The new film explores the rise of antisemitism and support for Hamas following the October 7 massacre. (Film trailer in English)
On October 7, 2023, veteran film producer Wendy Sachs was visiting her daughter Lexi at the University of Wisconsin-Madison when news of Hamas's massive attack on Israel began to trickle in. Together, they remained glued to their phones, watching footage of thousands of Hamas soldiers razing dozens of towns and villages in southern Israel.
They heard shocking reports of Hamas terrorists going door to door in villages, shooting entire families and burning homes with their residents inside. More than 1.200 people were killed, and 250 were kidnapped and taken to Gaza.
“We saw the images coming out of Israel: children, babies, grandparents, young people being kidnapped, murdered while they were broadcasting live,” Wendy recalled. “And then, on October 8, I saw the protests in Times Square, protests against Israel, supporting Hamas as freedom fighters, not terrorists.” I could hardly believe my eyes as college campuses erupted in hatred, celebrating the Hamas attack and blaming Israel for the massacre and kidnapping of its own citizens.
“I saw what was happening the next day, October 9, at Harvard, where more than 30 student groups signed a letter blaming Israel for the attack on itself. Then we saw the same thing repeated at university after university, from Columbia to NYU, Tulane, MIT, Cornell, and Penn. It seemed like the world had lost its mind. The silence, the indifference, the denial.”
Wendy realized she was witnessing something unlike anything she had ever seen before in the United States. This kind of raw hatred against 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 anti-Jewish hatred that followed the October 7, 2023, attack.
8 de Octubre It's the masterful result of that effort, showing how students, human rights agencies, politicians, and celebrities have embraced Hamas's rhetoric over the past year and a half. It's a must-see film for anyone concerned about the global rise of antisemitism and the future of Jewish life in the United States and around the world.
Documenting Hamas attacks
The film opens with footage of the October 7, 2023, attack, including scenes filmed by Hamas terrorists themselves. We meet Irit Lahav, a resident of Nir Oz, who shows us her destroyed village. (More than 100 Nir Oz residents were killed or kidnapped by Hamas.) Irit no longer lives in the village, she explains, and is still terrified of the terrorists whenever she returns.
She describes the horror of October 7, when she hid in the dark in her home's safe room with her daughter for more than 12 hours, making no noise, while listening to her neighbors being massacred outside. Safe rooms were designed to protect residents from bombs and missiles, so most didn't have locks. Irit survived by improvising a lock for the door with her vacuum cleaner and barricading herself inside.
These images remind us of just how deadly October 7th was. Hamas videos show terrorists walking and driving confidently through the streets of Israeli cities, shooting anyone in their path. After showing these atrocities, the film abruptly switches to scenes of wild celebration in the West.
Protests on university campuses
On October 8, 2023, more than a thousand people attended a demonstration in Times Square organized by the New York branch of the Social Democrats of America. Participants defended Hamas's ongoing massacre with slogans such as "resistance is justified," "by any means necessary," and "resistance is not a metaphor."
“It was October 8; there were still Hamas terrorists in the communities of southern Israel,” author and podcast host Dan Senor explains in the film. “There was still fighting. Israel was still counting the number of dead, maimed, raped, and kidnapped. And in Times Square, there was a protest against Israel. Instead of directing outrage at those who were massacring Jews, the outrage was directed at the Jews for refusing to be massacred.”
The film shows how this glorification of Hamas spread to college campuses and includes footage of students defending Hamas’s massacre at numerous universities, including Harvard, Tufts, MIT, UCLA, UC Santa Barbara, Cornell, Columbia, Cooper Union, City College of New York, and many more. We see footage of students declaring parts of campuses “Zionist-free zones,” chanting in Arabic “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be Muslim,” and calling for attacks against their fellow Zionist American Jews. The film details the tent cities that sprang up on campuses around the world, dedicated to being “anti-Zionist” spaces and further encouraging anti-Israel activity.
Links to Hamas
“We're seeing protests glorifying the actions of the 'resistance,' which is sort of a code word for Hamas,” explains Lorenzo Vidino, director of the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, in the film. “It became clear… from the beginning that there was a core of individuals across the country pushing a pro-Hamas narrative.”
He explains that many campus groups are using Hamas words and imagery in their protests, whether consciously or not. Calls to “flood” campuses with anti-Israel protests, for example, mirror the language Hamas used for its October 7 attack, which it called the “Al Aqsa Flood” (Al Aqsa is the Arabic word for Jerusalem). The film shows footage of countless student protesters holding signs with an inverted red triangle, a symbol Hamas uses in its propaganda videos to mark a Jewish target they are about to bomb or shoot.
This is no coincidence, explains Dr. Vidino. He points to Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) as the source of much of the language and organizing behind the seemingly spontaneous campus demonstrations. He and other experts note that SJP operates in the shadows, not disclosing its funding sources or its ties to student groups. Despite the widespread perception that it operates as a 501(c)(3) charity, it is not registered as a nonprofit and does not publish its finances. No one can prove that SJP has ties to Hamas or any other designated terrorist group; however, its chants, iconography, and organizing tactics against Israel match Hamas's rhetoric.
In one of the most fascinating sections of 8 de OctubreIn this interview, Dr. Vidino shares a secret FBI recording of a 1993 meeting in Philadelphia where 25 Hamas leaders met. Hamas officials outlined a plan to “infiltrate U.S. media outlets, universities, and think tanks. The main objective they discussed was how to present Hamas’s activities in a manner acceptable to Americans.” More than 30 years ago, these Hamas leaders understood that the best way to influence American public opinion was to frame their struggle to eliminate Israel and kill Jews in the language of human rights. Today, by presenting Hamas’s desire to murder Israelis and destroy the Jewish state as “liberation,” their goal has become a reality.
Media bias
8 de Octubre It also examines how the media has been eager to portray Israel as the aggressor in its war against Hamas. Take, for example, the massive explosion in the courtyard of Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City on October 17, 2023, in which 500 people were reported dead. Newspapers and media outlets around the world immediately reported that Israel had deliberately targeted the hospital. However, as the hours passed, it became clear that the initial reports were completely wrong.
The death toll was, thankfully, much lower than 500, and, more remarkably, it turned out that Israel hadn't bombed the hospital at all. A rocket launched by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a Hamas-affiliated terrorist group, attempted to send a bomb into Israel (aimed at civilians), but accidentally landed on the hospital in Gaza. 8 de Octubre documents how journalists and human rights activists seized on this hospital bombing as “proof” of Israeli malice, revealing its underlying hostility toward the Jewish state.
One of the most chilling segments in the film is about how most young people get their news from TikTok, a platform extremely hostile to Israel. The app's algorithms direct users toward anti-Israel content. On TikTok, pro-Israel videos are outnumbered by anti-Israel videos by an overwhelming ratio of 1 to 54.
Representative Richie Torres, the young Democrat from New York's 15th Congressional District and a staunch pro-Israel voice in the U.S. Congress, wonders aloud if most Americans would care if many of our mainstream media outlets, from The New York Times but also Associated Press, were controlled by China. Well, for young people, TikTok is just as important as those prestigious news outlets, Torres points out, and it's controlled by China, a country openly hostile to the US and often publicly aligning itself with Israel's enemies, like Iran.
“I felt completely betrayed”
Actress Debra Messing co-produced 8 de Octubre and appears in the film describing a petition she attempted to launch after October 7, 2023, condemning Hamas’s brutal assault. Despite Hollywood stars not shying away from making political statements and frequently speaking out on issues like Ukraine, Nepal, Black Lives Matter, Me Too, and other topics, no one wanted to sign to condemn Hamas and support Israel. “I felt completely betrayed by Hollywood,” Messing says in the film. “I thought the whole world would be mourning. And it wasn’t just silent, it was jubilation.”
Actor and comedian Michael Rapaport also appears in the film, recalling his participation in the large pro-Israel demonstration on the National Mall in Washington, DC, on November 14, 2023. He notes that he and Debra Messing were the only two Hollywood stars in attendance, and says it's shocking that no other actors or celebrities were willing to appear..
Human rights organizations
Danielle Haas, the only Jewish Israeli employee of Human Rights Watch (HRW), describes how the human rights community has shown itself willing to align itself with Hamas and automatically view Israel as the enemy.
After seeing how HRW showed no empathy toward the Israeli victims of the Hamas attack, she resigned a week later, sending a scathing resignation letter:
“Following the Hamas massacres in Israel on October 7, years of institutional drift culminated in organizational responses that shattered professionalism, abandoned the principles of precision and fairness, and abdicated their duty to defend the human rights of all. HRW's initial responses to Hamas's attacks failed to categorically condemn the murder, torture, and kidnapping of Israeli men, women, and children…” Yvette Al Miller.
With information from AL agencies
Karla Gaona
Ecuadorian journalist in Israel.