Lesley Stahl: "On a knife's point" one year after October 7th

One year ago today, Hamas militants stormed across the border of Gaza. 

In communities along the border and at a music festival, they killed more than 1,200 Israelis, raped and sexually assaulted women, and took more than 250 people into Gaza as hostages. 

60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl said the pain of that day is still felt amongst Israelis and will be for me some time.

"It traumatized the Israeli population, and I think they're still suffering from it," she said. 

Now, the war in Gaza that followed rages on. Over 41,000 Palestinians have lost their lives. The Israeli death toll is about 1,500. But the battlefront has now expanded to include Lebanon, Yemen, and Iran. 

"The United States has tried so hard not to allow this to happen…the war has expanded, deepened, and escalated," Stahl explained. 

In an interview with 60 Minutes Overtime, Stahl reflected on the events of Oct. 7, her reporting in Israel over the last year, and the expanding war that has brought the Middle East to a "knife's point." 

Oct. 7, 2023

In the days that followed the Oct. 7 attacks, Lesley Stahl and 60 Minutes producers Shachar Bar-On and Jinsol Jung reported from Israel.

They spoke to Amir and Miri Tibon, residents of Nahal Oz. They had hidden in a safe room with their children while Hamas militants rampaged through their kibbutz.

"It's a moment I will never forget, when we started hearing the automatic gunfire. And we looked at each other and we just both had the same look of horror," Amir said.

"We heard the Arabic. I'm like, 'Amir, they're here,' Miri told Stahl. 

The 60 Minutes team also met Bar and Lior Matsner, survivors of the massacre at the Nova music festival. 

They tried to flee in their car but had to abandon it and hide under dead leaves until help arrived. 

They told Stahl that Israel would never be the same again, and that they wanted to move to another country with their two children. 

"It was a surprise. Israeli intelligence… didn't see it coming, even though there were warning signs. The army wasn't ready. It was a Jewish holiday, so a lot of soldiers were not at their posts," Stahl told Overtime. 

"It was a total massacre. Israelis say it's the worst massacre of Jews anywhere since the Holocaust."

In December of 2023, Stahl interviewed Alon Gat, who was abducted by Hamas militants on Oct. 7 along with his wife, Yarden, and daughter. The militants also shot and killed his mother.

He and his daughter managed to escape. His wife was held hostage for 54 days and eventually freed in a prisoner swap. But another family member was taken that day and remained in captivity at the time of the interview: Alon's older sister Carmel. 

Alon described the agony of not knowing what was happening to her sister and the other hostages. 

"I'm scared for…Carmel and for all the other hostages. I'm scared that something will happen to them— every day, every second."

Sadly, Alon's sister Carmel was executed by Hamas, along with five other Israeli captives, after nearly 330 days in captivity.

"It was very painful because… her family expected that she would be coming out in what they thought would be [another] imminent prisoner swap," Stahl said. 

Today, 100 of the 250 hostages are believed to remain in Hamas captivity. But Israelis fear only half of them are still alive.

War in Gaza

Almost immediately after the Oct. 7 attacks, Israel began an assault on the Gaza strip. The war is still ongoing one year later.

Now, as the war enters its second year, more than 41,000 Palestinians have lost their lives in Gaza. Many more have lost their homes. The Israeli death toll is about 1,500.

"There've been charges of indiscriminate bombing [and] terrible pictures coming out of Gaza, of children being killed and maimed. This has hurt Israel's image around the world," Stahl told 60 Minutes Overtime.

In February, 60 Minutes correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi interviewed an American doctor, Dr. Nahreen Ahmed, the former medical director of MedGlobal, who worked at Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza and had just finished a two-week stretch. 

Dr. Ahmed told Alfonsi that she would see between three or four waves of mass casualties on any given night and noted that supply shortages made treating patients difficult, sometimes impossible.

"A regular day for me was seeing children with shrapnel injuries I have never in my life seen before, with traumatic brain injury, death happening in a fully treatable situation because the supplies are not available," she told Alfonsi. 

The Palestinian Ministry of Health estimates that women and children make up a majority of the over 41,000 people killed in Gaza since October 7th.

Hezbollah

On an almost daily basis in the months following Oct. 7, Iran-backed Hezbollah fighters fired rockets and sent explosive drones into Israeli territory, and the Israeli military fired back into Lebanon.

Israeli residents near the border, more than 60,000 people, have evacuated the area for their safety. Residents in southern Lebanon also evacuated as the fighting intensified. 

In April, Stahl and a 60 Minutes team traveled to northern Israel and reported from these deserted communities. 

The town of Metula has almost been completely abandoned. But a few residents, like the town's mayor and others, have stayed behind to monitor incoming fire from Hezbollah militants. 

Stahl and the 60 Minutes team were taken into an underground bunker complex, with a war room and cameras facing the hillsides of Lebanon to monitor incoming attacks.

Watching a camera feed facing Lebanon, the town's mayor told Stahl that it takes a Hezbollah missile eight to 20 seconds to reach Metula when fired from across the border. 

Twenty minutes after they arrived to tour the bunker, Stahl and the team were told they had to shelter in place. An explosive drone had been spotted hovering above them.

Israeli fighters tried to shoot it down, but the explosive drone would eventually explode, wounding two Israeli soldiers who would later die from the injuries. 

After waiting an hour, Stahl and the team were told they needed to run to their cars and evacuate the area. They heard explosions in the distance as they drove off.

"Now, this war since then has heated up. It's escalated. It's intense," Stahl told Overtime. 

Israel is in the midst of an air and ground invasion to fight Hezbollah inside Lebanon.

At the same time, Israeli airstrikes have rained down on towns and cities in southern and eastern Lebanon. They've reached as far into the country as Beirut, the country's capital.

Lebanon's health ministry said over 2,000 people have been killed and one million displaced since the airstrikes began.

"Civilians caught in the middle, as always, are the ones suffering the most," Stahl told Overtime. 

The Israeli military said it is targeting Hezbollah leadership with the airstrikes. Last week, an Israeli airstrike killed Hezbollah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, in Beirut. 

"Israel, I think feels pretty confident that they're winning at this point," Stahl told Overtime.

Stahl said it is unclear how long the fight with Hezbollah will continue, and when residents in northern Israel will be able to return to their homes.

"We have seen no signs that they're allowing Israelis to move back at this stage."

Iran

Since Oct. 7, another battlefront in the war has emerged between Israel and Iran.

On April 12, Iran launched over a hundred projectiles at Israel in an unprecedented, direct attack, in retaliation for the assassination of a top Iranian general in Damascus, Syria.

It was a massive and synchronized attack: about 170 explosive drones, over 30 cruise missiles and 120 ballistic missiles.

Israeli pilots shot down the drones and cruise missiles, and their "Arrow" defense system took down ballistic missiles. Only a handful made it through.

A coalition of allies, like the United States, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan, assisted in the interception, and other Arab countries allowed Israel to fly over their air space to take them down.

In April, Stahl spoke to Brigadier General Omer Tischler, who is second in command of the Israeli Air Force.

General Tischler showed 60 Minutes the control room where he sat on the night of April 13th as one of the leaders who helped direct Israel's defense. 

In an interview, he said that the attack was something Israel had never seen: a direct attack that was launched from Iran itself, and not one of its Iranian-backed proxies. 

"Till that night, Iran [attacked] us using its proxies from Yemen, from Iraq, from Syria, from Lebanon. But on that night, Iran [attacked] Israel directly," he told Stahl.

"And Iran knows that we are capable of attacking at any given time."

Last week, Iran attacked Israel again: about 180 missiles were launched from Iran directly at Israel. 

Israeli defense systems and American Navy destroyers were able to intercept most of the incoming missiles, but a few landed in southern and central Israel. 

Israeli president Benjamin Netanyahu, on the eve Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, vowed retaliation for the attack: "We will stand by the rule we established: Whoever attacks, we will attack them."

Fears are growing that Israel may try to attack Iran's nuclear capabilities in a retaliatory strike. President Biden has made it clear that the U.S. will not support that. 

On Wednesday of last week, a reporter asked, "Would you support an attack on Iran's nuclear sites by Israel?"

"The answer is 'no'…they have a right to respond, but they should respond in proportion," the president said.

"Netanyahu has a habit of not listening to [President] Biden. So, that's up in the air," Stahl told Overtime. 

"On a Knife's Point"

Stahl told 60 Minutes Overtime that today, on the anniversary of the October 7th attacks, there is a palpable feeling of uncertainty due to the escalation of war in the Middle East over the last year. 

"Right now, we're in the fog of war. Everything's unclear," she told Overtime. 

"[We're] on a knife's point right now in the Middle East. Everybody in the West is working hard to try and cool things off, but it's awfully hard to convince Iran and Israel to step back."

At the same time the U.S. presidential election is under way. Stahl said that whoever wins the presidential election will be a "wartime president." 

"Every couple of years things explode over there. And our presidents, certainly in my lifetime have been a huge factor…a strong ally of Israel in that part of the world," Stahl told Overtime. 

"It's not going to be easy for the new president, whoever it is, to manage this time."

The video above was produced by Will Croxton. It was edited by Sarah Shafer Prediger. 

Photos and video courtesy of Getty Images, AFP, South First Responders and IDF