‘October 8’ Is a Mirror of the Hate Festering Below the Surface

March 27, 2025

by: Nurit Greenger ~ JNS

Thursday, 27 March 2025 | On October 7, 2023, the world witnessed what Hamas terrorists are capable of, as armed Gazans gleefully bragged about their ability to torture, murder, mutilate, burn alive, rape and kidnap unarmed civilian children, women and men.

And the world saw the unthinkable murderous scenes and reacted. And the reaction was wicked.

On October 8, 2023, the truth began to come out loud and clear. The central truth was that anti-Jewish, anti-Israel, global antisemitism was lying so close to the surface, that it was ready to erupt if it had a reason.

The October 7 massacre of Jews in their homeland gave haters a reason, which led to the eruption of worldwide antisemitic protests. From the streets, protesters told us that Jewish life has no value and Jews must not defend themselves. They also told us, based on atrocious lies, that terrorism, what Hamas perpetrated in Israel, was justified.

The global antisemitism truth erupted into ferocious protests, in which the masses came out on the streets and on college grounds to justify the heinous murder of Jews by the Hamas brutes in the name of Allahu Akbar, “God is great” in Arabic. They came out to profess the “truth,” that to erase off the map the state of the Jewish people, Israel, is justified and to be anti-Israel and hate Jews is a good diversion from civility.

The mass protests on US college campuses, which we watched on TV screens and via social media, in which the participants expressed support for Hamas’s murderous activities, told us that the next generation of Americans—the future leaders of America—are being brought up to think erroneously and hate a particular group of people—the Jews, the Zionists. Their behavior and the slogans they yelled were guided by an indoctrination of lies in which they came to believe; lies that are unfamiliar to most Americans.

The West denies the fact it is facing the spread of Islamic holy war. Could it be due to the West’s fear it can’t win against the 1.8 billion Muslims who are at odds with its Judeo-Christian tenet and, therefore, choose not to even try to fight?

Instead, the West is shielding itself behind the comforting fiction that if Israel just puts its head under the Islamic butcher’s cleaver, the Hamas-style radical Islam will not be so bad to others.

Here is advice to the West: Remove the neckerchief keffiyeh symbol of terrorism, connect the dots, and fight like Israel to prevail.

Since October 8, 2023, the campaigners in US city squares and university campuses celebrated Hamas as freedom fighters rather than murderous terrorists. Their message was clear: Jews deserve the inhumanity they experienced at the hands of Hamas.

The lies written on the protesters’ placards made it clear that we are witnessing modern antisemitism. For instance, anti-Zionism is the modern antisemitism definition. Zionism is the Jews’ self-determination right in their homeland, Israel. Translated, if there is no Zionism, then Jews have no right to defend themselves and exist in their sovereign land. That transforms it into modern-day antisemitism.

The scope and magnitude of Islam’s threat to Western civilization are greatly embedded within the American college campus and the mainstream media. Islam is in a “Holy War” with Western culture reinforced by the mainstream and instigated by a failing education system.

Today, the Islamic war attacks the Jews, easily made into a convenient assault target group. Tomorrow they will attack the Christians and all other non-Islamic people, as they currently do throughout Africa and the Middle East. Radical Islam is not a peaceful political religion; it is dedicated to global domination and the destruction of all those they call infidels.

The documentary film “October 8” is not political. Rather an eye-opener of what we watched erupt following Hamas’s atrocities in Israel. And what erupted should scare us all. It is a reality we cannot live with if we wish to continue being a civilized society.

The documentary bears the question: How did we, in America, arrive at this moment where murderous Hamas [members] are celebrated as “freedom fighters” and not the savage terrorists they are? Don’t the protesters have enough moral attributes to perceive that this fight is about primitive darkness versus enlightened civility?

“October 8” has a broader scope than just the Jews and Israel. It is collectively about all of us, how so many people became blinded by their baffling hate for Israel that they can’t find empathy for the innocents who were murdered or kidnapped on October 7. Today, the hate is directed at Jews; tomorrow, the same hate will be directed at who? What does that mean for all Americans? For humanity?

“October 8” tells us that the world may have lost its mind. That it is regressing, not progressing, and sinking into a very dangerous territory. It is an eye-opener to a reality we either do not want to recognize exists or that we are indifferent to it. Either way, “October 8” tells us that too many Americans have lost their moral compass. More than that, we are in a fight for the soul of America, for humanity’s soul.

The opinions and facts presented in this article are those of the author, and neither JNS nor its partners assume any responsibility for them.

Posted on March 27, 2025

Source: (This article was originally published by the Jewish News Syndicate on March 25, 2025. Time-related language has been modified to reflect our republication today. See original article at this link.)

Photo Credit: Andrew Bernard/jns.org