the streets of Gaza City. Ive seen a lot ive seen war firsthand. But nothing could have prepared me for October 7th. On the morning of October 7th, our team responded as rockets soared through the skies of israel. You can hear the explosions overhead. We would ultimately report amid a Hamas Infiltration of the country, then entering the Gaza Strip with the israeli military following a Ground Invasion. The Israelis Have Cut the Gaza Strip in half. This is the story of how it all began on black saturday. My phone rings at 7 03 a. M. And its my producer. Youre not. My parents live not far away from the israeligaza border. And my dad was the first one to call me and say something is off. She said there are Rocket Sirens all over. Theyre firing on central israel. We know the drill here. Ive been covering this story for the past ten years. And when rockets are fired from gaza, we immediately start reporting. They heard the sirens, sound siren. Thats not good. Its not the usual. Something is wrong. I went when my wife woke up. Tell her. Become. But it seems like war story. 6 minutes after i wake up, im on the phone with greg hayden, the Vice President of News Coverage of fox. Just after midnight eastern time. I got a call from trey. I said israel is under attack. And hayden knows when it makes sense to move, when it makes sense to stay put. He asks all the right questions. I was like, what is your Threat Assessment . Theres no margin for error here. Safety first. Trey gave me his best assessment of where he wanted to go. The team he wanted it to take. I told hayden. Same plan as always. Were going to go to stewart and start reporting. That was about as close to the border as probably i would feel secure. And i told them to do it. Start driving down route for. This is saturday morning. Shabbat. The roads are empty. Theres no one out. This is a weekly day of rest for the jewish people. I see rockets being intercepted overhead. The closer i get to gaza border, the Rocket Fire gets more intense. Hamas and Islamic Jihad continue to target positions here along the border with gaza. Theres been an impact just right here. I to have my cameraman show you the black smoke rising up this massive Rocket Fire right now into Southern Israel. Its just nonstop fire right now. Okay. Roll on all this. Yes. Rolling. Yes. Were going to. You can see here one of those rockets just fired from the Gaza Strip, slammed into a house behind me. Secondary explosions taking place. Many things on fire. We could see debris On The Road. Paramedics and firefighters just ran. We do our reporting there. And yonat not jumps in my car. Yonats a producer who has decades of news experience. Shes covered this story her entire life. Her parents live in Southern Israel. I was worried about friends and other families that i have all around the communities next to the borders. She was trying to get in touch with her parents. She said, i think theyre in the shelter. We all texted Each Other and some of us didnt get a response back. And i could tell that she was shaken up by what was unfolding before our eyes, but had very limited information about what was taking place. Really, the only video that we have that indicates this is an infiltration is video of hamas gunmen on the back of a pickup truck. Does this doesnt go down well, i thought it was an old movie out of iraq. But then i saw the familiar signpost of the market instilled and i said, this is the world we know this town like the back of our hand. We figure if hamas is installed, the Army And Police will get there and theyll engage them and well go and report on what happened. Our plan is to take a left turn at this Gas Station and head towards sderot. We get to this intersectiOn And we see an ambulance on the side of the road. We figure lets jump out and do some reporting on the constant flow of civilians being loaded into ambulances here along the gaza border. People are using their personal cars to drop off their loved ones. And so we start to piece together whats happening and we have a decision to make. Do we stay at the Intersection And Report or do we go with the initial plan . If one person on the team feels not good about it, the whole team doesnt go. I made a decision for us to stay put. I dont know why i made that decision at that moment, but im glad that i did because had we driven just one intersection further, we would have driven directly into a Hamas Ambush at this road where hamas had ambushed civilians. And had we continued driving, we would have driven directly into the ambush. You know, i keep thinking what would happen to us if we didnt stop, because otherwise we would be down in sderot when the massacre was taking place. We were one decision away from dying. I think about what i would have done. What i have just driven over them. What ive tried to get away, what ive tried to reason with them to explain that im a journalist. I dont know if they would have killed us. And very quickly, the intersection turns into a triage point. Straight to a Fox News Alert. Israel declaring it is at war. Trey angst is live on the ground in Southern Israel with the very latest. Good morning. And unimpressive, vented and coordinated attack against israel is taking place right now. This has been a constant scene along the gaza border. The military also bringing their injured troops here. Severely wounded soldiers are being evacuated from the front here. The first person that i saw die during the war was at this intersection, something about war. Until you see that first person die, it doesnt feel real. But you have to constantly remind yourself that it is real, because otherwise youre in a really dangerous situation. And just now, were receiving reports of israeli troops entering the city to try to rescue civilians that were taken hostage. As the day went on, we started to realize that this wasnt just a Rocket Attack and a few gunmen that had entered israel. It was thousands of gunmen that attacked nearly every community along the border. The Elite Hamas fighters from their nuclear unit had led the initial charge into israel. Well, it took us a few days to understand the scale of this, the amount of people murdered. We have like 20 people die 30, 4020. Its took time until they realize it was 1200. Hamas and islamic Jihad Used Rockets and mortars as cover around 6 30 a. M. And as those rockets were soaring overhead, they sent their most elite militants, gunmen with rocket propelled grenades, small arms and ieds. They targeted the outposts of the israeli military that have remote machine guns. They knew how to get through the Border Fence to deliver to here. That was touted as one of the most advanced in the world. They cut through the fence, the Al Kassam brigades. Then around 3000 gunmen over the border into these communities to slaughter civilians. The Hamas Attack against israel was systematic. These units had clearly trained to infiltrate into these border communities. Some of them had maps. They had intelligence that had been gathered before. And theres this Bullshit Line that you hear over and over from hamas officials when we interview them that they were only targeting soldiers. And thats not true. If this was just a story about the Israeli Army battling hamas gunmen, it might be easier to consume. But this is a story about a massacre behind every Splenda Product is a mission. Helping millions of people reduce sugar from their diets. Now try a sweetener grown by u. S. Farmers. Introducing zerocalorie Splenda Stevia. At Splenda Stevia farms, our plants are sweetened by sunshine. Experience how great Splenda Stevia can be. Grown on our farm, enjoyed at your table. in sderot, hamas were very systematic in their attack. The first location that they went to on the morning of October 7th was this sderot Police Station. Theres about 25, 26 of them, and they start storming the Police Station. Once they were here, the police came from everywhere. Well, going back to hamas. But you had Police Officers who were off duty showing up just with their Hand Guns to try to help the taliban. You had civilians coming here to try to help their battling them with handguns versus terrorists with m16s, with rpgs. When the terrorists took over, the offices that were inside, ran to the rooftop and they were pinned down on the roof of the Police Station. And there was an insane battle, Movie Style Battle from like seven, eight in the morning until one, two in the morning. We rescued the officers from the roof, and thats when the commander just decided its going to be the safest thing for everybody. He Cant Risk more officers going inside. And they took down the station. We made it into the road october 8th, and it was frozen in time. This is the closest any journalist has been to the Gaza Strip since this erupted. There were cars that still had their blinkers on, pools of blood all over that infamous Bus Stop where older israelis were slaughtered before they were planning to go on a day trip. We got to the Police Station, all the area without electricity was totally in the dark when we saw whats going on in the Police Station. It was just unfathomable. We are in the israeli town of strout that sits just near the gaza border. And we stood outside and i interviewed dean live on that night. I dont even think theres words to describe what took place right behind us. Eight officers lost their lives during the combat that took place right here. There was so much incoming Rocket Fire this night and we had to just dive down and take cover and get down everyone flat. So i dont have everyone down flat. We had more rockets now, loud explosions coming off. Another time there, theyre trying to overwhelm the Iron Dome again. I can see them blowing off the Gaza Strip from multiple locations. It was scary because the rockets were being intercepted right overhead and slamming into the ground. And so it was just a matter of chance that we werent hit. It sounded like a few of those slipped past the explosions just rocking the area. It became the soundtrack of the war. Everyone okay . These are the teams that are going in to try to find the bodies of those officers. They dont have the time to go through and identify each and every person because as you see there, they have stacked ten or 11 bodies into the back of one pickup truck. The first responders were pulling bodies out of the Police Station and for the first time since the attack, i just cracked, i, i held back tears. I was trying not to cry. And theres not a lot that makes me cry. You see scenes of parents showing up to. Im sorry. Its. Its difficult. Yeah, but parents showing up to to give a pair of their kids to the authorities to see if they can match the dna to the bodies. And i just. I cracked live. Im going to stop talking here. I just want to give this the respect that it needs. You know, most of the time im able to separate my emotions from the work because we have to, you know, you see such horrific things and the time to deal with it is not during the coverage. Ill deal with it later. I still havent dealt with it, to be honest. But the coverage continues. man these men of means with their silver spoons. What will become of them when they discover robinhood gold allows others to earn their very liberal rates on idle cash. They would descend into chaos. Beeri was arguably the hardest day for for me and for the team. When friends to a bury, there was a pile of bodies. Houses were severely damaged. Torched. And you would see bodies that you couldnt understand. Theyre the residents or the terrorists. You can see the blood stained patio of this home and you saw marking of hands on the walls. And you could see the track of blood in the corridors of the homes. It was early in the morning on saturday when hamas militants stormed into their homes, slaughtering women and children. There were bodies just everywhere. I was heartbroken and speechless. You had to be careful not to trip over bodies. I couldnt believe the amount of hatred people can inflict on other people, especially the people i know who live in those communities, as were Peace Activists and artists. And they have done their outmost to help the people and the children of gaza. And it was just so heartbreaking. I covered tsunamis. I cover wars. I cover a suicide bombing cover. A lot of things. But to walk into Kids Rooms and you see the blood everywhere, the smell was horrific. It stuck to your clothes and in your nose. And it was hard. Do you hear me . Harris the policy was you cant go live from the border area. And i just said, look, we need to show the world whats happening here. I got him out. I got you. Harris we felt the world needed to see this live because people had already started to deny what took place. Okay, guys, i need to warn our viewers what were about to show you is the aftermath of the massacre. We arrived here with the army a few hours ago. And On The Road in, you could smell the stench of death in the air. It became obvious that we didnt even have a full grasp of what took place here. I was talking to Harris Faulkner and we went into one of these houses of horror. This is what israel is facing right now, and its very important that we show you this. Im going to have my cameraman come in here. You can see the floors are stained with blood. The floor was sticky. The blood was getting on the boots that i was wearing. But we needed to be live. We needed to show the world what was happening. And so we did. It is the most horrific thing i have ever seen. The most difficult for me was to see the families houses that with the kids pictures, food on the tables, the family photos on the fridge. Was just like my whole home. And within a minute, it all shattered in the most horrific and horrendously. It shows just how violent these militants were against the civilian population here. I mean, just there are no words really. I literally felt my heart was broken. I even can feel it today. We were in the Work Mode and we did live shots and everything. But when we went out, i felt that i couldnt breathe. Ive been trying for All My Life to see with empathy the other side and how we have more things in common than sets us apart. And that specific day, my whole being was shattered in the second the morning of October 7th. Yoav, our technician, was trying to get in touch with his brother gil, who lives in neros. I tried to call him. He didnt answer. He couldnt reach him. There was no way to confirm if his brother had been killed or kidnaped. And eventually we made it to neros. And it was filled with scenes of horror houses that were stained with blood. Bullet holes in Shelter Doors. This is the shelter known as the mermaid. The place where people were hiding when militants entered their home. The Blood Stained Floors tell the story of the struggle that ensued. So many houses in the community of neros are burned down. Many relatives still looking for their loved ones, Holding On to hope that they are alive and just pulled into gaza, held hostage by hamas. And we saw gils home the first time. Actually, i have break down. It was when we went to my Brother Community and i saw his burned house. We did not know this was the exact house. But now that were on the other side to see it is this is the home of the brother of our engineer. This is yoav. When . When you see when you see this, what does it feel like . Horrible. Horrible. Im just trying to think whats happened to them. The house was totally burned. 25 of his community at that time was either murdered or kidnaped. 25 from 400 people. Its crazy. It is grief. Gil had survived with his wife in their shelter. When do you know somethings wrong . Six in the morning. The red alert. And we went to the mahmoud to the safe room. There was no stopping. And the missiles . One after another. Like in thousands. Then it became quiet. So i said to my wife, well, im going to bring the cell phone, open the door of the safe. And we had a mass people inside here shouting and screaming, i know what im doing. But so immediately we locked the door, get inside, hide behind the couch and wait. You know, we heard them shouting and shouting. And then someone approached the door. Hamas had entered the home, fired on the Shelter Door and the latch locked, and that saved their lives. Somehow we hit the lock so no one could open it. From now on, we heard them destroying things in the house. Then you realize we are alone. Nobody is coming. What emotions do you feel when you think about that . Betrayed. And a few minutes later, they start burning the house. We were lying on the floor and smoke. You think about survivor and you dont think about anything. Yes. Lets go inside. Whats it feel like to be inside the house . Theres nothing in it that reminds me that this is my house. This used to be my whole. This used to be the kitchen. This is the whats left from the fridge to table. Dining table. And over there is the safe room. You can see where they shot it. You can see some of the shots. But this the most important one. This is the one that hit it. Hit the lock and. And locked it. Then they start to put fire on it in the house. If you could meet the people who did this, what would you say to them . Terrorists. I dont know if i have to say anything to them. He waited there for 16 hours, and during that time, there was no information. You were with us in the south, and i saw you checking your phone, waiting