October 8: A Must-See Documentary | Aish

On October 7, 2023, veteran film producer Wendy Sachs was visiting her daughter Lexi at the University of Wisconsin-Madison when news began pouring in about Hamas’ massive attack on Israel.  Together, they sat glued to their phones, watching images of thousands of Hamas soldiers rampaging through dozens of towns and villages in southern Israel.

They heard shocking reports that Hamas terrorists were going door to door in villages and shooting entire families and burning houses down with their residents still inside.  Over 1,200 people had been murdered and 250 kidnapped and taken into Gaza.

“We saw the images coming out of Israel, children, babies, grandparents, young people being kidnapped, being live-streamed and murdered,” Wendy recalled.  “And then it was October 8 when I saw the protests in Times Square, the protests against Israel, supporting Hamas as freedom fighters rather than as terrorists.” She could scarcely believe what she was seeing as college campuses erupted into hate, celebrating Hamas’ attack and blaming Israel for the massacre and kidnapping of its own citizens.

It just felt like the world had lost its mind.  The silence, the dismissal, the denial.

“I saw what was happening the next day on October 9, and at Harvard, where more than 30 student groups signed onto a letter blaming Israel for the attack on itself.  And then we saw the same thing happen from campus after campus, from Columbia to NYU to Tulane to MIT, Cornell, Penn.  It just felt like the world had lost its mind.  The silence, the dismissal, the denial.”

Wendy realized she was seeing something different from anything she’d previously witnessed in the US.  This sort of raw hatred of Israel felt new - and terrifying.  Wendy knew she had to do something.  She decided to use her filmmaking skills to fight back and began working on a documentary about the tsunami of Jew hatred that followed the October 7, 2023 attack.

October 8 is the masterful result, showing how students, human rights agencies, politicians, and celebrities have all embraced Hamas talking points over the past year and a half.  It is a must-see for anyone who cares about the global spike in antisemitism and in the future of Jewish life in the United States and elsewhere around the world.

Documenting Hamas’ Attacks

The film opens with footage from the October 7, 2023 attack, including scenes that were filmed by Hamas terrorists.  We meet Irit Lahav, a resident of Nir Oz, who shows us around her ruined town.  (Over a hundred Nir Oz residents were murdered and kidnapped by Hamas.)  Irit no longer lives in the village, she explains, and is still terrified of terrorists every time she goes back.

She describes the terror of October 7, as she hid in her home’s safe room, in the dark with her daughter for over 12 hours, making no noise, while she heard her neighbors being massacred outside.  Safe rooms were meant to protect residents from bombs and missiles, so most did not have locks.  Irit survived by rigging a door lock out of her vacuum cleaner and barricading herself inside.

This footage reminds us just how deadly October 7 was.  Hamas videos show terrorists confidently walking and driving through the streets of Israeli towns, shooting down everyone they come across.  After showing these atrocities, the film abruptly shifts to scenes of wild celebration in the West.

Campus Protests

In Times Square, over a thousand people attended a rally organized by the Democratic Socialists of America New York chapter on October 8, 2023; participants defended Hamas’ ongoing massacre with slogans including “resistance is justified,” “by any means necessary,” and “resistance is not a metaphor.”

“It was October 8; there were still Hamas terrorists in communities in southern Israel,” author and podcast host Dan Senor explains in the film. “There was still fighting going on.  Israel was still counting the numbers of the dead, and the mutilated and the raped and the kidnapped.  And there’s a protest against Israel in Times Square.  Rather than the outrage being directed against those slaughtering the Jews, the outrage was being directed against the Jews for objecting to being slaughtered.”

The film shows how this glorification of Hamas spread to college campuses and includes footage of students defending Hamas’ massacre at myriad schools, including Harvard, Tufts, MIT, University of California Los Angeles, University of California Santa Barbara, Cornell, Columbia, Cooper Union, City College of New York, and many others.  We watch footage of students announcing that parts of campuses are “Zionist-free zones,” yelling in Arabic “from the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Muslim,” and calling for attacks on their American Jewish Zionist students peers.  The film details the tent cities that sprang up on campuses across the world, dedicated to being “anti-Zionist” spaces and fomenting yet more anti-Israel activity.

Hamas Links

“We are seeing protests glorifying the actions of the ‘resistance,’ which is sort of a code word for Hamas,” Lorenzo Vidino, Director of the Program on Extremism at The George Washington University, explains in the film.  “It became apparent…from the get-go that there was a core of individuals nationwide that were pushing a pro-Hamas narrative.”

He explains that many campus groups are using Hamas words and imagery in their protests, either unwittingly or not.  Calls to “flood” campus with anti-Israel protests, for instance, echo the language Hamas used for its October 7 attack, which it named the “Al Aqsa (Arabic for Jerusalem) Flood.”  The film shows footage of countless student protestors holding posters with an inverted red triangle, a symbol that Hamas uses in its propaganda videos to denote a Jewish target they are about to bomb or shoot.

The chants, iconography, and toolkit for organizing against Israel echo Hamas talking points.

This is no accident, Dr. Vidino explains.  He points to Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) as the source of much of the language and organization behind seemingly spontaneous campus demonstrations. He and other experts note that SJP operates in the shadows, never disclosing its funding sources and obscuring its links with student groups.  Despite widespread perception that it operates as a 501(c)3 charity, it is not incorporated as a nonprofit and does not post its finances.  No one can prove that SJP has any links at all with Hamas or any other group designated as a terrorist organization - yet the chants, iconography, and toolkit for organizing against Israel do happen to echo Hamas talking points.

In one of October 8’s most fascinating sections, Dr. Vidino shares a secret FBI recording of a 1993 meeting that 25 Hamas leaders held in Philadelphia.  The Hamas officials outlined a plan of “infiltrating American media outlets, universities, and research centers.  The main goal they discussed was how to present what Hamas was doing and make it palatable to Americans.”  Over 30 years ago these Hamas officials realized that they could best sway Americans by couching their struggle to eliminate Israel and kill Jews in the language of human rights.  Today, by framing Hamas’ desire to kill Israelis and destroy the Jewish state as “liberation,” Hamas’ goal has come to fruition.

Media Bias

October 8 also examines the fact that news outlets have been eager to cast Israel as the aggressor in its war with Hamas.  Take the massive explosion in the courtyard of the al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City on October 17, 2023, in which it was reported that 500 people were killed.  Newspapers and media outlets around the world immediately reported that Israel had targeted the hospital deliberately.  Yet as the hours passed, it became obvious that initial media reports were completely wrong.

The death toll was, luckily, much lower than 500 and more notably, it turned out that Israel had not bombed the hospital at all.  A rocket launched by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a terrorist group affiliated with Hamas, had tried to send a bomb into Israel - targeted at civilians - but accidentally hit the Gaza hospital instead.  October 8 documents how journalists and human rights activists seized on this hospital bombing as “proof” of Israeli malfeasance, revealing their underlying hostility to the Jewish state.

One of the more chilling segments in the film is about how most young people get their news from TikTok, which is extremely antagonistic to Israel.  The app’s algorithms steer users to anti-Israel content; pro-Israel videos are outnumbered by anti-Israel videos on Tik Tok by a whopping 1 to 54.

Rep. Richie Torres, the young Democrat from New York’s 15th Congressional District and a staunchly pro-Israel voice in the US Congress, wonders aloud if most Americans would mind if many of our major outlets, from The New York Times to the Associated Press, were controlled by China.  Well, for young people, TikTok is as important as those other august news organizations, Rep. Torres points out - and it's controlled by China, a country that is openly hostile to the USA and often publicly aligned with Israel’s enemies such as Iran.

Feeling “Completely Betrayed”

Actress Debra Messing co-produced October 8 and appears in the film describing a petition she tried to launch after October 7, 2023, condemning Hamas’ vicious assault.  Despite the fact that Hollywood stars are no strangers to political statements and often speak out on issues such as Ukraine, Nepal, Black Lives Matter, Me Too, and others topics - nobody wanted to go on the record of condemning Hamas and standing with Israel.  “I felt completely betrayed by Hollywood,” Messing says in the film.  “I thought the entire globe would be in mourning.  And not only was it silent, there was jubilation.”

I thought the entire globe would be in mourning.  And not only was it silent, there was jubilation.

Actor and comedian Michael Rappaport appears in the film too, reminiscing about appearing at the massive pro-Israel rally held on the National Mall in Washington DC on November 14, 2023.  He notes that he and Debra Messing were the only two Hollywood stars there, and says that it’s shocking no other actors or famous entertainers were willing to appear.  

Human Rights Organizations

Danielle Haas, the only Jewish Israeli employee of the group Human Rights Watch (HRW), describes how the human rights community has become willing to side with Hamas and reflexively view Israel as the enemy.

After watching HRW fail to extend empathy to Israeli victims after Hamas’ attack, she resigned a week later, wiring a scathing resignation letter:

“Following the Hamas massacres in Israel on October 7, years of institutional creep culminated in organizational responses that shattered professionalism, abandoned principles of accuracy and fairness, and surrendered its duty to stand for the human rights of all.  HRW’s initial reactions to the Hamas attacks failed to condemn outright the murder, torture, and kidnapping of Israeli men, women, and children…”

Personal Toll

Perhaps the saddest aspect of October 8 is the way it gives voice to Jewish students whose faith in the goodness and impartiality of their friends and community has been shattered.  Take the case of Tessa Veksler, who was Student Body President at the University of California, Santa Barbara, in October 2023.  A proud Zionist, Tessa was vilified by anti-Israel protestors who covered the campus with graffiti and flyers denouncing her by name.  She eventually faced - and barely survived - a recall vote.  She speaks movingly of the way her faith in her fellow students was broken.  Her parents fled the Soviet Union because of antisemitism, Tessa explains; she can’t imagine how painful it must be for them to watch their daughter subjected to antisemitism as well.

That’s a sentiment echoed by Cornell student Talia Dror, whose parents fled antisemitism in Iran, only to watch their daughter be yelled at and threatened by anonymous posts on Cornell social media, threatening to kill Jews after October 7.  She describes Cornell’s Jewish students hiding in their rooms after the threats.

Another perspective is offered by Barnard student Noa Fay. A proud Black Jew, Noa describes her pain at being asked to justify her feelings of being threatened by antisemitic rhetoric on campus.  No one would question her identity or feelings as a Black woman, she notes, yet when it comes to her Jewish identity, anti-Israel activists seem comfortable demanding that she not be so sensitive to their hateful anti-Jewish chants.

October 8 is also warning the world where support for Hamas will lead. It’s an urgent film that is required viewing for anyone who cares about Israel, the United States, and the essential battle of good against evil.