‘I feel like I’m grieving for the security we thought we had, or the sense of protection I thought my children had. I’m working hard to find in that grief our strength,” said Sheryl Sandberg, author and former Meta COO, in the documentary October 8, about the wave of antisemitism that has swept the US, particularly on university campuses, since the October 7 massacre by Hamas and the outbreak of war.
The documentary, directed by Wendy Sachs and executive produced by actress Debra Messing, one of the interviewees, opens in theaters around the US on March 14.
The film’s tagline is “The fight for the soul of America,” and the detailed documentary lives up to this ambitious line.
It is a comprehensive, well-organized, and persuasive look at just how widespread this antisemitism has become and how it was fostered by Hamas, which planted the seeds of hatred of Jews and Israel years before the current war.
It must have been a daunting task to assemble all the material, particularly since there were new antisemitic incidents taking place all the time.
What is the documentary about?
October 8 mixes interviews with Jewish leaders, political analysts, academics, authors, actors, students, and others who try to put it all into perspective and offer positive steps for the way forward.
In addition to Sandberg and Messing, the interviewees include US Congressman Ritchie Torres; actor Michael Rapaport; son of one of the founding members of Hamas and former Shin Bet operative Mosab Hassan Yousef; activist and author Noa Tishby; and Columbia professor Shai Davidai, who has called out the university for failing to address antisemitism on campus. Many of us follow these people on social media, but listening to them speak in the film has a greater impact than just seeing their posts.
The movie starts with interviews with survivors of the October 7 massacre in Israel’s South, then quickly moves to New York’s Times Square on October 8, when a huge, virulently anti-Israel rally was held, marked by obscene slogans against Israel and joyful chants about how many had been killed by Hamas.
Start-Up Nation author and podcast host Dan Senor summed up the situation: “It was October 8; there were still Hamas terrorists in communities in southern Israel. 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.”
Said Lorenzo Vidino, director of the program on extremism at George Washington University: “We were seeing protests glorifying the actions of the ‘resistance,’ which is sort of a code word for Hamas. It became apparent… from the get-go that there was a core of individuals nationwide that were pushing a pro-Hamas narrative.”
Campus antisemitism immediately after October 7
In the early hours of October 8, 34 student groups at Harvard signed a statement saying that they “hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.”
Hamas was never named, and the statement went viral. Soon, demonstrations began on other campuses.
Jewish students reported harassment at multiple colleges, and Ivy League professors announced their joy over the killings of Jews (and the Muslims, Christians, and Buddhists who were also victims) on October 7.
One of the documentary’s most important elements is that it explains how demonstrations and statements were organized so quickly after the massacre, at a time when many, both in Israel and abroad, were still struggling to comprehend exactly what had happened.
Vidino presents evidence from a meeting of 25 Hamas leaders held in 1993 in Philadelphia, which was recorded by the FBI, in which the participants outlined a plan for “infiltrating American media outlets, universities, and research centers.”
According to Vidino, “The main thing they discussed was how to present what Hamas was doing and make it palatable to Americans.”
The documentary also looks into the group Students for Justice in Palestine, which has been behind many of the openly pro-Hamas demonstrations.
It turns out that the group is in a legal gray area and is not a nonprofit, so its sources of finance are unknown.
Tessa Veksler, a recent graduate of the University of California at Santa Barbara who was also the student body president, talks about being on the receiving end of antisemitic hate after she made social media posts mourning the October 7 massacre.
Her leadership position on campus was challenged, but she fought and eventually won the right to stay in the post. Other Jewish students talk about facing harassment and discrimination for their pro-Israel stances.
Much of the film is about university protests, but it also looks into other arenas.
Messing talks about how she composed an open letter to governments around the world asking them to prioritize the release of hostages and was distressed Hollywood celebrities wouldn’t sign it.
“I felt completely betrayed by Hollywood,” she said.
The main message of the interviewees and the documentary is to be vigilant in the face of increased antisemitism and to be aware of Hamas’s hate-filled agenda.
Mosab Hassan Yousef, who knows Hamas as a former insider, is particularly persuasive when he says, “Any Hamas win will not be only a threat to the State of Israel and to the Jewish people, it will be a threat against all civilized people who want to live in harmony, who believe in tolerance, who believe in peaceful dialogue with their neighbors, and who believe in diversity.
“And Hamas is anti all that. Since October 7, all this angry mob on the street, they want to globalize the intifada. Globalizing the intifada means… chaos. People in the West, what they don’t understand is that shortly after adopting the concept of intifada, violence will follow.”