The day after the October 7 terror attacks Times Square teemed with anti-Israeli voices.
And they only grew louder.
“October 8” chronicles the antisemitism spike following the worst terror attack since 9/11. Director Wendy Sachs (“Surge”) connects the harrowing dots, from Hamas hijacking the Left’s talking points to the inscrutable silence of human rights groups.
What emerges is a vital document for our times. One talking head wonders if we’re living in 1930s-style Germany, the moment before antisemitism became deadly on a mass scale.
We’re not there yet. The current normal remains unacceptable, framed by cowardice from those claiming to protect marginalized groups.
“October 8” is relentless, necessary and never less than shocking.
The film opens with October 7 survivors sharing first-person accounts of Hamas’ savagery.
The calendar flips to Oct. 8. Anti-Israel protesters flood cities and colleges to cheer on the massacre. More than 30 groups at Harvard blamed the savagery on Israel, not the ghouls who raped, tortured and killed innocents.
It’s a stunning turn of events, one disconnected from worries over Israeli’s retaliation. The country was busy counting the dead and the missing at the time.
That ghoulish disconnect is enough to anchor a documentary. “October 8” is just getting started.
Groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch stood down in the weeks following the terrorist attacks. Hollywood stars, who weigh in on virtually every hot-button issue, spoke out briefly but, later, were reduced to near silence.
Stars like Patricia Heaton, John Ondrasik, Michael Rapaport and Debra Messing, an executive producer on the film, have been the exceptions to the rule.
“I felt completely betrayed by Hollywood,” Messing says on screen. Fellow “October 8” star Rapaport is even more blunt.
“Hollywood celebrities speak out about so many differing things,” the “Atypical” actor says, from BLM to trans issues. “You should be ashamed of yourself for not saying anything about the hostages.”
The film compares that reaction to celebrities rallying behind the “BringBackOurGirls hashtag campaign against Boko Haram a decade earlier.
“October 8” relentlessly highlights hypocrisy on steroids.
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College students have done nothing but speak out following the Oct. 7 attacks. They’ve blocked Jewish students from attending classes, saluted Hamas’ barbarism and spray-painted vile slogans on university grounds.
Clip after clip, much of it unseen on legacy media, captures the staggering moral collapse. What have we done to the next generation?
A segment on The New York Times’ attempt to blame a hospital attack on Israel hints at the press’ culpability in the antisemitic wave. We need a separate documentary to cover the extreme media bias against Israel.
Maybe two.
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“October 8” is never dull, and the film’s sober approach is welcome. So is Sachs’ decision to keep politics off-screen. We do see brief interviews with Democrats like Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and Congressman Richie Torres, but the film eschews partisan finger pointing.
That’s frustrating for conservatives who seethed as Democrats looked the other way while Hamas sympathizers ran wild.
Others behaved far worse. Rep. Rashida Tlaib happily spread that New York Times slander without apology, another damning clip briefly featured in the film.
More familiar footage, like the Ivy League presidents tap-dancing around Jewish hate, gets a lingering closeup.
Sachs’ ability to connect cultural threads over the decades is impressive. Her apolitical approach is shrewd and necessary. The messages within “October 8” must reach as many people as possible.
Politics shouldn’t matter when it comes to renouncing hate.
HiT or Miss: “October 8” offers a bleak look at antisemitism’s surge in the wake of Hamas’ 2023 attack on Israel. It’s not to be missed.
These unquestioning liberal people don’t stand for anything so they fall for anything. Be assured the conservative patriotic “We the People “ stand with Israel.
I’ll bet $ a lot of the driver for all the noise generated by Hamas sympathizers originates from NGO’s funded by the US government with assist from Middle East states like Iran and Qatar.
With Hollywood celebrities it’s herd instinct. There’s likely an informal group that puts out the messaging through phone calls, text messages, and emails, and everybody mindlessly repeats what they heard. Passing it on signals you’re one of the Cool Kids.
Do I know this for a fact? No. But pattern recognition isn’t that hard. It IS a fact, the invasion into the US by illegals was funded by our taxpayer dollars through NGO’s.
If you want to say I wear a tin hat, I’m good with that.
Spot on.
I think Hollywood has virtue signalling radar, like gay radar, except they pick up the right narratives to parrot to stay in the club.
I agree.