Fox News chief foreign correspondent Trey Yingst has been consumed by conflict since he began covering the aftermath of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel and the devastating war in Gaza.
Monday’s historic cease-fire news, however, provided the 32-year-old journalist with a feeling that’s been in short supply these past couple of harrowing years: relief.
“It’s nice to cover a piece of good news for once,” Yingst told TheWrap from Tel Aviv on Monday. “So often our work, not just here, but around the world, is focused on the worst days of people’s lives — and that’s just the reality of being a war correspondent, because war is not a pretty thing to cover — but it’s nice every once in a while when there are these moments of light amid a very dark story.”
The release of the final 20 living Israeli hostages from Gaza on Monday and the subsequent release of 1,900 Palestinian detainees from Israel, all part of a U.S.-brokered cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas, marked the apparent end of a two-year war that has divided the world and caused ripple effects through the U.S. political system.
After around 1,200 people were killed during the 2023 Hamas-led attack — with hundreds more taken hostage — Israel launched a sweeping retaliatory campaign that has seen nearly 67,000 Palestinians killed, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, and led to a humanitarian crisis. (The Hamas-run organization does not distinguish between civilian and combatant deaths, but its figure has been considered the most accurate estimate of the war’s fatalities, including by the United Nations.)
Yingst has covered the region for more than a decade, and he was among the first journalists to report on the aftermath of the Oct. 7 attack. He documented his coverage in a book, “Black Saturday: An Unfiltered Account of the October 7th Attack on Israel and the War in Gaza,” which was timed to the first anniversary of the assault. Yingst’s reporting on the war has drawn praise from members of the media, as well as Monday from President Donald Trump, who called him a “real professional” during an interview in Israel.
Yingst acknowledged to TheWrap that journalists have to take the cease-fire “day by day and cover the developments as they happen,” though he suggested Monday’s events could be a turning point in the Middle East, one which provides solace for families of those taken hostage and the potential for rebuilding in Gaza.
Lay out the scene for me about where we’re at in this moment. What can we expect in the next few weeks?
Trey Yingst: It’s certainly a turning point for the Middle East, because the war inside Gaza is over, at least for now. And you know, the hope in the region is that the cease-fire holds. But as someone who has covered multiple wars in the Middle East, sometimes cease-fires don’t hold, sometimes they collapse, and we have to just take it day by day and cover the developments as they happen. It’s hard to predict the future, especially in this part of the world, and so I try to avoid doing it. I really try to focus on, “what do we know today?” and “What can we confirm today?” Because the one thing I have learned about covering the Middle East is that the things that you think will happen almost never happen. There’s just so much unpredictability in this part of the world that you have to just be prepared for anything to happen.
I think of this year, no one could have predicted that in June, we would be covering a 12-day war between Israel and Iran, and there would be ballistic missiles landing in neighborhoods where I normally go to a coffee shop, but that was the case, and you have to adapt and adjust and report as such. And I think my team and I are uniquely prepared to do that because of the support that we get from the Fox leadership, who has not only come here to see us on the ground in the Middle East, but on a daily basis, checks in to see what we need to do our jobs at the highest level, and that’s very important, especially for a foreign correspondent who lives thousands of miles away from home.
You’ve been on the front lines of covering this for us since Oct. 7, and you’ve seen a number of starts and stops in cease-fire deals that have fallen through. What does this moment, coming nearly two years to the day since the conflict broke out, mean to you from all the coverage that you’ve done on it?
Yingst: It’s nice to cover a piece of good news for one. So often our work, not just here, but around the world, is focused on the worst days of people’s lives — and that’s just the reality of being a war correspondent, because war is not a pretty thing to cover — but it’s nice every once in a while when there are these moments of light amid a very dark story. And I think we saw that today with these families reuniting, and we came to know many of the hostage families quite well. We interviewed them multiple times. I think of Lishay Milan, whose husband Omri was released today, and she’d been waiting more than two years to reunite with her husband, but also importantly, to reunite her children with her father. And I think that she was one interview that stood out to me in the course of our reporting that was so important to highlight, because it’s the human story amid a story often about numbers.
Have you heard anything from inside Gaza? Have you heard anything about what this future will look like there now that a cease-fire is in place?
Yingst: I’m speaking with Israelis and Palestinians on a daily basis to try to understand what’s going on in both places. Gaza is an incredibly challenging place. The civilian population of Gaza is more than 2 million people, and so it’s a very small strip of land, and it has limited resources, and it has been largely decimated by the Israeli campaign that started following the Oct. 7 massacre. And so the situation there is not good, but it’s also — many people that we talk to see this as a turning point in a moment that, maybe, things will get a little bit better. It’s not because there’s going to be an immediate turnaround in the humanitarian situation, but just for the fact that there’s no longer bombs being dropped, and there’s no longer gunfire, there’s no longer fighting. It is a moment where people can gather their belongings, as we saw in images that we reported this week, return to their homes, in some cases, and see what is left. So it’s a story that I think we’ll continue to cover and will change, especially as access changes, but it’s certainly a story, I think, that we look at every single day.
You’ve been covering this since the beginning, during a time where journalists have faced immense scrutiny for their work and fear for their lives. What does this moment mean for you in illuminating it for people who’ve been following this, who’ve had limited access to information from the region?
Yingst: We just continue to focus on our work and doing the best job that we can. Covering war is very complicated, and each war zone has its own set of challenges. This war is no different, but we did the best that we can to bring our audience the latest information that we can confirm and report the facts as we get them. And so there are certainly challenges, and there are certainly areas where I wish we had more access. I will always advocate for access for journalists. I think it’s very important so that we can show the world what’s happening, but I think everyone’s experience is different, and I can really only speak for myself. And like I said, we’re focused on the mission of getting this story out to our audience, and we’ll keep doing it.
This conflict has divided people and countries across the world. Now that it’s nearing its apparent end, do you see a pathway toward reconciliation?
Yingst: I hope so. Just as a human, I think there are always opportunities for people to understand each other better, and often I feel that that’s part of the work that we do. How can we humanize the subjects that we interview to make people who live maybe thousands of miles away care? I find that as one of the priorities that I have in journalism, and I think it’s one of the most important things that we do as journalists, to make people care about people who are different than them, to try to humanize people in a way that will allow someone on the other side of a conflict to say, ‘Hey, those people are just like me.’ And so I hope so, and I actually do, having lived and worked in the region for so many years, there are often these examples that shine through broadly dark stories. It’s always surprising to people — I wouldn’t say surprising to me, having lived here — is that most people just want to live their lives. They’re not inherently political. They’re not very— they don’t change the way that they live based off of what they believe. They want to go to work, they want to have dinner with their families. Maybe they’re religious, maybe they like sports. Whatever their identity is — they have an identity — but generally, I find that people have a lot more in common than they do apart.
You wrote in your book last year that recounted your experience in covering this, particularly being there right at the beginning, a question that you were asking yourself as you were going through Gaza with your crew: “How did I get myself into this?” Reflecting on this moment now, how do you feel about your experience in covering this war, and what reflections have you taken from a turbulent two years?
Yingst: I think personal reflections — one reflection I would have is to pace myself. I’m someone who loves the industry so much, and I like reporting so much that even on my days off, I report because it’s what I like to do. So I would say I’m trying to get better at occasionally taking breaks and small vacations. That’s a personal sort of approach, but I would say on a professional level, I’m very happy with the work that my team and I do. I’m very proud of the work that we do. I think that we operate at the highest level, we compete at the highest level, and we do journalism in the way that journalism should be done, and that is in a way that takes no sides, that calls balls and strikes, and we do that in a very old-fashioned way, and that’s something that I’m very proud of.
You mentioned that it’s hard to predict what happens tomorrow, but does this feel to you like the end of this conflict right now, at least as we’ve grown to know it over the last two years?
Yingst: I think we have to look at it as it is today, and today there’s a cease-fire. There is no active war inside Gaza, and I think a lack of war is an objectively positive thing as someone who covers war for a living, because it’s not pretty. When there is a moment for peace and there’s a moment for people to step back and observe what’s happening, I think these are positive moments for any region of the world, not just the Middle East. And so it is tough to predict the future, and we don’t know if this cease-fire will hold. For now, it’s holding, and the region is looking at a more peaceful time than it seemed for the past two years. We don’t know if that will hold forever, and history shows oftentimes it doesn’t, and so we have to just be prepared to cover whatever story develops.
You interviewed President Trump today. What did you learn from that conversation?
Yingst: In all the interviews that I do, whether it’s with a civilian that I meet in a war zone or if it’s with the President of the United States, I approach it the same way, just trying to get a better understanding of what’s happening and to approach the story with a lens of objectivity that allows anyone who is watching the interview to take something away from it. I asked him about the hostages and what the moment meant for him to see these hostages come out alive as part of this deal. I asked him about Palestinian civilians who have expressed concern to me in the interviews that I’ve conducted. They’re worried about being forcefully displaced from their homes and what the future of Gaza will look like. I think it’s important, no matter who you’re interviewing, to ask a variety of questions that get to topics that encompass a conflict, and this is not an easy conflict to cover. It’s certainly complex, and it has a lot of implications, and I think, background, that’s important knowledge to have. But I approach interviews, no matter who they’re with, the same way to try to understand a story and situation better and try to get new information about what’s actually happening.
The President did compliment your coverage and said that ‘you’re a real professional’ and that it would be great if other people could cover things like you do. How do you feel about compliments like that from officials that you do cover?
Yingst: Look, I think we’re professional in everything that we do. We try to have professional relationships with officials across the board, not just the president of a country. Like I said, we practice this craft in a very old-school, old-fashioned way, and I think that you can be a really great journalist and a really respectful journalist at the same time. And I’m proud to be known for — if my reputation is that I’m a professional journalist, I don’t mind my reputation.