By Lana Melman, JNS
“October H8TE” explores the explosive rise of Jew-hate in the United States, especially on college campuses.
I recently attended a screening of “October H8TE,” a documentary film by director and co-executive producer Wendy Sachs, which was followed by a question-and-answer session. Later, I had a one-on-one conversation with co-executive producer Debra Messing, in addition to a student featured in the film.
Unlike some of the other films about the Hamas-led terrorist attacks and atrocities in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, in which 1,200 people were massacred and 251 others kidnapped and dragged into the Gaza Strip, this documentary focuses on the wave of Jew-hatred that has spiraled upward in America since Oct. 8.
The film starts and ends in Israel, but the story is told through an American lens. “I am an American Jew,” says Sachs, the filmmaker and mother of a college student. “So, I’m telling it through my point of view, in my experience and what’s happening here in America.”
“This is not a film about the Republican Party or the Democratic Party,” says Sachs. “But at the same time—what is a doozy to me, and, I think, to many of us—is what is happening in the progressive left of the Democratic Party—the not just refusal to call out the antisemitism but a hostility toward Israel and even the term ‘Zionism’.”
Anti-Israel bias and loathing have become rampant on many campuses. Clips of angry student protests with their calls for Israel’s destruction weave throughout the film. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, a recent Harvard-Harris poll found that 52% of Generation Z, those between the ages of 18 and 24, said they side more with Hamas than Israel.
I asked Messing, who appears in the film, what she would say to them.
“I would say you’re sympathizing with terrorists,” she told me. “Then I would ask: What kind of civilization do you want? One in which women can’t show their hair, speak in public, sing, learn? Where gay people are hung in the town square or pushed off buildings to their deaths? Where there is no freedom of speech, no freedom of religion, no freedom of movement? If this is not what you want, then you have to stop marching with people carrying Hamas, Hezbollah and ISIS flags.”
Messing said supporting the Palestinian people and the Israeli people is not a binary choice. “You can want freedom and self-determination for Palestinians, and at the same time believe that Israel is a sovereign state and the ancient ancestral homeland of the Jews. Both Palestinians and Israelis deserve self-determination and to be free of Hamas’s terror.”
If looking for causes of the roots of contemporary Jew-hatred, this film explains a great deal. The filmmakers dive into the role of the movement to boycott and divest from Israel; the alignment of social-justice movements with Hamas; the history of antisemitism and Islamic jihadism; and the evolution of the group Students for Justice in Palestine, arguably the leading anti-Israel group on campus.
The film boasts an impressive list of interviewees, including Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.); Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.); historian Deborah Lipstadt, U.S. special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism; journalist and author Bari Weiss; technology executive and former Facebook CEO Cheryl Sandberg; author and commentator Dan Senor; and Mosab Hassan Yousef, whose father helped found Hamas.
The heart of the movie, however, lies in the stories of university students. Since Oct. 7, apart from Orthodox Jews, college students who refuse to renounce their ethnicity or support for Israel are among those most viciously targeted. One of them is Tessa Veksler, who served as student body president at the University of California, Santa Barbara, during the Oct. 7 attack and has since graduated.
After condemning the violence in Israel that Black Shabbat morning, she instantly faced online harassment, receiving messages like “Happy Holocaust” and “Free Palestine.” Antizionist signs were taped to her office, including one reading: “Zionists not allowed.” She also faced a recall election, where Veksler stood firm, declaring to the student senate: “I refuse to be conditionally Jewish.”
I marvel at the fortitude of Veksler and the other students in the film. “Young Jewish adults are stronger than people may believe,” she says. “We do not solve problems on any scale by turning our backs on them. We can control the way we react to antisemitism, and that choice should be to confront it head-on, fiercely, and consistently.”
Messing tells me that “pride in our survival after thousands of years of persecution keeps us moving forward. While countless groups … have come and gone, Jews have the strength of our ancestors to show us, ‘Yes we can.’”
So, will hate and harassment drive Jewish students from universities their predecessors spent decades seeking to gain entrance to, and where they have succeeded even since?
No, affirms Veksler: “We’re not going anywhere.”
