Lester Holt joined NBC News’ efforts to cover terrorist attacks in Israel by flying first to London, then Amman. The journey took hours, and it’s unclear when it all will truly end.
“I think this will be a long TV deployment,” says the “NBC Nightly News” anchor of coverage of terrorists’ moves against the country. Holt is expected to anchor from Israel through this week.
He is one of many from NBC News who have traveled to cover the unrest. Richard Engel, the popular foreign correspondent, is also at work, as are crews devoted to logistics, technology and more. “It’s hard to know what direction this thing will take,” says Holt, speaking from Israel by phone. “It could become a full military invasion, which has a lot of international consequences. It could just be a regional conflict.”
NBC News has many rivals in the area also seeking stories. CBS News has dispatched “CBS Evening News” anchor Norah O’Donnell to Israel, while ABC News sent “World News Tonight” anchor David Muir, who lead a Thursday-night special report in primetime that sought to bring U.S. audiences up to speed
Holt has covered similar events. In 2006, he helped chronicle Hezbollah efforts against Israel, but from Lebanon. “We saw the rockets being launched into Israel,” he says. “We didn’t see kidnapping, nothing on the scale of what we have seen here. It’s a really big difference.”
The anchor has been on the hunt for stories that will be relevant to U.S. audiences. He’s worked to interview an American family that was in Israel seeking help to gain the release of relatives who had been kidnapped and a security guard who was trying to help attendees at the ill-fated Nova music festival find paths to safety. “The kidnappings add a new dimension to a long-running conflict,” he says. He has also reported live from a hospital in Tel Aviv where a number of victims were being treated, relaying the scene to viewers of NBC’s “Today.”
