Black Saturday: The inside story of Trey Yingst: 'One decision' made on Oct 7 saved my life

Fox News Chief Foreign Correspondent Trey Yingst has been covering conflicts all over the world for many years. He was on the frontlines in Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Pakistan and has reported both from Israel and Gaza on many occasions throughout his career.

Yet, nothing he experienced before could have prepared him for Oct. 7.

“I'll tell you, the moment that I realized this is something we've never seen before. It's when the intersection turns into a triage point and all of the people that they're bringing wounded - soldiers and civilians - to this intersection, they're wounded, but they're not wounded by rocket shrapnel. They're wounded by gunfire. And that's an indication there are militants inside Israel,” Yingst told Joel Rosenberg in an exclusive interview for THE ROSENBERG REPORT on TBN.

Yingst is the only American journalist who has written about Oct. 7. In his book, "Black Saturday: An Unfiltered Account of the October 7th Attack on Israel and the War in Gaza" the Fox News correspondent shares his firsthand account of the Hamas massacre and the ensuing war.

He also includes insights from his conversations with Israeli hostages who have already been released from Hamas captivity, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and high-ranking IDF soldiers. He also spoke with a senior Hamas official and displaced Gazan civilians.

On the morning of the Hamas invasion in southern Israel, Yingst was asleep in Tel Aviv. He received a call from a Fox News producer who informed him of the breaking news.

“My producer described to me a rocket attack that was covering almost the entirety of Israel. A widespread attack. And so, we've been through this before. There are often rounds between Israel and Gaza. Sometimes they last three or four days. Back in 2021, it was 11 days. And in 2014, it was 51 days. But it was impossible to know at 7:03 a.m. the magnitude of this,” he told ALL ISRAEL NEWS Editor-in-Chief Joel Rosenberg.

The veteran foreign correspondent first assumed that the rockets were some kind of retaliation for a targeted assassination inside Gaza or a beginning of “another” round of fighting. His instincts and vast experience quickly signaled otherwise.

“There was something about this day that was different, but I couldn't put my finger on it. And so, I didn't have time to sit under what it was. I got on the phone with my boss. I said, Look, something's happening. We're headed to the south,” he recounted.

It was when the sirens began to sound in Tel Aviv, that Yingst realized something significant was happening. He put on his bulletproof vest and told his TV crew they would meet at a parking lot in the southern city of Sderot – a location they have reported from dozens of times.

Along the way, he didn’t see any military, police or checkpoints. There was no one on the road.

The intensity of rocket fire increased. He said he was so close that he could feel the interceptions. Yet, Yingst noticed that Hamas rockets emerging from Gaza were also slipping past Israel’s missile defense system, as plumes of smoke were rising from the south of the country.

“I get to the expressway and the rocket fire is continuing. And this is really an eerie feeling because I have to make a decision. Do we keep heading south? Do I call the team and tell them it's too heavy, the fire, or do we keep going at this point?” he explained.

He decided to make a stop in the city of Ashkelon.

“We made it the largest plume of smoke next to the city of Ashkelon in the south, do some reports to camera and there's a delay in us meeting each other,” he told Rosenberg. “We can't find each other initially. And, at the time, I'm frustrated. But looking back, I'm thankful because that delay might have saved our lives.”

At that point, the infiltration of thousands of Hamas and Palestinian Jihad terrorists was already unfolding in Israel’s southern cities and communities. Yingst and his crew had no idea. When they first heard about an “infiltration of militants” they assumed it was one truck of terrorists.

The Fox News team proceeded to go further south to the city of Sderot. There were no Israelis going their way. That is where they started to grasp the magnitude of the events. 

“And so, there are people coming past us. But no one going toward Gaza. And that's when we start to realize something that's really wrong. But also that decision – one decision saved our lives – and it was stopping at that intersection,” he said.

“What happens next is this intersection turns into a triage point and we realized that, had we continued to drive just one more intersection, we would have been in the middle of an ambush because Hamas was in Israel. They were conducting a massacre. And still, this morning, we didn't know how large the massacre was.”

The intersection was transformed into an emergency point, where medical teams prioritized injured Israeli civilians, police officers, and IDF soldiers based on the urgency of their need for treatment.

“I remember the first person that I saw die during the war,” Yingst shared with Rosenberg. “It was an officer who had a long beard, and his friends rushed to the intersection, dragged him out of the vehicle, put him on the ground, and these paramedics came around him. They hooked up to a defibrillator. They tried to revive him. They couldn't. They tried again. His friends were pacing back and forth. And then suddenly everything stopped. Everyone just put their hands up and it was; he was gone. But they didn't have time to mourn. They didn't have time to sustain an ongoing attack. It's an ongoing attack.”

Rosenberg noted that up until recently – almost one year after Oct. 7, 2023 – the estimation was that about 3,000 terrorists had crossed from Gaza into Israeli territory on that day, “but now Israeli intelligence is updating and saying it may have been 6,000 terrorists.”

“You're a reporter at one level. You have to keep yourself a bit of emotional psychological distance,” he told Yingst. “On the other hand, you're going through blood-soaked homes, bullets everywhere. You're seeing dead bodies. You're talking to grieving people. You're going into those terror tunnels. How are you processing it?”

The Fox News correspondent replied, “I never thought of myself as a very religious person. But when you lived through something like this, it makes you more spiritual because you understand that one decision could change the entire course of your life. You start to think about how much control you have over that and the larger plan of your life. And the morning of Oct. 7 was really hard.”

Yingst went on to describe how the hardest part is processing the images of people who died in front of him in the field.

“As time goes on, sometimes it comes up… I've been very open about the fact that I struggle with post-traumatic stress, the nightmares that come along,” he shared.

“You see the worst of humanity on display. And it can be hard to maintain your hope and faith as a result because you're there, often for the worst day of someone's life.”

In his book, Yingst shares one of the most powerful stories that he encountered about a hostage who forced herself to maintain some hope on the worst day of her life.

Chen Almog-Goldstein (49) was one of the Israelis released from Hamas captivity as part of the ceasefire deal in November. She was taken into Gaza on Oct. 7 with three of her children after witnessing her eldest daughter and husband being murdered.

“This mother talks in ‘Black Saturday’ as part of our interview, about how she tried to reassure her kids after just watching her husband and daughter be executed that they were going to be okay,” Trey explained. “They're moved throughout Gaza in different areas, sometimes below, sometimes above ground. But she talks about what it was like meeting some of the other people underneath Gaza, the people who are still being held there as we speak. And she's a former social worker and trying to empathize with those people, trying to remind them it's going to be okay when she knew it might not be okay.”

“You hear these stories and you try, as a journalist, to find moments of hope and of faith, but it's hard. And I do think it comes down to the individual. These strong people who were able to survive.” 

Don’t miss Part Two of Joel Rosenberg’s conversation with Trey Yingst next week.

Watch Part One of the interview on the TBN website.

THE ROSENBERG REPORT airs Thursday nights at 9 p.m. EST and Saturday nights at 9:30 p.m. EST – on the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN), the most-watched Christian television network in the United States.