Black Saturday

What do you do when the story you’re covering becomes a moment that changes a nation—and changes you? In Black Saturday, Trey Yingst argues that to understand the Israel–Hamas war, you must look through two lenses at once: the raw, on-the-ground reality of October 7, 2023 and its aftermath, and the parallel battle to control truth in the fog of war. He contends that journalism at its best demands proximity, empathy, and restraint—especially when the world is primed to share, misread, and weaponize images in seconds. The result is a gripping, first-person chronicle that doubles as a field manual for making sense of violent conflict in a hyperconnected era.

Across this account, you walk alongside Yingst and his team—from the first sirens in Tel Aviv and a harrowing drive south, to triage scenes outside Sderot and embeds with Israeli units pushing into Gaza. The book braids three storylines: the surprise Hamas assault and the massacre that followed; Israel’s evolving military and political response; and the human toll on civilians, soldiers, hostages, and the journalists tasked with telling their stories. Along the way, it interrogates viral claims (the Gaza hospital explosion, “beheaded babies,” evacuation blockades), documents wrenching choices (what to show on TV, when to hold back), and reveals how trauma shadows even the most seasoned correspondents (recurring nightmares, sensory flashbacks, and coping routines).

A Day No One Saw Coming

October 7 unfolds like a thriller with no safe exit: a producer’s 7:03 a.m. call; rocket streaks over Tel Aviv; a decision to head for Sderot; then a makeshift evacuation point where wounded civilians and soldiers pour in, many with bullet wounds rather than shrapnel. The realization lands: the border has been breached in dozens of places, and the IDF is not yet on scene. From there, Yingst records live as gunfights erupt, ambulances jam the road, and mothers lift limp children into waiting stretchers. He meets Ziv, an off-duty Be’eri resident who first tries to stop the cameras, then—upon seeing Trey’s photo with Benny Gantz—becomes a source, reciting names of kibbutzim under attack.

The book’s narrative method matters: rather than argue abstractly, Yingst shows you scenes—and the human beings inside them. A bearded officer dies on the pavement as paramedics pace in frustration. An Israeli policewoman, Corporal Mali Shoshana, battles rooftop attackers at the Sderot station, tossing a live grenade back down a stairwell and radioing a farewell to her son when she believes she’ll die. Meanwhile, texts from Gaza (from Nael, a longtime fixer turned U.S. resident visiting his parents) reveal a second vantage point: ER corridors at Shifa flooding with gunshot victims; one whispered report of an Israeli hostage appearing inside the hospital; later, bombarded neighborhoods and sleepless families trying to calculate survival.

The War in Two Theaters: Streets and Screens

If this book were only a dispatch from the front, it would already be urgent. But it insists you also reckon with the information war. Rumors and claims spiral as fast as rockets. Did Israel strike the al-Ahli hospital, killing hundreds? Yingst audits the evidence: no large crater; blast patterns matching a misfired rocket; video timestamps and metadata from a border soldier; still, a death toll he refuses to guess at. Were babies beheaded in Kfar Aza? A local TV report cites a soldier; days later, rescuers confirm brutal mutilations but not the viral number. Were Gazans blocked from evacuating? Yingst gathers a Hamas official’s denial, counters with audio and drone video of armed men turning civilians back, and keeps the record open where facts are incomplete. (For comparison, Peter Pomerantsev’s work on propaganda, or Janine di Giovanni’s on war ethics, highlight similar tensions.)

Why This Matters to You

You live in the blast radius of instant content. This book gives you habits to stay human: verify before you share, resist the seduction of total certainty, and hold two painful truths at once. Hamas committed a mass atrocity; thousands of Gazan civilians—men, women, and children—have also suffered, been displaced, or killed by Israel’s response. You meet specific people on both sides: Chen from Kfar Aza who watched militants kill her husband and eldest daughter, then resolved to protect her remaining children in tunnels and safe houses; Dr. Abdelwahab Abu Warda, a Gaza City surgeon who runs out of anesthesia and still operates; Mohammed Al Aloul, the journalist-father who loses four children in Al-Maghazi; and reservists like Lt. Col. Gilad Pasternak, who spends weeks fighting block by block and still calls families when IDF mistakes cost hostage lives.

Expect to learn how the first hours of failure shaped everything that followed; why Israel’s leadership (Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi, and a divided cabinet) struggled over timing, fronts, and the ground war; how evacuation orders collided with logistics, fear, and militant enforcement; how hostages shifted diplomacy and battlefield choices; and what it costs a reporter to keep showing up. The through-line is clear: clarity comes from specificity, and empathy requires proximity. If you want to be an informed citizen and a better consumer of wartime media, Black Saturday is a tough, necessary guide.

A Core Claim

“Two things can be true at once: the October 7 massacre was horrific; and innocent Palestinian lives must be protected.”

What do you do when the story you’re covering becomes a moment that changes a nation—and changes you? In Black Saturday, Trey Yingst argues that to understand the Israel–Hamas war, you must look through two lenses at once: the raw, on-the-ground reality of October 7, 2023 and its aftermath, and the parallel battle to control truth in the fog of war. He contends that journalism at its best demands proximity, empathy, and restraint—especially when the world is primed to share, misread, and weaponize images in seconds. The result is a gripping, first-person chronicle that doubles as a field manual for making sense of violent conflict in a hyperconnected era.

Across this account, you walk alongside Yingst and his team—from the first sirens in Tel Aviv and a harrowing drive south, to triage scenes outside Sderot and embeds with Israeli units pushing into Gaza. The book braids three storylines: the surprise Hamas assault and the massacre that followed; Israel’s evolving military and political response; and the human toll on civilians, soldiers, hostages, and the journalists tasked with telling their stories. Along the way, it interrogates viral claims (the Gaza hospital explosion, “beheaded babies,” evacuation blockades), documents wrenching choices (what to show on TV, when to hold back), and reveals how trauma shadows even the most seasoned correspondents (recurring nightmares, sensory flashbacks, and coping routines).

A Day No One Saw Coming

October 7 unfolds like a thriller with no safe exit: a producer’s 7:03 a.m. call; rocket streaks over Tel Aviv; a decision to head for Sderot; then a makeshift evacuation point where wounded civilians and soldiers pour in, many with bullet wounds rather than shrapnel. The realization lands: the border has been breached in dozens of places, and the IDF is not yet on scene. From there, Yingst records live as gunfights erupt, ambulances jam the road, and mothers lift limp children into waiting stretchers. He meets Ziv, an off-duty Be’eri resident who first tries to stop the cameras, then—upon seeing Trey’s photo with Benny Gantz—becomes a source, reciting names of kibbutzim under attack.

The book’s narrative method matters: rather than argue abstractly, Yingst shows you scenes—and the human beings inside them. A bearded officer dies on the pavement as paramedics pace in frustration. An Israeli policewoman, Corporal Mali Shoshana, battles rooftop attackers at the Sderot station, tossing a live grenade back down a stairwell and radioing a farewell to her son when she believes she’ll die. Meanwhile, texts from Gaza (from Nael, a longtime fixer turned U.S. resident visiting his parents) reveal a second vantage point: ER corridors at Shifa flooding with gunshot victims; one whispered report of an Israeli hostage appearing inside the hospital; later, bombarded neighborhoods and sleepless families trying to calculate survival.

The War in Two Theaters: Streets and Screens

If this book were only a dispatch from the front, it would already be urgent. But it insists you also reckon with the information war. Rumors and claims spiral as fast as rockets. Did Israel strike the al-Ahli hospital, killing hundreds? Yingst audits the evidence: no large crater; blast patterns matching a misfired rocket; video timestamps and metadata from a border soldier; still, a death toll he refuses to guess at. Were babies beheaded in Kfar Aza? A local TV report cites a soldier; days later, rescuers confirm brutal mutilations but not the viral number. Were Gazans blocked from evacuating? Yingst gathers a Hamas official’s denial, counters with audio and drone video of armed men turning civilians back, and keeps the record open where facts are incomplete. (For comparison, Peter Pomerantsev’s work on propaganda, or Janine di Giovanni’s on war ethics, highlight similar tensions.)

Why This Matters to You

You live in the blast radius of instant content. This book gives you habits to stay human: verify before you share, resist the seduction of total certainty, and hold two painful truths at once. Hamas committed a mass atrocity; thousands of Gazan civilians—men, women, and children—have also suffered, been displaced, or killed by Israel’s response. You meet specific people on both sides: Chen from Kfar Aza who watched militants kill her husband and eldest daughter, then resolved to protect her remaining children in tunnels and safe houses; Dr. Abdelwahab Abu Warda, a Gaza City surgeon who runs out of anesthesia and still operates; Mohammed Al Aloul, the journalist-father who loses four children in Al-Maghazi; and reservists like Lt. Col. Gilad Pasternak, who spends weeks fighting block by block and still calls families when IDF mistakes cost hostage lives.

Expect to learn how the first hours of failure shaped everything that followed; why Israel’s leadership (Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi, and a divided cabinet) struggled over timing, fronts, and the ground war; how evacuation orders collided with logistics, fear, and militant enforcement; how hostages shifted diplomacy and battlefield choices; and what it costs a reporter to keep showing up. The through-line is clear: clarity comes from specificity, and empathy requires proximity. If you want to be an informed citizen and a better consumer of wartime media, Black Saturday is a tough, necessary guide.

A Core Claim

“Two things can be true at once: the October 7 massacre was horrific; and innocent Palestinian lives must be protected.”

Yingst’s day begins with a jolt: a 7:03 a.m. phone call from producer Yonat Friling and the shock of interceptor trails over Tel Aviv. Within minutes, he secures approval from Fox News leadership to head south. That precise chain—decision, movement, documentation—sets the tone for the book: act fast, but choose your angles carefully. As you ride with him down Route 4, you see cars pulled over, families prone in the treeline, and Iron Dome puffs dotting the sky. The initial hunch—this must be blowback for a targeted Israeli operation—crumbles under real-time evidence: widespread sirens, videos of infiltrations, IDF spokespeople unable to quantify attackers.

A Triage Point Turns into a Truth Point

Blocked from Sderot’s main route by fighting, the team stages at a crossroads near Yad Mordechai. In twenty minutes, it becomes an impromptu triage station. Soldiers and civilians roll in with gunshot wounds; a bearded officer dies under a foil blanket; a Hamas body is dumped on a median. A man named Ziv first tries to stop the cameras, then feeds Yingst updates from kibbutzim group chats—Be’eri, Kfar Aza, Nirim—each a bright ember in a growing wildfire. This is where the scale reveals itself: not rocket shrapnel but rifle fire; not one incursion but dozens; not a headline, a catastrophe.

Inside Israel’s command bunker—the Kirya in Tel Aviv—Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi, and the head of Shin Bet are only just triangulating the chaos. Gallant’s working premise is grim and expansive: prepare for a multi-front war (Hezbollah in the north, Iran’s proxies across the region) even as the Gaza border collapses. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will later tell the nation, “We are at war.” In the field, the sentence has already been true for hours.

The Nova Festival and Kfar Aza: Faces in the Crowd

As the morning unfolds, another horror emerges: Hamas attackers have descended on the Tribe of Nova rave near Re’im. Paragliders, pickup trucks, and gunmen encircle thousands of partygoers. Videos proliferate: young Israelis sprint through plowed fields; others cower in a roadside shelter where grenades are tossed in. Survivors later recount sprinting from lemon groves to dairy farms, dodging ambushes, watching friends cut down (Aharon Sabag’s friend Daniel is killed by a grenade; young Noa Argamani is abducted on a motorcycle). Meanwhile in nearby Kfar Aza, Chen Almog-Goldstein crouches in a safe room as militants blow through the wall, shooting her husband Nadav in front of their children and later killing their daughter Yam. They will be taken to Gaza within hours—seven minutes’ drive; seven weeks to return.

A Reporter’s Choice: What to Show, What to Hold

If you’ve ever wondered how a correspondent decides what goes live, this chapter answers it. Yingst records voraciously for social and broadcast, yet draws hard lines: no identifiable victims until families are notified; no tactical details that could aid militants; no rumors presented as facts. He films a line of IDF Humvees heading to the fight and bumps fists with a friend, Itay, a combat medic who calls the day a balagan (mess). The juxtaposition matters: friendship splits the abstraction of “troops” into a person with a mother and a fiancée—someone you might meet at a bar the night before a war.

What You Can Take Away

When events escalate fast, your best compass is verified specificity—who, where, when, how known—and the humility to change your mind as new, credible details surface. Yingst models that habit in real time.

(Context: Dexter Filkins’s The Forever War similarly stitches together battlefield scenes to let readers derive the war’s logic; Yingst adds the real-time social feed dilemma that Filkins largely predated.)

Yingst’s day begins with a jolt: a 7:03 a.m. phone call from producer Yonat Friling and the shock of interceptor trails over Tel Aviv. Within minutes, he secures approval from Fox News leadership to head south. That precise chain—decision, movement, documentation—sets the tone for the book: act fast, but choose your angles carefully. As you ride with him down Route 4, you see cars pulled over, families prone in the treeline, and Iron Dome puffs dotting the sky. The initial hunch—this must be blowback for a targeted Israeli operation—crumbles under real-time evidence: widespread sirens, videos of infiltrations, IDF spokespeople unable to quantify attackers.

A Triage Point Turns into a Truth Point

Blocked from Sderot’s main route by fighting, the team stages at a crossroads near Yad Mordechai. In twenty minutes, it becomes an impromptu triage station. Soldiers and civilians roll in with gunshot wounds; a bearded officer dies under a foil blanket; a Hamas body is dumped on a median. A man named Ziv first tries to stop the cameras, then feeds Yingst updates from kibbutzim group chats—Be’eri, Kfar Aza, Nirim—each a bright ember in a growing wildfire. This is where the scale reveals itself: not rocket shrapnel but rifle fire; not one incursion but dozens; not a headline, a catastrophe.

Inside Israel’s command bunker—the Kirya in Tel Aviv—Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi, and the head of Shin Bet are only just triangulating the chaos. Gallant’s working premise is grim and expansive: prepare for a multi-front war (Hezbollah in the north, Iran’s proxies across the region) even as the Gaza border collapses. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will later tell the nation, “We are at war.” In the field, the sentence has already been true for hours.

The Nova Festival and Kfar Aza: Faces in the Crowd

As the morning unfolds, another horror emerges: Hamas attackers have descended on the Tribe of Nova rave near Re’im. Paragliders, pickup trucks, and gunmen encircle thousands of partygoers. Videos proliferate: young Israelis sprint through plowed fields; others cower in a roadside shelter where grenades are tossed in. Survivors later recount sprinting from lemon groves to dairy farms, dodging ambushes, watching friends cut down (Aharon Sabag’s friend Daniel is killed by a grenade; young Noa Argamani is abducted on a motorcycle). Meanwhile in nearby Kfar Aza, Chen Almog-Goldstein crouches in a safe room as militants blow through the wall, shooting her husband Nadav in front of their children and later killing their daughter Yam. They will be taken to Gaza within hours—seven minutes’ drive; seven weeks to return.

A Reporter’s Choice: What to Show, What to Hold

If you’ve ever wondered how a correspondent decides what goes live, this chapter answers it. Yingst records voraciously for social and broadcast, yet draws hard lines: no identifiable victims until families are notified; no tactical details that could aid militants; no rumors presented as facts. He films a line of IDF Humvees heading to the fight and bumps fists with a friend, Itay, a combat medic who calls the day a balagan (mess). The juxtaposition matters: friendship splits the abstraction of “troops” into a person with a mother and a fiancée—someone you might meet at a bar the night before a war.

What You Can Take Away

When events escalate fast, your best compass is verified specificity—who, where, when, how known—and the humility to change your mind as new, credible details surface. Yingst models that habit in real time.

(Context: Dexter Filkins’s The Forever War similarly stitches together battlefield scenes to let readers derive the war’s logic; Yingst adds the real-time social feed dilemma that Filkins largely predated.)

Black Saturday zooms into the places whose names now carry unbearable weight—Sderot, Kfar Aza, Be’eri, Nir Oz—and shows you the granular heroism and horror inside each. You’re not reading about abstract “border communities.” You’re walking with individuals who made near-impossible choices in first moments and long hours before help arrived.

Sderot Police Station: The Rooftop War

When a white pickup of Hamas fighters rolls into Sderot, Corporal Mali Shoshana—a single mother picking up an extra shift—sprints to the station roof as RPGs slam the building. Twice, waves of gunmen push up the stairwell. She breaks a door with her pistol and tosses a live grenade back toward attackers. Low on ammo and bleeding from a hand wound, she radios a message to her son in case she dies. The station is eventually bulldozed by Yamam counter-terror police to retake it. Days later, Yingst reports live as bodies are pulled from the rubble, and you can hear his voice break. It’s a rare on-air crack that tells you something words alone can’t.

Kfar Aza and the Seven Minutes to Gaza

At Kfar Aza, Chen’s family hides in a shelter whose door won’t lock. Militants blow through the house, shoot Nadav, and later kill their 20-year-old daughter, Yam. Then comes the car ride to Gaza. She tells the children their sister is gone, believing clarity is kinder than uncertainty. In Gaza, she’ll be forced into hijab, moved through apartments, mosques, and tunnels, and comfort other women who describe sexual assaults. When a supermarket firefight rages outside, guards shield her and the children with their own bodies: a moment of icy calculus—hostages as bargaining chips—inside a nightmare. Chen returns with a mission: tell the truth for women who cannot yet speak.

Be’eri’s Houses of Horror—and Complication

Be’eri, a kibbutz known for its gallery and peace activism, becomes a byword for massacre. Yingst enters with soldiers and sees kitchens frozen in time, floors red with dried blood, white body bags with running-shoe soles protruding. He also records an uncomfortable fact: in at least one case, Israeli tank fire during a chaotic rescue killed hostages as well as militants. Hadas Dagan—whose husband Adi died—describes trying to plug an arterial wound after tank rounds hit their home. An IDF probe ultimately cleared the tank commander, but the inclusion matters: it’s an honest book that refuses to sand down tragic complexities.

Nir Oz: “The Army Isn’t Coming”

Nir Oz, a 400-person kibbutz, loses one quarter of its residents to killing or kidnapping. Gil and Michal Shamir barricade in their saferoom, learn to breathe under melting paint as their house burns, and finally crawl from a cracked window when Hebrew voices arrive after 11 hours. Their son Rotem survives a shot that kills the family dog. Later, Yingst returns with Lt. Col. Gilad Pasternak to find safe-room doors stitched with bullet holes and blood trails into bedrooms. The soldiers show him Hamas manuals on taking hostages, live-streaming abductions, and sabotaging houses—grim evidence that shreds claims of spontaneous rampage.

(Comparison: Janine di Giovanni’s The Morning They Came for Us renders Syrian neighborhoods in similar specificity; Yingst adds the dual-embed perspective from both sides of a closed front.)

A Quiet Pattern

Volunteer first responders—kibbutz defense squads, neighbors with pistols, off-duty medics—bridged the fatal hours before organized forces arrived. Their stories warn you about resilience gaps in any crisis: plan for the unthinkable, or the unthinkable plans you.

Black Saturday zooms into the places whose names now carry unbearable weight—Sderot, Kfar Aza, Be’eri, Nir Oz—and shows you the granular heroism and horror inside each. You’re not reading about abstract “border communities.” You’re walking with individuals who made near-impossible choices in first moments and long hours before help arrived.

Sderot Police Station: The Rooftop War

When a white pickup of Hamas fighters rolls into Sderot, Corporal Mali Shoshana—a single mother picking up an extra shift—sprints to the station roof as RPGs slam the building. Twice, waves of gunmen push up the stairwell. She breaks a door with her pistol and tosses a live grenade back toward attackers. Low on ammo and bleeding from a hand wound, she radios a message to her son in case she dies. The station is eventually bulldozed by Yamam counter-terror police to retake it. Days later, Yingst reports live as bodies are pulled from the rubble, and you can hear his voice break. It’s a rare on-air crack that tells you something words alone can’t.

Kfar Aza and the Seven Minutes to Gaza

At Kfar Aza, Chen’s family hides in a shelter whose door won’t lock. Militants blow through the house, shoot Nadav, and later kill their 20-year-old daughter, Yam. Then comes the car ride to Gaza. She tells the children their sister is gone, believing clarity is kinder than uncertainty. In Gaza, she’ll be forced into hijab, moved through apartments, mosques, and tunnels, and comfort other women who describe sexual assaults. When a supermarket firefight rages outside, guards shield her and the children with their own bodies: a moment of icy calculus—hostages as bargaining chips—inside a nightmare. Chen returns with a mission: tell the truth for women who cannot yet speak.

Be’eri’s Houses of Horror—and Complication

Be’eri, a kibbutz known for its gallery and peace activism, becomes a byword for massacre. Yingst enters with soldiers and sees kitchens frozen in time, floors red with dried blood, white body bags with running-shoe soles protruding. He also records an uncomfortable fact: in at least one case, Israeli tank fire during a chaotic rescue killed hostages as well as militants. Hadas Dagan—whose husband Adi died—describes trying to plug an arterial wound after tank rounds hit their home. An IDF probe ultimately cleared the tank commander, but the inclusion matters: it’s an honest book that refuses to sand down tragic complexities.

Nir Oz: “The Army Isn’t Coming”

Nir Oz, a 400-person kibbutz, loses one quarter of its residents to killing or kidnapping. Gil and Michal Shamir barricade in their saferoom, learn to breathe under melting paint as their house burns, and finally crawl from a cracked window when Hebrew voices arrive after 11 hours. Their son Rotem survives a shot that kills the family dog. Later, Yingst returns with Lt. Col. Gilad Pasternak to find safe-room doors stitched with bullet holes and blood trails into bedrooms. The soldiers show him Hamas manuals on taking hostages, live-streaming abductions, and sabotaging houses—grim evidence that shreds claims of spontaneous rampage.

(Comparison: Janine di Giovanni’s The Morning They Came for Us renders Syrian neighborhoods in similar specificity; Yingst adds the dual-embed perspective from both sides of a closed front.)

A Quiet Pattern

Volunteer first responders—kibbutz defense squads, neighbors with pistols, off-duty medics—bridged the fatal hours before organized forces arrived. Their stories warn you about resilience gaps in any crisis: plan for the unthinkable, or the unthinkable plans you.

You can’t understand this war if you only stand on one side of the fence. Yingst keeps a lifeline to Gaza through Nael (a former Fox fixer), Dr. Abdelwahab Abu Warda (a Shifa ER surgeon), Raed Mousa (a UN eye doctor and father), and later, Mohammed Al Aloul (a journalist who loses four children in Al-Maghazi). Their messages put flesh on casualty counts: gunshot victims crowding corridors in the first hours; entire families packed in apartments with no electricity; ambulances unable to reach hospitals; mass graves dug on hospital grounds when morgues fail.

Shifa, Rantisi, and the Allegation of Dual-Use

The fiercest argument of the war centers on whether Hamas uses hospitals as cover. After weeks of IDF claims (and a 3D animation many found underwhelming), Yingst accepts a high-risk embed into Shifa—first at night, then by day—to see for himself. In the radiology building, Israeli forces show go-bags and weapons stashed near an MRI suite; outside, he films Palestinian civilians—an elderly woman and a girl in pink with a teddy bear—sheltering amid soldiers. Later, the IDF unveils a tunnel adjacent to Shifa’s internal medicine building (built without a direct entrance from the hospital, they say) and leads reporters into a concrete-lined, single-file passage with tiled rooms. The evidence suggests a subterranean network consistent with long-documented Hamas tactics; it does not negate the suffering of Shifa’s legitimate patients.

Civilians Calculating Survival

Raed’s family leaves Gaza City when UN contacts warn of coming strikes; they head south to Rafah, living with dozens of relatives in one house. He times movement to windows when fewer bombs fall; he uses his status to find marginal safety for his kids. Mohammed hears a friend say “call your family—bombing next to them,” then spends a night phoning hospitals to discover which of his children lived. These are the choices that get abstracted into “compliance with evacuation orders.” On the ground, you weigh rumors, fuel, elders who refuse to move (recalling 1948), armed men at checkpoints, and the odds of being bombed on the road.

Tunnels as Strategy, and as Psyche

By book’s end, Yingst has crawled multiple tunnel systems, including an extensive lattice beneath Khan Younis with narrow cells where hostages were held. For Hamas, tunnels are the backbone of survival and surprise; for families on both sides, they are nightmares with concrete ribs—places where time dissolves, air is rationed, and the difference between military target and civilian shield is argued after the fact. (Note: Scholars of urban warfare, such as David Kilcullen, have long warned that subterranean cities multiply fog-of-war errors and civilian risk.)

Hard Truth

Holding two truths—Hamas abuses civilian infrastructure; civilians still deserve unambiguous protection—doesn’t dilute either. It keeps your moral vision from collapsing into partisanship.

You can’t understand this war if you only stand on one side of the fence. Yingst keeps a lifeline to Gaza through Nael (a former Fox fixer), Dr. Abdelwahab Abu Warda (a Shifa ER surgeon), Raed Mousa (a UN eye doctor and father), and later, Mohammed Al Aloul (a journalist who loses four children in Al-Maghazi). Their messages put flesh on casualty counts: gunshot victims crowding corridors in the first hours; entire families packed in apartments with no electricity; ambulances unable to reach hospitals; mass graves dug on hospital grounds when morgues fail.

Shifa, Rantisi, and the Allegation of Dual-Use

The fiercest argument of the war centers on whether Hamas uses hospitals as cover. After weeks of IDF claims (and a 3D animation many found underwhelming), Yingst accepts a high-risk embed into Shifa—first at night, then by day—to see for himself. In the radiology building, Israeli forces show go-bags and weapons stashed near an MRI suite; outside, he films Palestinian civilians—an elderly woman and a girl in pink with a teddy bear—sheltering amid soldiers. Later, the IDF unveils a tunnel adjacent to Shifa’s internal medicine building (built without a direct entrance from the hospital, they say) and leads reporters into a concrete-lined, single-file passage with tiled rooms. The evidence suggests a subterranean network consistent with long-documented Hamas tactics; it does not negate the suffering of Shifa’s legitimate patients.

Civilians Calculating Survival

Raed’s family leaves Gaza City when UN contacts warn of coming strikes; they head south to Rafah, living with dozens of relatives in one house. He times movement to windows when fewer bombs fall; he uses his status to find marginal safety for his kids. Mohammed hears a friend say “call your family—bombing next to them,” then spends a night phoning hospitals to discover which of his children lived. These are the choices that get abstracted into “compliance with evacuation orders.” On the ground, you weigh rumors, fuel, elders who refuse to move (recalling 1948), armed men at checkpoints, and the odds of being bombed on the road.

Tunnels as Strategy, and as Psyche

By book’s end, Yingst has crawled multiple tunnel systems, including an extensive lattice beneath Khan Younis with narrow cells where hostages were held. For Hamas, tunnels are the backbone of survival and surprise; for families on both sides, they are nightmares with concrete ribs—places where time dissolves, air is rationed, and the difference between military target and civilian shield is argued after the fact. (Note: Scholars of urban warfare, such as David Kilcullen, have long warned that subterranean cities multiply fog-of-war errors and civilian risk.)

Hard Truth

Holding two truths—Hamas abuses civilian infrastructure; civilians still deserve unambiguous protection—doesn’t dilute either. It keeps your moral vision from collapsing into partisanship.

If the street war runs on explosives, the narrative war runs on speed. Yingst shows you how claims metastasize—and how to resist them. He treats every viral allegation as a case study: gather primary footage, match timestamps, triangulate with trusted sources on both sides, and be explicit where uncertainty remains. The goal isn’t to be first; it’s to be right enough to keep faith with victims and viewers alike.

Case 1: The Gaza Hospital Explosion

Within minutes of the blast at al-Ahli hospital, claims of an Israeli airstrike killing “hundreds” dominate feeds and streets. Yingst refrains. A Gaza source sends fresh video: no deep crater, burn patterns consistent with a misfired rocket, and damage centered in a parking lot. A U.S. intelligence contact concurs on the physics; IDF later releases intercepted audio; skepticism persists in Arab capitals. Yingst reports what he can verify and doesn’t state a body count. The choice matters: when you leave room for correction, you model intellectual honesty for an inflamed audience.

Case 2: Beheaded Babies

A local TV report from Kfar Aza cites “40 beheaded babies”; global outlets repeat it; the number dissolves under scrutiny. Rescuers later document mutilations of children and adults, but not that figure. Yingst’s move: separate confirmed brutality from unverified numbers and keep both on record. It’s how you prevent justified rage from hitching a ride on a falsehood—and giving denialists an opening.

Case 3: Evacuation Blockades

A senior Hamas official (Dr. Basem Naim) tells Yingst, on camera, it’s “logistically impossible” that Hamas blocks evacuations. Meanwhile, IDF releases drone footage and a transcript of a call with a Gazan resident describing Hamas men shooting at people on Salah al-Din road. Yingst includes both, labels sources, and updates as corroboration appears. He neither launders claims nor treats official denials as dispositive. He leaves a trail you can audit.

The Ethics of Showing Pain

A through-line here is restraint: Yingst avoids face-identifiable footage before next-of-kin notification; he warns viewers before graphic segments; he films for the record even when he can’t air it yet. He’s also candid about the pressure: mass brigading on TikTok; death threats; being accused by both sides of bias—sometimes for the same segment. The counter is discipline: label what’s known, give sources, avoid absolutes.

(Compare: Peter Pomerantsev’s Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible dissects how narratives get bent; Yingst shows you how to straighten your lens under fire.)

A Practical Rule for You

Before you share a wartime clip: ask who filmed it, when, where, how we know, and who benefits if it’s true (or if it’s false). If those answers are thin, wait.

If the street war runs on explosives, the narrative war runs on speed. Yingst shows you how claims metastasize—and how to resist them. He treats every viral allegation as a case study: gather primary footage, match timestamps, triangulate with trusted sources on both sides, and be explicit where uncertainty remains. The goal isn’t to be first; it’s to be right enough to keep faith with victims and viewers alike.

Case 1: The Gaza Hospital Explosion

Within minutes of the blast at al-Ahli hospital, claims of an Israeli airstrike killing “hundreds” dominate feeds and streets. Yingst refrains. A Gaza source sends fresh video: no deep crater, burn patterns consistent with a misfired rocket, and damage centered in a parking lot. A U.S. intelligence contact concurs on the physics; IDF later releases intercepted audio; skepticism persists in Arab capitals. Yingst reports what he can verify and doesn’t state a body count. The choice matters: when you leave room for correction, you model intellectual honesty for an inflamed audience.

Case 2: Beheaded Babies

A local TV report from Kfar Aza cites “40 beheaded babies”; global outlets repeat it; the number dissolves under scrutiny. Rescuers later document mutilations of children and adults, but not that figure. Yingst’s move: separate confirmed brutality from unverified numbers and keep both on record. It’s how you prevent justified rage from hitching a ride on a falsehood—and giving denialists an opening.

Case 3: Evacuation Blockades

A senior Hamas official (Dr. Basem Naim) tells Yingst, on camera, it’s “logistically impossible” that Hamas blocks evacuations. Meanwhile, IDF releases drone footage and a transcript of a call with a Gazan resident describing Hamas men shooting at people on Salah al-Din road. Yingst includes both, labels sources, and updates as corroboration appears. He neither launders claims nor treats official denials as dispositive. He leaves a trail you can audit.

The Ethics of Showing Pain

A through-line here is restraint: Yingst avoids face-identifiable footage before next-of-kin notification; he warns viewers before graphic segments; he films for the record even when he can’t air it yet. He’s also candid about the pressure: mass brigading on TikTok; death threats; being accused by both sides of bias—sometimes for the same segment. The counter is discipline: label what’s known, give sources, avoid absolutes.

(Compare: Peter Pomerantsev’s Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible dissects how narratives get bent; Yingst shows you how to straighten your lens under fire.)

A Practical Rule for You

Before you share a wartime clip: ask who filmed it, when, where, how we know, and who benefits if it’s true (or if it’s false). If those answers are thin, wait.

The book also serves as a primer on Israeli decision-making under shock. You watch a leadership class juggle multiple clocks: political (cabinet consensus), diplomatic (U.S. deterrence and weapons flows), military (reserve mobilization, urban doctrine), and humanitarian (evacuations and aid corridors). Defense Minister Yoav Gallant emerges as the blunt instrument: push north to deter Hezbollah; push into Gaza now; accept months of fighting. The cabinet hesitates—wary of casualties and hostages used as human shields. An October 11 plan to preemptively hit Hezbollah is reportedly airborne when President Biden calls and Netanyahu aborts. Strategic patience, or a missed deterrence window? The book doesn’t adjudicate; it shows the steps.

Mobilization and the Beachhead Plan

Three hundred thousand reservists flood bases; highways turn into parking lots. On October 27, as Yingst reports from a hill in Sderot, shock-and-awe strikes mark the transition to ground operations. Gallant’s concept: punch in from the north and east, rush a westward cut to the Mediterranean, bisect the strip, and grind block by block into Gaza City. Yingst embeds with Lt. Col. Gilad Pasternak’s 828th Brigade and rides in an APC into Juhor ad Dik. Upstairs, a rooftop gunfight crackles; downstairs, soldiers read, eat tuna and corn, or sleep between contacts. The war looks like a paradox: terror and tedium alternating in 20-minute cycles.

Urban War’s Moral Math

Pasternak is candid: booby-trapped houses, anti-tank ambushes, tunnels with “hundreds of openings”—and civilians largely evacuated from immediate zones, he says. Still, even careful doctrine (roof “knocks,” maps, text alerts) clashes with reality: older residents can’t move; some choose not to; militants exploit both. Yingst includes the worst-case: three hostages—among them the red-haired drummer Yotam Haim—mistakenly shot by IDF soldiers in Shejaiya after emerging with a makeshift white flag. Gallant calls families himself and orders a lessons-learned review. The scene underlines a maxim: urban combat is a machine built to fail in human ways.

The Regional Fuse

While Gaza dominates, the north simmers. Hezbollah rockets escalate; a U.S. carrier group moves into the Med; later, Iran launches a historic drone-and-missile swarm, mostly intercepted by a U.S.-led coalition. The map of this war is bigger than your phone screen. Black Saturday keeps that in view without losing the individual frame.

(Context: Michael Walzer’s Just and Unjust Wars offers a framework for weighing military necessity and civilian immunity; Yingst grounds those debates in specific doors, stairwells, and alleys.)

The book also serves as a primer on Israeli decision-making under shock. You watch a leadership class juggle multiple clocks: political (cabinet consensus), diplomatic (U.S. deterrence and weapons flows), military (reserve mobilization, urban doctrine), and humanitarian (evacuations and aid corridors). Defense Minister Yoav Gallant emerges as the blunt instrument: push north to deter Hezbollah; push into Gaza now; accept months of fighting. The cabinet hesitates—wary of casualties and hostages used as human shields. An October 11 plan to preemptively hit Hezbollah is reportedly airborne when President Biden calls and Netanyahu aborts. Strategic patience, or a missed deterrence window? The book doesn’t adjudicate; it shows the steps.

Mobilization and the Beachhead Plan

Three hundred thousand reservists flood bases; highways turn into parking lots. On October 27, as Yingst reports from a hill in Sderot, shock-and-awe strikes mark the transition to ground operations. Gallant’s concept: punch in from the north and east, rush a westward cut to the Mediterranean, bisect the strip, and grind block by block into Gaza City. Yingst embeds with Lt. Col. Gilad Pasternak’s 828th Brigade and rides in an APC into Juhor ad Dik. Upstairs, a rooftop gunfight crackles; downstairs, soldiers read, eat tuna and corn, or sleep between contacts. The war looks like a paradox: terror and tedium alternating in 20-minute cycles.

Urban War’s Moral Math

Pasternak is candid: booby-trapped houses, anti-tank ambushes, tunnels with “hundreds of openings”—and civilians largely evacuated from immediate zones, he says. Still, even careful doctrine (roof “knocks,” maps, text alerts) clashes with reality: older residents can’t move; some choose not to; militants exploit both. Yingst includes the worst-case: three hostages—among them the red-haired drummer Yotam Haim—mistakenly shot by IDF soldiers in Shejaiya after emerging with a makeshift white flag. Gallant calls families himself and orders a lessons-learned review. The scene underlines a maxim: urban combat is a machine built to fail in human ways.

The Regional Fuse

While Gaza dominates, the north simmers. Hezbollah rockets escalate; a U.S. carrier group moves into the Med; later, Iran launches a historic drone-and-missile swarm, mostly intercepted by a U.S.-led coalition. The map of this war is bigger than your phone screen. Black Saturday keeps that in view without losing the individual frame.

(Context: Michael Walzer’s Just and Unjust Wars offers a framework for weighing military necessity and civilian immunity; Yingst grounds those debates in specific doors, stairwells, and alleys.)

If policy is a chessboard, hostages are the piece no rulebook anticipates. They drive negotiations, shape operational timelines, and haunt every urban contact. Yingst puts names and sequences to the stories you only glimpsed in headlines—and shows how releases alternated hope with heartbreak.

Abduction Stories You Can’t Unread

Shani Goren is dragged from her Nir Oz shelter after a dud grenade lands beside her; she’s paraded past Gazans looting her home (even her dog, led away on a rope). A helicopter strafes the tuk-tuk carrying her and neighbors to the fence, killing Doron’s mother Efrat and leaving Shani spattered with metal fragments. In Gaza, she’s moved from a farmhouse to hospital rooms (Nasser), sometimes overseen by a “haver”—a Hebrew-speaking man who’d once worked inside Israel—who promises medical dressings and five cigarettes a day. She survives by making games for the children and by one act of deliberate hope: telling boys she will look after them, then demanding guards keep boys (Eitan and Erez) in her room to honor that promise. Fifty-five days later, she’s blindfolded and marched deep into tunnels, then back to Nasser for a chaotic exchange staged for cameras.

Cease-fire, Lists, and Noise

Qatar’s Majed al-Ansari announces a cease-fire predicated on lists; thirteen Israeli women and children and twelve Thai workers are handed to the Red Cross. Buses in the West Bank disgorge Palestinian detainees to chants and Hamas flags. For every reunion clip shared in Tel Aviv or Ramallah, there are families refreshing WhatsApp waiting for a name not on the day’s roster—Noa Argamani among them until a later rescue operation. Yingst films ambulances entering Hatzerim Airbase, hedges every sentence with “if confirmed,” and still manages to show joy without losing precision.

The Weight of Mistakes

Not all hostage outcomes hinge on diplomacy. In Shejaiya, three hostages approach IDF positions, shirtless with a white cloth; a sniper kills two, a third shouts in Hebrew and is shot while reappearing. Lt. Col. Pasternak’s unit sends bodies for identification; dread becomes certainty; Gallant phones the families. You will want a villain; instead you get a chain of fear-shaped micro-decisions in a place designed to confuse friend and foe. That’s the point: policies made in “front offices” will always be implemented by young men and women squinting into powder smoke.

How to Read Hostage News

Track three threads at once: negotiations (mediators, lists), operations (rescues, deconfliction rules), and propaganda (staged videos, choreographed handoffs). Expect all three to collide.

If policy is a chessboard, hostages are the piece no rulebook anticipates. They drive negotiations, shape operational timelines, and haunt every urban contact. Yingst puts names and sequences to the stories you only glimpsed in headlines—and shows how releases alternated hope with heartbreak.

Abduction Stories You Can’t Unread

Shani Goren is dragged from her Nir Oz shelter after a dud grenade lands beside her; she’s paraded past Gazans looting her home (even her dog, led away on a rope). A helicopter strafes the tuk-tuk carrying her and neighbors to the fence, killing Doron’s mother Efrat and leaving Shani spattered with metal fragments. In Gaza, she’s moved from a farmhouse to hospital rooms (Nasser), sometimes overseen by a “haver”—a Hebrew-speaking man who’d once worked inside Israel—who promises medical dressings and five cigarettes a day. She survives by making games for the children and by one act of deliberate hope: telling boys she will look after them, then demanding guards keep boys (Eitan and Erez) in her room to honor that promise. Fifty-five days later, she’s blindfolded and marched deep into tunnels, then back to Nasser for a chaotic exchange staged for cameras.

Cease-fire, Lists, and Noise

Qatar’s Majed al-Ansari announces a cease-fire predicated on lists; thirteen Israeli women and children and twelve Thai workers are handed to the Red Cross. Buses in the West Bank disgorge Palestinian detainees to chants and Hamas flags. For every reunion clip shared in Tel Aviv or Ramallah, there are families refreshing WhatsApp waiting for a name not on the day’s roster—Noa Argamani among them until a later rescue operation. Yingst films ambulances entering Hatzerim Airbase, hedges every sentence with “if confirmed,” and still manages to show joy without losing precision.

The Weight of Mistakes

Not all hostage outcomes hinge on diplomacy. In Shejaiya, three hostages approach IDF positions, shirtless with a white cloth; a sniper kills two, a third shouts in Hebrew and is shot while reappearing. Lt. Col. Pasternak’s unit sends bodies for identification; dread becomes certainty; Gallant phones the families. You will want a villain; instead you get a chain of fear-shaped micro-decisions in a place designed to confuse friend and foe. That’s the point: policies made in “front offices” will always be implemented by young men and women squinting into powder smoke.

How to Read Hostage News

Track three threads at once: negotiations (mediators, lists), operations (rescues, deconfliction rules), and propaganda (staged videos, choreographed handoffs). Expect all three to collide.

Beneath the blast maps is a human operating system: how a journalist thinks, decides, and pays the cost. Yingst is frank about his rituals and his breaking points. He repeats one mantra to his team—momentum—because focus is a survival skill. He refuses to buckle a Humvee seatbelt in Gaza (quicker to bail if ambushed). He keeps a vest by the TV at home. He texts his dad before every plunge and after every near-miss.

Courage Isn’t Recklessness

You see restraint as courage. He declines to go live from unsafe positions when the LiveU backpack isn’t locking signal. He talks a hotheaded policeman through letting him film by showing a photo with Benny Gantz. He argues with IDF censors to air what matters without compromising unit security. And when the embed to Shifa turns sketchy—a promised APC out, replaced by open-bed Humvees at night through uncleared streets—he registers the danger, rides anyway, and later resolves (briefly) to pause embeds. When his dad texts, “Risk-reward doesn’t calculate anymore,” he knows it lands because it comes from someone who’s held the camera beside him in Ukraine and Gaza.

PTSD, Said Plainly

The symptoms are specific and spare of self-pity: hearing sirens that aren’t there; smelling barbecue and being hurled back to the odor of burned flesh in Be’eri; frozen in front of a hotel trash can because a coffee stain looks like a pooled kitchen floor. He avoids the tragic arc of war correspondents lost to alcohol by building habits: cold plunges, espresso, walks, breathwork, gym time, motivational videos. Still, the cost remains. When he breaks on-air describing bodies piled in a pickup, you can tell it’s not performative.

Teams Save Lives

No one goes alone. Producer Yonat sources embeds and evacuation maps while checking on her parents in the south. Cameraman Yaniv shoulders and shoots in gunfights, shields Yingst during barrages, and cracks a quiet “achi” (brother) when they need to breathe. Engineer Yoav keeps the gear (and sometimes the crew car) running while fearing for his brother trapped in Nir Oz. Security lead Sean—calm, medic-trained, Afghan-tested—reads terrain, calls “mines,” and tells Trey when an APC’s noise is worth the risk over a soft-skinned van. You come away grateful for professionals who make courage a team sport.

(Compare: Marie Colvin’s dispatches emphasized bearing witness as duty; Yingst adds the digital triage and mental hygiene needed to last in an always-on war.)

A Reader’s Rule

Protect the people who protect your right to know. Support press freedom, push back on calls to criminalize coverage you dislike, and extend empathy to the humans behind the camera.

Beneath the blast maps is a human operating system: how a journalist thinks, decides, and pays the cost. Yingst is frank about his rituals and his breaking points. He repeats one mantra to his team—momentum—because focus is a survival skill. He refuses to buckle a Humvee seatbelt in Gaza (quicker to bail if ambushed). He keeps a vest by the TV at home. He texts his dad before every plunge and after every near-miss.

Courage Isn’t Recklessness

You see restraint as courage. He declines to go live from unsafe positions when the LiveU backpack isn’t locking signal. He talks a hotheaded policeman through letting him film by showing a photo with Benny Gantz. He argues with IDF censors to air what matters without compromising unit security. And when the embed to Shifa turns sketchy—a promised APC out, replaced by open-bed Humvees at night through uncleared streets—he registers the danger, rides anyway, and later resolves (briefly) to pause embeds. When his dad texts, “Risk-reward doesn’t calculate anymore,” he knows it lands because it comes from someone who’s held the camera beside him in Ukraine and Gaza.

PTSD, Said Plainly

The symptoms are specific and spare of self-pity: hearing sirens that aren’t there; smelling barbecue and being hurled back to the odor of burned flesh in Be’eri; frozen in front of a hotel trash can because a coffee stain looks like a pooled kitchen floor. He avoids the tragic arc of war correspondents lost to alcohol by building habits: cold plunges, espresso, walks, breathwork, gym time, motivational videos. Still, the cost remains. When he breaks on-air describing bodies piled in a pickup, you can tell it’s not performative.

Teams Save Lives

No one goes alone. Producer Yonat sources embeds and evacuation maps while checking on her parents in the south. Cameraman Yaniv shoulders and shoots in gunfights, shields Yingst during barrages, and cracks a quiet “achi” (brother) when they need to breathe. Engineer Yoav keeps the gear (and sometimes the crew car) running while fearing for his brother trapped in Nir Oz. Security lead Sean—calm, medic-trained, Afghan-tested—reads terrain, calls “mines,” and tells Trey when an APC’s noise is worth the risk over a soft-skinned van. You come away grateful for professionals who make courage a team sport.

(Compare: Marie Colvin’s dispatches emphasized bearing witness as duty; Yingst adds the digital triage and mental hygiene needed to last in an always-on war.)

A Reader’s Rule

Protect the people who protect your right to know. Support press freedom, push back on calls to criminalize coverage you dislike, and extend empathy to the humans behind the camera.

The final gift of Black Saturday is practical: it teaches you how to consume war news without losing your head or your heart. Think of it as your checklist for the next viral video—or for the next time a friend texts you a clip with “unbelievable!!!”

Hold Dual Truths Without Numbing Out

Two things can be true at once, and both demand action: Hamas conducted a mass atrocity on October 7; thousands of Gazan civilians have since suffered and died in Israeli bombardments. If you can only hold one, you’re not seeing clearly; if you hold neither, you’re hiding. Practice saying, “Yes, and…” rather than “Either, or…”

Audit the Clip

Before you share: Who shot it? When? Where? How do we know? Who amplified it first? Who benefits if it’s true—or false? (This mirrors techniques in Bellingcat investigations; Yingst models it for live broadcast.) If answers are thin, don’t lend your account to a psychological operation.

Ask What’s Off Camera

Evacuation orders look clear on a map; on the ground, an 85-year-old refuses to leave the house she was forced from in 1948; a mother waits for a text from a consulate; an armed group checks IDs on a road you’ve never driven. Push yourself to imagine the friction embedded in simple sentences.

Center Specific People

Remember names. Mali on the Sderot roof; Chen and her children in a supermarket firefight; Dr. Abu Warda at Shifa; Mohammed in Al-Maghazi; Lt. Col. Pasternak in Juhor ad Dik; Yotam and Noa among the hostages. When you argue policy, picture a kitchen in Be’eri or a corridor in Shifa. Policy that forgets kitchens and corridors rarely helps people who live in them.

Protect Your Own Mental Health

Compassion fatigue is real. Borrow Yingst’s tools: limit doomscrolling, interleave hard segments with a walk, breathe before bed, use a cold rinse to reset, phone a friend. Caring for your nervous system isn’t avoidance; it’s maintenance so you can keep caring tomorrow.

Action You Can Take

Support credible outlets; donate to medical NGOs on both sides; write representatives urging protection of civilians and journalists; resist dehumanizing language in your circles. Small braces hold big structures.

The final gift of Black Saturday is practical: it teaches you how to consume war news without losing your head or your heart. Think of it as your checklist for the next viral video—or for the next time a friend texts you a clip with “unbelievable!!!”

Hold Dual Truths Without Numbing Out

Two things can be true at once, and both demand action: Hamas conducted a mass atrocity on October 7; thousands of Gazan civilians have since suffered and died in Israeli bombardments. If you can only hold one, you’re not seeing clearly; if you hold neither, you’re hiding. Practice saying, “Yes, and…” rather than “Either, or…”

Audit the Clip

Before you share: Who shot it? When? Where? How do we know? Who amplified it first? Who benefits if it’s true—or false? (This mirrors techniques in Bellingcat investigations; Yingst models it for live broadcast.) If answers are thin, don’t lend your account to a psychological operation.

Ask What’s Off Camera

Evacuation orders look clear on a map; on the ground, an 85-year-old refuses to leave the house she was forced from in 1948; a mother waits for a text from a consulate; an armed group checks IDs on a road you’ve never driven. Push yourself to imagine the friction embedded in simple sentences.

Center Specific People

Remember names. Mali on the Sderot roof; Chen and her children in a supermarket firefight; Dr. Abu Warda at Shifa; Mohammed in Al-Maghazi; Lt. Col. Pasternak in Juhor ad Dik; Yotam and Noa among the hostages. When you argue policy, picture a kitchen in Be’eri or a corridor in Shifa. Policy that forgets kitchens and corridors rarely helps people who live in them.

Protect Your Own Mental Health

Compassion fatigue is real. Borrow Yingst’s tools: limit doomscrolling, interleave hard segments with a walk, breathe before bed, use a cold rinse to reset, phone a friend. Caring for your nervous system isn’t avoidance; it’s maintenance so you can keep caring tomorrow.

Action You Can Take

Support credible outlets; donate to medical NGOs on both sides; write representatives urging protection of civilians and journalists; resist dehumanizing language in your circles. Small braces hold big structures.