‘October H8te’ documentary aims to understand US college alignment with Hamas

Filmmaker Wendy Sachs was visiting her daughter, a student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, last Oct. 7 when the Hamas terrorist attack was taking place in Israel, unfolding a nightmarish scene of murder, atrocities, abduction and destruction.

By Oct. 8, Sachs said, there was a concurrent explosion of antisemitism on college campuses in the U.S., a development that she explores in “October H8te,” a 100-minute film that premiered one year later, on Oct. 31 in Tel Aviv’s Cinematheque.

The film takes viewers through the timeline of the pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel and antisemitic protests that mushroomed on American campuses starting Oct. 8, through the Dec. 5 congressional hearing and testimonies from the presidents of Harvard, MIT and the University of Pennsylvania, and into the springtime sieges at Columbia University in New York City and other campuses.

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Throughout “October H8te,” Sachs attempted to understand how this situation came to be, and why the campus social justice movements ended up aligned with Hamas, a terrorist organization.

She looked at the funding, strategy and messaging created by Hamas, and its apparent proxy on campuses, the Students for Justice in Palestine group.

On the long side for a documentary, “October H8te” attempts to answer perhaps too many questions, tackling the unfolding scenes of antisemitism while also examining how Hamas gained a foothold on college campuses.

The film looks closely at SJP but not at the role of Qatar, the tiny Middle East state that has reportedly contributed $4.7 billion to dozens of academic institutions across the United States between 2001 and 2021, according to Times of Israel reports.

Sachs said that the Qatar element was difficult to pin down in order to determine if it’s playing a role in sowing anti-Zionism on campuses.

“It’s all a little bit gray,” said Sachs.

Sachs herself was surprised by the organization of SJP, which she had formerly thought of as just one of many student groups on college campuses.

“What’s fascinating right now to people is that this has been developing for decades,” said Sachs. “Hamas in the U.S. was playing the long game and was figuring out 30 years ago how to make their message more palatable. The sophistication really surprised me.”

“October H8te” also looks at how antisemitism turned into anti-Zionism, the global silence around the sexual assault and rapes Hamas terrorists perpetrated against Israeli women on Oct. 7, and includes an interview with Sheryl Sandberg, who produced “Screams Before Silence,” about the sexual atrocities of Oct. 7.

“I poured every part of myself into this film,” said Sachs, who conducted some 80 interviews with various leaders, voices and influencers, including actress Debra Messing (who serves as a producer of the film), comic Michael Rapaport, Noa Tishby, U.S. Rep. Ritchie Torres, and U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, along with several impressive Jewish student leaders.

Some 40 interviews ended up in the documentary and some of the strongest ones are with student leaders from Barnard, MIT and UC Santa Barbara.

It’s those conversations that help viewers gain an understanding of what these students experienced and the tumultuous effect of Oct. 7 on their campuses, as well as what they did to combat that experience.

“What my intention was all along was not just document what’s been happening in the aftermath of Oct. 7 but how intentional it was,” said Sachs. “What I want is that the 80% of the world who maybe do not have firm opinions [on the events of the last year] to see this.”

Sachs is looking for distribution for the film and hopes to sign with a streaming platform to reach audiences beyond Jewish community screenings.

There’s a lot of information tackled in the film by Sachs, whose 2020 film, “Surge,” which played on Showtime, Amazon Prime and Hulu, sought to understand the movement of women politicians in the wake of the 2016 Donald Trump presidential win.

She is also booking private showings and wants to screen “October H8te” at schools and universities.

“My daughter and her friends, my son’s friends, are all clamoring to see the film,” said Sachs. “But it’s not just for Hillel and Chabad and Jewish Greek life. Yes, it’s here to empower them and for them to see the diversity of young Jewish leaders, but to also get into the general population of young people. They’re the ones who need to see this.” PJC