By Carl Zebrowski
Editor

The few hundred people seated in the JCC’s Kline Auditorium on March 31 realized the film they’d come to watch would be difficult to get through. 

“We know each moment will be heart-wrenching,” said Amy Golding, who cochaired the event along with Lauren Rabin. “Yet you chose to show up.” 

“The only way to see it is with the community,” said Robby Wax, president of the Jewish Federation of the Lehigh Valley, which presented this new documentary at the time it was playing nationally in first-run theaters (though nowhere else in the Lehigh Valley). Fresh-popped popcorn and boxes of Mike and Ikes lent the feel of a movie theater. 

“October 8” begins with the horror of the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, and quickly transitions to the aftermath. It traces the months of antisemitism directed at Jews all over the globe as much of the world quickly seemed to forget the fact that Hamas attacked and killed Israeli civilians of all ages and took hostages back to Gaza, many of whom still have not been returned.

The film, which features appearances by actresses Debra Messing and Noa Tishby and others, showed how global media bias fanned the flames of anti-Zionism and antisemitism. “Wars today are not only on battlefields, but on media outlets and social media,” said an Israel Defense Forces officer on camera.

One glaring early example of news media mistakes and misconduct came at the end of October 2023, when numerous outlets reported that an Israeli missile had hit a Gaza hospital, killing and injuring civilians. The source of the information was the “Gaza Ministry of Health,” an instrument of Hamas, which the U.S. State Department has officially listed as a terrorist group since 1997. 

The IDF responded promptly that the incident was under investigation. That didn’t slow the storm of social media condemning Israel for the attack and fueling anti-Israel anger. The evidence soon showed that the missile was not launched by the IDF, but was a malfunctioning or misfired Hamas weapon. But the damage had already been done. 

Human rights organizations have sometimes fared no better than the media—comparatively worse if you expect better of them due to their self-professed mission to seek justice. A former 13-year-veteran executive from Human Rights Watch reacted to one written release from the organization criticizing Israel post-Hamas attacks. “Not one mention was made of a Jewish victim or a hostage,” she said. “People are thinking that if a human rights organization is saying it, it must be true, and that’s a dangerous assumption to make.”

The worst of the growing antisemitism in America revealed itself on college campuses. Antisemitic protests, as well as harassment and physical threats to Jewish students, spread across the country. 

Pro-Palestinian protesters at the University of California—Santa Barbara hung signs in the school’s multicultural center with statements like, “Zionist not allowed.” The student body president, Tessa Veksler, who is Jewish, tried to open up conversation. Signs then began to appear attacking her personally.

Soon 844 students signed a petition to recall her as president. The 11-member student senate voted to decide whether to hold a special recall election. 

“The recall effort failed by one vote,” Veksler said, disappointed by the lack of support from her fellow student leaders. “And I have worked with all 11 of those people, too.”

The former Palestinian militant Mosab Hassan Yousef had a special place in the film. As a son of a Hamas’s founder and leader, he brought a unique perspective to the story. 

Yousef fled Gaza to Israel in 1997 and began working as a spy for Shin Bet, the Israel Security Agency. He moved to the United States in 2007 and has been outspoken against Hamas and its antisemitic propaganda and terrorist tactics, citing in particular a personal responsibility to the country that took him in. 

Much of what the world sees related to Hamas is Hamas propaganda, a decades-long effort to make Israel look like the oppressor and aggressor while Hamas appears the victim. The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement to punish Israel is a direct consequence of this rewriting of the story of the Israeli people and the land.

“For me October 7 was so barbaric that it was a frontal assault on our common humanity,” Yousef said. He worried especially about the college students and other young Americans displaying such hatred for Israel and the Jewish people, asking what we’re becoming as a society if we cannot condemn such a massacre and those who planned it and carried it out. “What is at stake is the soul of America.”

If all this seems pessimistic, the film concludes on an upbeat note. “Our history shows us that Jews always make it out,” said Veksler, expressing confidence in Jewish strength and courage. “That’s what gives me hope.” 

She said the Jewish people of the world need to lock arms together. “If we do that,” she explained, “we can change ideas and habits, and ultimately that will change the world.”

Debra Messing concluded, “We have to live ‘Hatikvah,’”—“The Hope,” as expressed in the Israeli national anthem. “That’s going to help us light up the dark.