Sachs filmed the documentary ‘October 8’ for 10 months around the world, including on college campuses, in Israel, London, and across the US.
By Shiryn Ghermezian, The Algemeiner
More than 100 movie theaters across the United States will release on Friday a scathing documentary that examines how antisemitism exploded on college campuses, social media, and the streets across America starting the day after Hamas-led terrorists went on a deadly rampage across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
From Briarcliff Entertainment and award-winning filmmaker Wendy Sachs, “October 8” dives deep into the surge of antisemitism in the immediate aftermath of the Hamas attacks, while Israel was still counting the number of people murdered and taken hostage by the terrorist group.
The documentary shows that on Oct. 8, 2023 — just one day after the largest massacre of Jews to take place since the Holocaust — people across the US were already trying to justify and celebrate the Hamas atrocities and use them as an excuse to spread hatred against Jews and Israel.
It features footage from Times Square, New York, where less than 24 hours after the Hamas attack, thousands gathered to protest against Israel and applaud Hamas for murdering 1,200 people and kidnapping 251 hostages ranging in age from nine months to 93 years old.
“Rather than the outrage being directed against those slaughtering the Jews, the outrage was being directed at the Jews for objecting to being slaughtered,” says author and podcast host Dan Senor in the documentary.
After sharing harrowing footage from the Oct. 7 massacre and testimony by survivors, the documentary scrutinizes how Hamas has been celebrated as freedom fighters rather than terrorists for orchestrating the attack and exposes how the anti-Israel narrative promoted by the US-designated terrorist organization has become mainstream on college campuses through its numerous ties to student groups like Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP).
It is estimated that SJP has roughly 200 branches on college campuses across the country.
Sachs was visiting her daughter at the University of Wisconsin on Oct. 7, 2023, and learned about the terrorist attack through the images and videos shared on television and social media.
“It was horrifying and gutting,” she told The Algemeiner. “I think we all as the Jewish diaspora community felt completely gutted, as if a generational trauma had been unleashed.”
Seeing the immediate surge in hatred against Israel and Jews after the attack made her want to start filming the phenomenon and share it with the world, she explained.
Sachs filmed the documentary “October 8” for 10 months around the world, including on college campuses, in Israel, London, and across the US.
“Really it was on October 8 when I saw the protest in Times Square, where they were celebrating Hamas as freedom fighters rather than as terrorists. And then on October 9 we saw that more than 30 student groups at Harvard had signed on to a letter blaming Israel for the attack on itself. And then we saw everything unfolding at all these college campuses and I realized that something epic was going on,” Sachs noted.
“And as a journalist, documentary filmmaker, and a Jewish American, I knew there was a story here and I wanted to document what was happening.”
“It absolutely felt like this was a Kristallnacht, a pogrom, something that we never experienced before,” she added, referring to the infamous Nazi assault on the German Jewish community on Nov. 9-10, 1938.
“And the reaction by universities, by what we were seeing in the streets of America, on social media, by the silence of so many people, was so shocking to me that I felt like I needed to document this moment and the explosion of antisemitism that we were seeing.”
The documentary largely focuses on pro-Hamas narratives that are flourishing on college campuses across the US with the help of SJP.
One striking audio clip featured in the documentary is an FBI wiretap from 1993, when 25 senior members of Hamas held a meeting at a hotel in Pennsylvania to discuss strategy for how to expand the organization’s influence in North America through American media outlets, universities, and research centers.
Viewers are also shown evidence proving that SJP’s tactics have direct links to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, and how the student organization is perpetuating violence and not doing anything to advance peace in the Middle East.
“To me what was most surprising and shocking was honestly what I discovered about SJP,” Sachs told The Algemeiner.
“I think like most other people, you see SJP and you think it’s just another student group. What I didn’t understand was that it’s really connected to the Muslim Brotherhood, American Muslims for Palestine, and Hamas, and the tentacles lead back to Iran. I think that level of understanding of how sophisticated SJP is, and that it is not just a student group and that the messaging is coming from Hamas in America and Hamas abroad. And that revelation from that 1993 Marriot hotel room in Philadelphia where we have FBI wiretap of members of Hamas in America talk about how to make their messaging more palatable to an American audience and how when they’re speaking to people on the left, they’re going to speak in terms of social justice and apartheid. That understanding was really mind-blowing to me, my editors, and our production team. That was really a revelatory moment in making the film.”
“They’re not taking about a two-state solution and they’re not talking about peace,” she continued, blasting SJP.
“I was filming at Columbia University and they’re talking about one state, we want it all we want it all. That to me was also really shocking because I think so many of us just assume that they’re protesting a war or a situation. But they’re protesting that Israel exists. Let’s start with that. They’re protesting that there is a Jewish state of Israel and until we understand that — it’s fundamental to any conversation of lack of conversation that we can have about the issue. They’re not talking about peace. They say it for themselves.”
“October 8” profiles several college students — including the student body president of the University of California, Santa Barbara – who have been targeted with antisemitic abuse and are trying to counter anti-Israel hatred at their schools, such as Columbia University, Harvard, and the University of Pennsylvania.
The film includes footage from the 2023 congressional testimony of three university presidents who had a hard time answering questions about their failed to protect Jewish students from harassment on campus and if calls for the genocide of Jews violated their school’s code of conduct.
Other topics examined in the documentary include the demonization of Israel by human rights groups and the media – such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and UN Women — the publishing of false news about Israel, and the normalization of violence against Jews online.
The documentary also condemns the widespread silence by celebrities about the Oct. 7 attack and Hamas’s hostage-taking, in comparison to the public outrage expressed after schoolgirls in Nigeria were abducted by Boko Haram in 2014.
“I felt completely betrayed by Hollywood,” actress Debra Messing says in the film.
Sachs conducted more than 80 interviews for the documentary and spoke to college students and professors, politicians, social media experts, antisemitism experts, journalists, academics, and celebrities.
Filming for “October 8” was completed in October 2024, when there were still 101 hostages being held by Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip. There are currently 59 Israeli hostages still held captive in Gaza and at least 35 are dead.
Sachs told The Algemeiner one thing she hopes viewers realize after seeing “October 8” is that “anti-Zionism is antisemitism today. There is no gray anymore.”
“And that the exceptionalizing of Israel has really led to this moment,” she added.
“We see it in the bias that we see in the media. We see it from NGOs, like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, and the propaganda being fed to young people. It is the perfect storm that has led to this moment, where this irrational obsessive hatred of Israel has led to Hamas being celebrated as freedom fighters rather than as terrorists. And that’s really what I want people to walk away with — to understanding that when they see ‘Zionists Not Allowed’ [signs], that means ‘Jews Not Allowed.’”
“October 8” will have a week-long nationwide theatrical release at AMC theaters starting on Friday. Advance tickets are now available.