This is CBS Eye on the World.

Here's John Batchelor.

I welcome Seth Fransman of the Jerusalem Post-war correspondent,

of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies,

and the author of The very helpful new book,

The October 7 War, Israel's Battle for Security in Gaza, just published.

I recommend for those of you who've lived the war as I have,

and yet seeing it written down and broken into very clear paragraphs with names attached helps a deal remember

what we've been through for nearly a year. Seth, congratulations, and a very good evening to you,

and I take you immediately to the evening of October 7th. I'm sure it's burned in your memory.

You drove as fast as you could to Gaza, knowing that there was chaos in some

fashion. You come to a police checkpoint. You stop your car, you get out, and there's a, I believe,

blue car in the middle of a four-lane highway, and there's a sack next to it. What did you

find, Seth, and what are your memories of that moment? Good evening to you.

Well, good evening to you. So, yeah, that day was the, it was the evening of the first day of the war.

So the war had been going on at that point for about 12 hours or so. It was going to be sunset.

And I tried to get down to the, you know, Gaza border as fast as possible. So I driven past

some other police checkpoints near Stero, which was closed off because there were terrorists there.

So I got to a place that was south of the city of Ashkelon, this highway, it's four or five lanes

wide. And that highway goes directly towards, towards Gaza.

There's just several Israeli communities next to it.

Like, yeah, I'm mortified.

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