‘Red Alert’ Examines Oct. 7 Massacre through Eyes of Victims

A father and his young daughter sit beneath a tree beside a wide, irrigated field. A small burner brings the water in a glass teapot to a boil while the father peels and drops in some ginger. In the distance, Gaza is visible on the coastline.

The young girl looks over her shoulder and asks, “Have you ever been there?” He nods and laments, “We used to go all the time.” An awkward pause after that speaks volumes. It isn’t safe to go there anymore.

It is that quiet exchange that opens “Red Alert,” a new four-part miniseries that premiered Tuesday, Oct. 7 on Paramount+. Produced by Academy Award–nominated filmmaker Lawrence Bender (“Pulp Fiction,” “An Inconvenient Truth”) and written and directed by Lior Chefetz, the series reconstructs the morning that sent shockwaves worldwide, and that continues to shape the world’s perception of what happened in Gaza. It tells the story not through manipulative Instagram posts or TikToks, but through real stories of ordinary people who risked their lives to save those in danger.

The production moves with the pulse of an action thriller, but its realism is arresting. Inspired by actual GoPro recordings made that day by gunmen and firsthand witness accounts, the series was filmed largely at the real locations where the massacres occurred. Survivors advised throughout the process, showing the filmmakers the places they hid, fought, and saw loved ones killed.

In one early sequence, an Arab family is driving toward Gaza. A pickup truck filled with Hamas gunmen speeds by unleashing a torrent of bullets indiscriminately at their car. A devout Muslim mother of eight, pregnant with her ninth child, is struck and dies. Before his escape, her husband manages to pull their youngest child from the back seat. He lifts his baby, and whispers a prayer of thanks for the life that remains. The moment is quiet, reverent, and devastating.

Chefetz began writing “Red Alert” just three months after the attacks. “After October 7 we were frozen,” he said at a screening in the Paramount Building at Times Square on Oct. 6, the eve of the second anniversary of the killing spree. “Everything felt bleak and dark. My co-creator, Ruth Efroni, said, ‘Let’s try to write something.’ We didn’t know if anyone would even want to read it, but as artists, that’s how we process the world.”

He and Efroni gathered more than a hundred firsthand stories and searched for those that illuminated courage amid fear. “Many were about light,” Chefetz said. “Regular people under extraordinary circumstances becoming almost superhuman. A father, a mother, a neighbor. Those acts of grace restored my sense of humanity.”

Compelled by a sense of duty, Lawrence Bender produced the miniseries. “I’d been making movies for decades,” he said. “After that morning, I realized I needed to do something.” He raised funds, traveled repeatedly to the set, and spent long days with survivors. “They felt alone, unseen,” he recalled. “A woman told me later she couldn’t believe someone from Los Angeles had come just to listen. That mattered to her.”

The episodes interlace several families—a mother fleeing with her daughters as her son is taken across the border, a medic searching for his injured wife, a father shielding his family, a police officer and his colleague refusing to abandon the wounded. Each thread connects by chance and proximity, building a portrait of endurance and resilience.

“It’s about families,” Bender said. “About human beings trying to survive. Anyone can relate to that.”

Chefetz, who had recently completed a project marking the 50th anniversary of another war, found immediacy to be its own kind of clarity. “Fifty years of perspective has advantages,” he said. “But art that comes from the gut—created while emotions are still raw—has its own power.”

For audiences who have seen that morning through fragmented clips online, ”Red Alert” arrives like a correction. In the months that followed, campus protests and public rallies turned the violence into abstraction and symbols for opposing causes. The series reclaims the human scale of the event. It shows viewers what that day actually looked like: families waking up to ordinary tasks, moments before everything fell apart.

The show’s power lies in its restraint. There are no speeches, no slogans—only sound, confusion, and the private resolve of people trying to stay alive. It is a drama of recognition, not debate.

“The people we met weren’t looking to make statements,” Chefetz said. “They wanted their stories told truthfully. When people understand what really happened to these families, they can start to understand how fragile life can be—and how strong people can become when everything falls apart.”

Through its precision and quiet empathy, ”Red Alert” achieves something rare: It restores moral clarity without preaching.

Imagine if a series like ”Red Alert” had existed sooner. Perhaps fewer young people would have been swept up by the Columbia University campus protests that recast the Oct. 7 morning of terror as a freedom campaign of Palestinians. It reminds us that before the death cult of Hamas sacrificed the lives of so many innocent civilians in order to curry international sympathy, Hamas indiscriminately took the lives of 1,200 Jews and Arabs, and kidnapped 250 people.

”Red Alert” premiered globally on Paramount+ on Tuesday, Oct. 7, with additional episodes dropping weekly.

Eric Schwartzman is an author, journalist, and marketing consultant.