“October 8” Review

Despite the title, October 8 spends little time talking about the Hamas terrorist attack and more about the fallout felt in America from the perspective of the Jewish and Zionist communities. The motive becomes clear as the topic goes further away from the prickly topic of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and more into the subject of antisemitism. But the antisemitism covered in this film covers a broad umbrella extending from death threats online to protests for a free Palestine. Noticeably missing from all the talking heads in this documentary are those for a free Palestine, likely because they’d challenge the film’s citation of the 1,200 murders by Hamas against Israel with the 48,000 casualties that Israel has inflicted on Gaza since. Those facts never come up in a film that would instead treat the hatred towards Isreal as an amorphous monster rather than a complex geopolitical issue.

It would be one thing if the film only wanted to center on grief and discrimination against the Jewish community, as that would require greater empathy and reflection on the situation as a whole. In its place are broad brushstrokes that do more to demonize any criticism of Israel. This is not to say that those interviewed are strictly bound by hatred. There’s little doubt in my mind that many of them were speaking from an earnest place of fear for the rise in antisemitism and the compassion to want that hatred expelled. We hear from scholars, activists, journalists, and celebrities who all have a stake in this feud and concerns about the safety of Jewish people. We also get plenty of citations from history about how dangerous it is to normalize the retaliations of attacking faith with slurs and death threats.

While all that may come from a genuine place of concern, this film and those interviewed don’t answer the more complicated follow-up question: What’s next? If antisemitism is on the rise, where is it coming from, what is propelling it, and how can we combat it? There are plenty of contributing factors to this volatile state, including the rise of neo-nazis and reflections on history playing out right now in a Republican administration that is going further right than ever before. But with how this documentary is framed, it only wants to focus on one enemy, and that’s Palestine and its sympathizers. No attempt is ever made to understand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict further and reduce the developing situation to Palestine being bullies and Israel being bullied. The closest the film gets to this topic is by interviewing the son of Hamas’s co-founder, but even that talk does little more than demonize Palestine further.

There is also no attempt to understand the differentiating views between Hamas and Palestine, a thorny subject for anybody familiar with how much Israel has obliterated Gaza and refused to adhere to ceasefires. If nearly 2,000 deaths of Jewish people are unacceptable and akin to the Holocaust, shouldn’t the tens of thousands of murdered Palestinians also be as heinous? That question is never asked of the talking heads, possibly because the answer might be too hideous to approach for both the interviewer and interviewee. While the film might be encouraging compassion and evoking grief, the onslaught of fear and allusions to the Holocaust will only breed more hatred. Those outside this conflict will naturally have questions about why some Palestinians have garnered so much more support from marginalized communities than Israel. The honest answer might have something to do with the uneven power dynamic being wielded in Gaza, but the answer the film and its subjects want you to arrive at is that people just hate Jews.

Comedian Andy Kindler once told a joke about how a casting director told him, “Don’t be schticky,” which Andy interpreted as “We hate the Jews.” It’s the same deal here. Why did the transgender community embrace Palestine? Could it have something to do with feeling a similar anxiety of oppressors wanting to wipe them off the map for their existence? No, the movie asserts, trans people probably just hate Jews. A lot of finger-pointing is performed on social media and, strangely enough, academia, despite many of the film’s talking heads being within academia. With a refusal to approach the topic beyond the emotional response and understand where the heated hatred comes from, there’s little shock that the film targets DEI and embraces the absurd notion of horseshoe theory about how those on the political left are now just as bad as the political right. Every trick in the book is thrown at the wall to avoid the deeply comfortable topic at all costs.

October 8 may present itself as a portrait of antisemitism, but it has a toxic aftertaste of stoking hatred and revenge further. Even the film admits it isn’t so much about antisemitism as it is a focus on the rise in calls for genocide, but those reading the film carefully will note its vocal defense of Zionism and vilifying of all Palestinians. Curbing discrimination only comes with recognizing where that pain comes from, and when a documentary like this is unwilling to go there, all it will do is stoke more hatred.