Almost immediately after the Hamas massacre of October 7, the world pivoted into a dystopian nightmare with the narrative rewritten, turning murderers into freedom fighters and victims into aggressors.
Ivy League presidents refused to condemn calls for the genocide of Jews as violations of their campuses’ codes of conduct. The sexual assault and rape of Israeli women was ignored, dismissed, even denied. And a tsunami of online antisemitism followed.
How did we get to this moment, when “Hamas in America” became not a right-wing talking point but a reality manifesting itself from Cambridge to Los Angeles?
The new documentary film October H8TE seeks to answer that question by examining intersectionality, why social justice activists align themselves with reactionary organizations, the influence of funding and messaging linked to Hamas and the “curious” amount of antisemitic content flooding social media linked to Iranian, Russian and Chinese IP addresses.
The film’s message is simple: Jewish or not, you need to care about this latest wave of antisemitism because Jews and Israel aren’t its only targets: The mobs shouting “Globalize the Intifada” are, ultimately, attacking truth, democracy and a free society.
The film includes interviews with Debra Messing, Michael Rapaport, Mosab Yousef (son of Hamas's cofounder), Sheryl Sandberg, US Representative Ritchie Torres, US Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, US Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt, Dan Senor, Noa Tishby, Bari Weiss and Douglas Murray.
After the screening, we will be joined by the film's director, Wendy Sachs, and Debra Messing, the film’s executive producer, for a moderated discussion with Zibby Owens, author, podcaster, bookstore owner and CEO of Zibby Media.