Book Review: Real-Time Account of October 7
Seth Frantzman's raw reporting brings it home
by Maayan Hoffman
The October 7 War: Israel's Battle for Security in Gaza
By Seth Frantzman
Wicked Son 2024 | 348 pages
Available on Amazon
According to the National Library of Israel, approximately 170 books have been written about the October 7 Hamas massacre and the ensuing war.
Most are in Hebrew and focus on the impact on Israeli society, the hostages, the IDF's war efforts, and the role of political leadership. Many written works preserve testimonies and tell stories of heroism.
Seth Frantzman's The October 7 War: Israel's Battle for Security in Gaza brings a bit of everything. What distinguishes his account is the immediacy of his reporting. Frantzman has been covering the ongoing conflict between the Gaza Strip and Israel since 2005, including, of course, the escalations in 2012, 2014, and 2021. His depth of experience is extraordinary.
As Executive Editor at ILTV, I recently hosted Frantzman and three other authors—Haaretz's Amir Tibon, Hadassah Ben Ari, and Gil Troy—for a studio discussion about their recently published books that are anchored in the October 7 massacre.
Several weeks into the war, after he had been to the south multiple times, interacting with Israeli military units, commanders, soldiers, and the police. Frantzman realized that he had interviewed nearly every unit involved in the conflict. He had spoken with those living in affected communities. The displaced. Frantzman wanted to give people a broader perspective; the forest through the trees. Instead of daily articles, he aspired to build a more holistic narrative.
People questioned how he could write a book about a war still unfolding. To him, October 7 was Israel's 9/11—a transformative day for the country and the Jewish people. He wanted to capture not just the event itself but the weeks, months, and even years leading up to it, along with its immediate aftermath.
For Frantzman, the war began with the first siren in Jerusalem. He writes about his 8-year-old son shaking him awake, telling him there were sirens.
"Sirens usually meant rocket fire, but they were rare in Jerusalem, even during previous wars with Gaza…" he continues, telling us how this bizarre event shocked him from sleep. From his balcony, he writes that 45 miles from Gaza, he had absorbed the surreal moment.
"The sirens were indeed wailing over the hills of Jerusalem. Within a few seconds, loud explosions overhead shook the house, sending my son running for his bedroom, as rockets were intercepted at 8:15 a.m."
By that time, hundreds of rockets had already hit southern Israel, and over 6,000 Hamas terrorists, including civilians, had infiltrated the country. The full extent of the horror would become clear in the days ahead.
Frantzman did what he always does; he got in his car and drove to the Gaza border.
"The massacre unfolding there was not known at the time," writes Frantzman. "Radio programs were struggling to report the chaos. One man called the Reshet Bet [radio] station, saying his wife's phone was now located in Khan Yunis, and he couldn't figure out how it got there. People discovering their relatives were kidnapped by tracking their phones was common. The Katz Asher family in Nir Oz learned a relative was kidnapped because the phone was in Khan Yunis. Others were calling the radio station, trying to reach loved ones hiding in safe rooms near Gaza."
Frantzman gives a ground-level view of what he saw, interwoven with real-time stories of soldiers and civilians shaping this ongoing tragedy.
As he moved from place to place, he captured the overwhelming chaos of that day.
On October 7, I was filling in as the news editor and head of The Jerusalem Post website. It was a Saturday, and our editor-in-chief wasn't aware of what was happening at first. It was just me and two young desk writers—one who didn't even know Hebrew—trying to tell the world what was going on when we were barely sure ourselves. Then Seth started filing from the field. Everything changed.
Frantzman chronicles how more than 6,000 people from the Gaza Strip—including around 3,300 Hamas terrorists, members of other terror groups, and civilians—entered Israel. They carried out systematic rapes, assaults, torture, and murders. Over 250 people were taken captive, with 101 still held by Hamas.
Military units and commanders "arrived piecemeal to the battlefield," he observed at the time, leaving civilian security forces and individuals to fight alone. Even where soldiers were present, most were unable to repel Hamas. The IDF and kibbutz security teams were staggeringly outnumbered. Among many such instances, he reports in detail how it took more than seven hours for the IDF to retake the Re'im base, the Gaza Division's headquarters, from the terrorists.
At Kibbutz Alumim, the security team managed to stop the terrorists before they could reach deep into the community. Although around 20 people were killed—including several foreign workers—and many were injured, "they saved the kibbutz," Frantzman reports. "The security team held off the terrorists for five hours until the army arrived."
Among the more spectacular episodes of that day was the intense battle for Sderot, a city of 30,000 people located 33 kilometers from the closest point of the Gaza Strip. Hamas targeted the city's central police station, where 38 terrorists attacked 12 officers on duty, killing more than half of them. Elite Yamam special forces and IDF units were needed to regain control of the city, which took two days. Around 70 people were killed in Sderot that day.
Frantzman takes readers from base to base and community to community along the roads of southern Israel, where the bodies of terrorists, soldiers, and civilian victims lay. He describes the body bags, blood, and bullet-riddled vehicles—all scenes he witnessed firsthand, not lifted from videos or reports.
His odyssey captures the chaos Israelis experienced that day with unsparing candor, exposing the chaos. He delivers the facts: that communities were unable to communicate with each other; that the IDF was disconnected from the communities; that the police were out of sync with the IDF; and the apparent absence of any government leadership. Not until late in the evening on October 7 did Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu make a statement or comment. It was brief and clarified nothing, most importantly, about what had happened and was ongoing. More than twelve hours of silence.
Frantzman reminds readers of what was happening in Israel and Gaza before the war, which is critical to understanding that fateful day, and how the massacre could and should have been prevented.
"It's important to understand Israel's military transition in the 2000s and its pioneering investment in new technology," he explains. "The IDF's embrace of new technology was designed to overcome threats from Hamas and Hezbollah. However, just as Israel had been surprised in 1973 and 2006, the technology was not a magic wand against an ever-changing enemy."
"This is a lesson for many Western armies that invested in expensive technology while neglecting larger, conventional army formations," he warns. It was a very costly lesson. "Israel learned from October 7 and its aftermath that it needed more tanks and combat helicopters. Technology is not a substitute for strategy and tactics."
Frantzman also highlights Israel's blind spots. The country's defense and political leadership dangerously underestimated Hamas, believing it could not "pull off" such a complex and devastating attack.
Since 2018, with Israel's enthusiastic encouragement, Qatar has been providing funds to Hamas. These payments were meant to “buy” peace but ended up strengthening Hamas's terror empire. PM Netanyahu referred to this significant cash flow as a critical part of his so-called "containment strategy," which promoted the notion that Hamas leadership wanted to avoid war and instead develop the conditions for the population in the Strip to live stable lives. That required money and jobs, which is also why Israel issued work permits to tens of thousands of men from Gaza for employment in southern Israel.
The strategy was never analyzed in a disciplined manner. It became gospel because of an operational herd approach. Very few questioned it.
But there were outliers, and Frantzman reminds us of the warnings of MK Avigdor Liberman, who, as far back as 2016, sent an 11-page document to the government warning of Hamas's plans to infiltrate Israel, break into border communities and take hostages. Liberman resigned as defense minister two years later, frustrated that Hamas, which was regularly organizing riots along the border, wasn't being taken seriously.
"Netanyahu and [former Chief of Staff Gadi] Eizenkot preferred to do something in the north... and at the end of the day, the final decision was a ceasefire with Hamas and to transfer 10 million dollars in cash to Hamas," Liberman said at the time.
Meanwhile, as Frantzman chronicles, Hamas was busy building mock-ups of IDF posts, practicing attacks in broad daylight. Israel's intelligence forces had even seen a nearly identical plan in 2022. But still, no action was taken.
Perhaps it was overconfidence after so many victories against Hamas. Or maybe it was a misreading of Hamas's drills as a bluff. Either way, as Frantzman states, Israel could have—and should have—prevailed on October 7.
As we know well, that was not the case.
About the author
Seth J. Frantzman is an Adjunct Fellow at The Foundation for Defense of Democracies and senior Middle East correspondent for The Jerusalem Post. His previous book, Drone Wars, focuses on the rise of drone warfare and new military technologies. Frantzman holds a PhD from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and was an Assistant Professor at Al-Quds University. He was born in Maine and lives in Jerusalem.
Maayan Hoffman is executive editor and strategist for ILTV News. She is the former Deputy CEO of Strategy and Innovation for The Jerusalem Post.
Maayan is an American-Israeli journalist and strategic communications consultant. She lives in Jerusalem.