S8 Ep295: THE HORROR OF OCTOBER 7 AND THE ORIGINS OF HAMAS Colleague Seth Frantzman. Seth Frantzman recounts his harrowing experience on the evening of October 7, discovering a body on the road to Gaza, symbolizing the chaos of the initial invasion. The conversatio

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John Batchelor

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🗓️ 10 January 2026

⏱️ 10 minutes

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Summary

THE HORROR OF OCTOBER 7 AND THE ORIGINS OF HAMAS Colleague Seth Frantzman. Seth Frantzmanrecounts his harrowing experience on the evening of October 7, discovering a body on the road to Gaza, symbolizing the chaos of the initial invasion. The conversation shifts to the historical origins of Hamas, founded by Ahmed Yassin during the First Intifada as an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood. Frantzman describes Hamas as evolving from a religious movement into a "terrorist mafia" known for internal brutality and killing collaborators. Key figures like Yahya Sinwarare discussed, noting his release from Israeli prison during the 2011 Gilad Shalit exchange. OCTOBER 7 WAR BY SETH FRANTZMAN NUMBER 1
1850 MASADA

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is CBS Eye on the World.
0:08.5	Here's John Batchelor.
0:11.5	I welcome Seth Fransman of the Jerusalem Post-war correspondent,
0:16.8	of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies,
0:19.2	and the author of The very helpful new book,
0:22.8	The October 7 War, Israel's Battle for Security in Gaza, just published.
0:28.6	I recommend for those of you who've lived the war as I have,
0:32.6	and yet seeing it written down and broken into very clear paragraphs with names attached helps a deal remember
0:39.2	what we've been through for nearly a year. Seth, congratulations, and a very good evening to you,
0:44.9	and I take you immediately to the evening of October 7th. I'm sure it's burned in your memory.
0:50.9	You drove as fast as you could to Gaza, knowing that there was chaos in some
0:55.7	fashion. You come to a police checkpoint. You stop your car, you get out, and there's a, I believe,
1:02.4	blue car in the middle of a four-lane highway, and there's a sack next to it. What did you
1:07.6	find, Seth, and what are your memories of that moment? Good evening to you.
1:12.8	Well, good evening to you. So, yeah, that day was the, it was the evening of the first day of the war.
1:18.0	So the war had been going on at that point for about 12 hours or so. It was going to be sunset.
1:24.6	And I tried to get down to the, you know, Gaza border as fast as possible. So I driven past
1:29.4	some other police checkpoints near Stero, which was closed off because there were terrorists there.
1:34.2	So I got to a place that was south of the city of Ashkelon, this highway, it's four or five lanes
1:41.0	wide. And that highway goes directly towards, towards Gaza.
1:46.2	There's just several Israeli communities next to it.
1:48.6	Like, yeah, I'm mortified.
	...

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