Downloaded from YTS.MX
[grand orchestral fanfare playing]
Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX
[air-raid siren blaring]
[explosions, terrified screams]
NEWSCASTER: Right now a massive barrage of rockets
coming off of the Gaza Strip.
NEWSCASTER 2: The terrorist group Hamas
launched an unprecedented
air, ground and even sea assault on Israeli soil.
[gunfire, screams]
NEWSCASTER 3: Palestinian gunmen are inside
Israeli cities and towns.
NEWSCASTER 4: There are reports that civilians
were barricaded in their homes
with Hamas gunmen going door to door in one Israeli village.
NEWSCASTER 5: The single worst incident
of this entire attack was at a party
just a couple of miles away from the Gaza border.
[gunshots]
NEWSCASTER 6: They have taken Israelis hostage
back inside of Gaza.
[chatter in Arabic]
NEWSCASTER 7: Israelis woke up today to find
their worst nightmares had come true.
♪ ♪
IRIT LAHAV: 6:30 a.m. we had missile alert.
I quickly jumped out of bed. We have ten seconds.
Ran to the safe room,
closed the door.
A minute later,
my daughter says, "I hear shooting."
I said, "No. Come on, you're imagining."
Another minute later,
my next-door neighbor wrote
in the kibbutz's messaging system,
"Somebody is shooting at our house."
SHAI DAVIDAI: It's Friday night here.
My wife and I are about to go to bed.
We just look at our phone for a second
and we see a picture that we get
from my sister-in-law, her one-year-old boy,
kind of like standing upright,
looking at the TV and we see missiles shot at Israel.
NOA TISHBY: It was 8:30 p.m. in the West Coast
and suddenly my phone rings and it's my sister from Israel.
I had a-a hunch that something is wrong.
I picked up the phone and she is there
and there are sirens in the background and explosions.
Nobody is reporting in mainstream media.
So I have the Israeli news on and I'm learning
what's unfolding as-as it's happening
and I go on Live on Instagram.
The Hamas terrorists have started launching rockets
into Israel in order to mask a land infiltration.
They have entered Israel on trucks
and on air glides, armed,
and are currently
roaming the streets all over the south of Israel,
looking for Jews to slaughter.
[gunshots]
DAVIDAI: Those first images of Hamas terrorists
driving Toyotas and shooting indiscriminately into houses.
It's just-- we realized something big is happening.
LAHAV: Another neighbor sent us a message saying
that he sees militant people fully armed.
"Stay in your safe rooms and lock your doors."
And I knew that these doors cannot be locked.
Those was endless shooting, automatic weapon.
[gunfire]
We realized that they are going from
door to door, door to door,
and soon enough they will come to our house.
[distant gunshots]
[chatter in Arabic]
Luckily, my brother, who's an engineer,
he sent me a picture of how
he locked his door with two broomsticks.
I grabbed an oar,
took apart my vacuum cleaner.
I used the metal hose of the Dyson vacuum cleaner,
took a leather cord because I wanted it to be very strong,
and I tied them to the door handle
and then made an "X."
Orna Pauker was writing:
"My husband was shot.
He's bleeding."
Nir Adar: "They're in my house."
Michal Itzik: "They're burning my house."
Efrat Katz: "They're walking around with knives.
They took Gadi."
Avner Goren:
"They're in my house."
[crying softly]
He was shot.
In his bed.
And his dog, too.
And his wife was in the baby room
and she was shot there.
♪ ♪
At around 10:30,
we were still hoping that they would not come
to our safe room's door,
but eventually they did.
We thought this was our end.
TESSA VEKSLER: I woke up and my two housemates
were just staring at me.
They said, "Tessa, there's a war in Israel."
And my response was, "There's always a war in Israel."
And they looked at me and they said, "This one's different."
My phone flooded with all these horrific images
and videos coming out.
[horns honking]
[repeats phrase in Arabic]
LAHAV: 6:00, we had not been able to drink
or eat for 12 hours.
We heard Hebrew.
Somebody was saying, "I'm from the Army.
I came to rescue you."
And then he opened the door wide.
We saw everything broken in the house.
He walked us to a safer area
where they gathered all the people from the kibbutz.
And we go, "What? Where is everybody? Where is everybody?"
And we realized that so many people are missing.
NEWSCASTER: The Israeli military
has declared a state of war alert
and is mobilizing its forces in response
to an unprecedented attack today.
Israeli forces are now going house to house
recovering bodies of... of men,
of-of women, and of children.
Too many to count, too many so far to give name to,
that they say one word describes what happened here,
and that is a "massacre."
♪ ♪
LIAD DIAMOND: The second day of the war,
we got nearly 200 journalists from all over the world
and we just opened the gate.
Wars today are not only in battlefields
but also on different media outlets,
on the Internet.
It's a very challenging war,
the war of the narrative
and sometimes even the war over truth.
♪ ♪
MANDANA DAYANI: When you actually see
the level of devastation,
I don't know how to unsee it.
It was meant to cause
the maximum amount of fear
and suffering in a population of people
who have inherited some
of the worst generational trauma you can imagine.
TISHBY: It's all stories that we've heard
and grew up on,
except this time around they were also
videotaped.
TAL-OR COHEN: This is not a terrorist attack
that happened in one place or period of time.
It happened multiple times on your most intimate platforms
that you're literally seeing before you go to bed.
And I think that that's why this content has penetrated
the psyche of probably every Jewish person who
felt that this was a genocidal attack
intended for them.
♪ ♪
[crowd chatter]
DEMONSTRATOR: Free, free Palestine!
Less than 24 hours ago on the land, from the sea,
and from the air, the people of the Gaza Strip...
[cheering]
DAN SENOR: It was October 8th.
There were still Hamas terrorists in communities
in Southern Israel.
There was still fighting going on.
DEMONSTRATORS: Free, free Palestine!
Israel was still counting
the numbers of the dead and the mutilated
and the raped and the kidnapped,
and there's a protest against Israel in Times Square.
Fuck Israel! Fuck Israel!
SENOR: Rather than the outrage being directed against those
slaughtering the Jews, the outrage was being directed
at the Jews for objecting to being slaughtered.
[shouting indistinctly]
LORENZO VIDINO: We were seeing protests glorifying the actions
of the resistance, which is sort of code word for Hamas.
How many dead? How many dead?
VIDINO: So it became apparent, I would say from the get-go
that there was a core
of individuals nationwide
that were pushing a pro-Hamas
narrative.
DEBRA MESSING: I just thought
the entire world turned upside down
and I immediately felt like,
"We're in trouble,"
because Israel hadn't responded yet.
SHABBOS KESTENBAUM: In the early hours of October 8th,
34 student groups really championed
by the Harvard Palestine Solidarity Committee,
promoted this statement. The opening line says,
"we hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible
for all the violence unfolding."
At no point was Hamas ever condemned or even named.
RABBI DAVID WOLPE: The statement went viral all over the world.
In a strange way, Harvard had become,
outside of the Middle East itself, the single
most important battleground
for forces on both sides of this continuing struggle.
NEWSCASTER: Hundreds of people supporting the Palestinians
gathered outside Cambridge City Hall today.
Dozens supporting Israel held
a counter protest across the street.
WOLPE: Once Harvard had set the tone,
it started this
unfathomable chain reaction.
DEMONSTRATORS: Free, free Palestine!
- Free, free Palestine! - Free, free Palestine!
- Free, free! Free Palestine! - Free, free! Free Palestine!
Israel, go to hell!
NOA FAY: October 12th was the first
anti-Israel and pro-terror rally that we saw on campus.
I was still consumed by the ongoing grief of October 7th.
It was incredibly shocking to see my peers in support
of a terrorist attack.
I personally was starting to
just feel a lot of tension within my own social circles.
REPORTER: From the quad of Columbia University,
dual rallies, side by side.
DAVIDAI: This is the first time since the Vietnam War
that Columbia University shut its gates to the public.
What I see is about 900 students
shouting "by all means necessary."
And behind me, about 200
Jewish American students holding the posters
of the kidnapped in absolute silence.
So it's two quads and I'm standing there in the middle.
I wasn't seeing an ideological disagreement between two sides.
I was seeing hatred.
[shouting indistinctly]
EYAL YAKOBY: Even before October 11th,
we've been seeing more and more
anti-Semitic incidents on campus.
"Jews are Nazis" was spray-painted adjacent
to Penn's main Jewish fraternity house.
There was a swastika spray- painted inside of a building.
"90% of pigs are gas chambered" was written in chalk
in the center of campus.
DEMONSTRATORS: Hey, hey, ho, ho, the occupation has got to go.
Hey, hey, ho, ho, the occupation...
CLAUDINE GAY: Our university embraces
a commitment to free expression.
That commitment extends even to views that many of us
find objectionable, even outrageous.
WOLPE: I got a call from Claudine Gay
and she was deeply emotional.
She'd been in the job for two, three months
and all of a sudden it was the biggest crisis
that the university has had.
She talked about creating an anti-Semitism panel
and I thought, "Okay, this is gonna be the response
"of the university.
"People can protest 'cause protesting is okay,
but this stuff is gonna stop."
JEWISH STUDENT: Stop touching me.
PROTESTERS: Shame! Shame! Shame! Shame!
SENOR: Protests quickly turned
beyond just rhetorical outbursts
to bullying and pushing
and shoving and then outright violence.
FAY: You have students who are being
physically assaulted. Their Magen Davids
are being ripped off their neck.
They're being shouted at because they're visibly Jewish.
DEMONSTRATORS: Viva, viva Palestina.
TALIA DROR: You had massive rallies at Cornell.
Students, professors,
and administrators all glorified the October 7th attacks.
Professor Russell Rickford
announced that he was exhilarated
and energized by the Hamas attacks.
A lot of students called it resistance.
They called it justified.
They began calling Zionist students racist.
PROTESTOR: All settlers and all settlements
are legitimate military targets
and they will be targeted
and you can either live there in peace
or you can go back to Moscow, and Brooklyn, and Gstaad
and fucking Berlin, where you came from.
YAKOBY: We started seeing an explosion of violence.
The Chabad house
was broken into and vandalized.
The Hillel received bomb threats.
Jewish students are texting in their group chats
saying, "Is it safe to walk outside?"
We cannot protect your children from pro-terror
student organizations because the president
of Columbia University will not speak out.
[over video]: People have asked me in the past few days,
"Are you not afraid to speak up?
You're putting your job on the line."
You got it all wrong.
I am not afraid to speak up.
I am speaking up because I'm afraid!
[sighs heavily]
This is the rawest that I've ever been. Right?
Like, this is, you know,
this is when-- when you take away
all the-the defense mechanisms
and it's like this is pure pain.
VEKSLER: UCSB is generally a calm campus.
There were protests here and there,
but a lot of it was behind the scenes.
A lot of it was happening online.
[notification chimes]
Right after October 7th,
I made a post essentially saying October 7th
was the largest massacre against Jews
since the Holocaust.
Standing up for Jewish human rights is not political.
I stand with the Jewish community.
And I stand with Israel, and you should, too.
The hate started flooding in almost immediately.
And a lot of it was really tied to the fact
that I'm student body president of my university.
And people were upset that I was taking a stance.
It was on every platform you could imagine.
And also, they were kind of acting
as if I had emerged from the Zionist closet,
even though
when I was elected student body president,
I was the president of Students Supporting Israel
on my campus when I ran.
My parents and my brother immigrated
from the former Soviet Union in 1990,
and I know that
a big reason as to why they left
was anti-Semitism.
They didn't want my brother to have this life that they had.
The definitely relinquished their Jewish identities.
I mean, they put my brother in a Catholic school.
My brother and I are 20 years apart.
So by the time I was born, things had changed a bit.
My parents were more open
to the idea of having a Jewish-raised daughter.
But it was really obvious that there was a fear
around being an openly Jewish person.
They didn't have to say it. It was just clear to me.
I feel a big responsibility defending my people.
I can't be quiet about this.
I published an op-ed called "What College Students Can Do
to Support the Jewish People and Israel."
Imagine if on October 9th,
instead of harassing me on social media,
that the entire student body bound together to condemn
what happened on October 7th.
And if every American college campus did that
and the U.S. government did that
and the international community did that,
Hamas would've had no ammunition.
FAY: Everything that we saw was organized
and directed by SJP.
They took the initiative to
host the rallies, to provide the chants.
JONATHAN SCHANZER: SJP, or Students for Justice
in Palestine is probably the most active network
of students, professors, administrators, and activists.
Vehemently anti-Israel, anti-Zionist.
75% of most of the resources
that support Islamophobia is coming from
pro-Israel sources. If you don't know...
SCHANZER: Hatem Bazian, the current chairman
of American Muslims for Palestine
created the first branch of
Students for Justice in Palestine
on the campus of Berkeley in the 1990s.
HATEM BAZIAN: Well, we've been watching
intifada in Palestine.
We've been watching an uprising in Iraq
and it's about time that we have an intifada in this country!
- [continues indistinctly] - [crowd cheering]
SCHANZER: And today we believe
that there are about 200 different branches
of SJP operating on campuses across the United States.
But when I say we believe, I say that
because they are an unincorporated association.
It's not a not-for-profit. It's not a 501[c][3].
They actually don't exist on paper
in any accountable way.
People think they are grassroots.
What I don't think they understand is
a terrorist group is actually providing them
with marching orders.
DEMONSTRATORS: Free, free Palestine!
♪ ♪
VIDINO: Back in '93,
a meeting took place in a hotel in Philadelphia.
25 leaders of Hamas in America-- we're talking about
very senior people-- met and discussed strategy.
This meeting was monitored by the FBI.
[voices speaking Arabic]
And the main thing they discussed was how to present
what Hamas was doing and make it palatable to Americans.
And so in a very efficient, very precise way, they said,
"Okay, with audience so-and-so--
"so when we meet with progressives,
"we're gonna frame it in the terms of apartheid
and racial oppression."
[voices speaking Arabic]
What we're seeing today is the realization
and the implementation of that strategy.
These people know very well
what the American political discourse is and the language
they are repackaging is really
what makes SJP a very clever organization.
ASAF ROMIROWSKY: SJP had a toolkit in place
right after October 7th that was a how-to guide with succinct
and analogous messaging for how to mobilize their students
and their chapter members throughout the United States.
And that toolkit came to them directly
out of Hamas messaging.
Hamas is a terrorist organization defined
by the U.S. State Department
and designated as a terror group.
TAL-OR COHEN MONTEMAYOR: The attack
by Hamas on October 7th was called
the Al Aqsa Flood.
That's how they referred to it themselves, Hamas.
And then we saw SJP create
Flood the Streets for Palestine.
So they're literally taking something that's being used
by a terrorist group to actually perpetuate violence and now
adapting that into their imagery
and their protest content.
ROMIROWSKY: From a funding standpoint,
there's a lot of flow of money
that's coming to fund this kind of activism.
SJP is an affiliate of American Muslims for Palestine, AMP.
AMP has direct ties to Hamas
and the Muslim Brotherhood.
And so SJP receives direct funding from groups affiliated
with the Muslim Brotherhood including Hamas itself.
SCHANZER: The Muslim Brotherhood is the cornerstone ideology
for every radical group that has ever attacked America.
But Hamas took their radical ideology
and put it on steroids.
And that's what is actually really so troubling
is that you are now watching students on the streets
of America embracing the notion of violence.
OTHERS: I am asking you all to escalate.
OTHERS: And to disrupt the streets.
OTHERS: To every single oppressor.
OREN SEGAL: My whole sort of career is built on
kind of when the hair stands behind your neck
because you know things are getting too far.
Well, I'm in that moment right now,
and that's why I think this is different than previous protests
that didn't have the blatant blueprint for violence.
[demonstrators chanting]
TISHBY: These organizations are hate groups
that use amazing words like "freedom" and "justice,"
and they make the students believe that
that's what they are about.
Here are the words that they're not using.
They're not using the word "peace"
and they're not using the word "two-state solution."
DEMONSTRATOR: We want all of it!
BARI WEISS: SJP says explicitly, what they want is one state
and what they're chanting in Arabic is not,
"From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free."
It's, "From the water to the water, Palestine is Arab."
JONATHAN GREENBLATT: College students didn't
come up with that slogan.
It is enshrined in the Hamas charter.
When they say that Palestine will be free
from the river to the sea, they mean free of Jews.
TISHBY: SJP is designed
to delegitimize the only Jewish state in the world.
For example, they'll bring a vote on campus.
They'll ask the student body of the university to adopt
the BDS resolution.
SCHANZER: BDS is the acronym
for Boycott Divestment and Sanctions.
The engineers of the BDS movement
look back at the unraveling
of apartheid South Africa
as a template for a way to destroy Israel,
to turn it into a country that will be shunned
by the international community.
NEWSCASTER: Protestors are demanding colleges
divest from companies they say
profit from ties to Israel.
DEMONSTRATOR: How do you spell justice?
OTHERS: BDS!
STUDENT: SBW 24-0-12 passes with...
[clamoring, joyful screaming]
TISHBY: All of these campus resolutions
have no actual meaning, but what it does do
is it trains the college students
that a resolution on the legitimacy
of Israel is even a valid resolution to begin with.
So criticism of the state of Israel is normal
and is important as one would be critical of any country
and its government for any range of policies.
There's a big debate in this country about what
to do about the policies of the Chinese Communist Party.
You don't hear anyone saying,
"Does China have a right to exist?"
Somehow when there's a debate about Israel, it often gets--
there's a sort of reductionist approach
where quickly the question is,
"Well, does Israel have a right to exist?"
We don't have that discussion about any other country,
and that is the way anti-Semitism
is expressed today.
BLAKE FLAYTON: One of the greatest perpetrators
of anti-Semitism on campus is,
if not officially DEI,
then the essence of DEI, the ideology of DEI.
DEI stands for
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.
And their mission statement is to promote diversity.
WOLPE: DEI was designed
basically to make sure that people
of color would be protected on campus.
It was not designed, first of all,
certainly for Jews,
but also to realize that you
can be vulnerable on campus
for lots and lots of reasons,
not only for reasons of your race.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: DEI, like a lot of things,
it started off with the right intentions
and we've made tremendous progress,
and that's something we should celebrate.
The issue is that we've created this orthodoxy
that's unhealthy, where we've decided
there are oppressors and oppressed.
There's not a lot of nuance here.
We stand here on the side of Palestine
because that is the side of the oppressed.
The fastest way to identify an oppressor is basically
kind of pale and male and wealth.
People have assigned this kind of white,
rich oppressiveness to Jews and Israel.
And this got so kind of overdone
that I think the snake started eating its own tail
and you've ended up with racism itself.
SENOR: If your lens is just on Israel
versus the Palestinians,
Israel is stronger.
So there's your David and Goliath.
Now, of course,
if you lift the lens a little bit,
you realize that the story's more complicated than that.
So you have Hamas, which is not just a group
of poor Palestinians that have been oppressed by Israel,
but it is also a military, which is well-trained
and well-armed by Iran.
And Iran is committed to Israel's destruction.
Iran is also arming
and training another proxy army in Israel's north, Hezbollah.
And as we're learning about these other organizations
like the Houthis and Syria,
which is on Israel's border,
and you start to say, "Wait a minute,
suddenly who's the David and who's the Goliath?"
Ethnic cleansing no more!
VIDINO: We can go back 30 years
and we have seen these sort of protests,
but they've historically been confined to small milieus.
It had gotten more brazen and larger over the years,
but all of a sudden it really became big.
PROTESTERS: We demand liberation!
VIDINO: There has been a growing ability
of that small group of Hamas sympathizers
and pro-Palestinian advocates to create synergies
and alliances with fellow travelers.
FAY: Students for Justice in Palestine have,
in my view, manipulated and come
to capitalize on the very real grievances
of our Black community,
our Indigenous community,
our queer community,
and the rights of other marginalized identities.
DEMONSTRATORS: Free, free, free Palestine!
FAY: SJP is showing our Barnard students
that if you join this movement,
then you're behaving righteously.
You're doing the correct thing.
ROMIROWSKY: The Palestinian narrative through the narrative
of intersectionality has
hijacked every underdog cause in the world.
If you are perceived to be yourself as an oppressed group,
you also have to support the Palestinian cause
because they are the gold standard
of oppression within the pyramid of oppressed groups.
VIDINO: So when you put all these elements together,
you have the perfect storm
because you have the ability
of that pro-Hamas, pro-resistance crowd
to repackage the Hamas narrative
and mobilize the allies they have made over time.
It was fringe ten, 15 years ago.
It's quite mainstream
at least on college campuses these days.
ROMIROWSKY: Even though they're coming from the right
and the left, all of these groups are willing
to put aside their differences
and they're willing to converge because of their hatred
and trying to turn the West on its head.
This is Hamas in America.
♪ ♪
MOSAB HASSAN YOUSEF: Not many people
know Hamas as I know Hamas.
My father,
he was a big shot and he's still a big shot in Hamas.
REPORTER: For ten years, Mosab worked undercover for Israel.
Israel's internal security service,
the Shin Bet, considered him its most valuable source
within the Hamas leadership.
YOUSEF: For many years, when people ask me
about the Middle East, I did not talk about it
because I thought I was done with it.
But when October 7th happened, I had no choice
but to take my moral responsibility.
[indistinct shouting]
Hamas' ultimate goal is to establish an Islamic state.
Their fight is not over territory.
They thought by jumping on the Palestinian cause,
it's an effective way to fan the flame
of nationalism, in order to get
to their religious agendas.
If Israel does not defeat Hamas in Gaza,
Hamas will prove to all other Islamists around the world
that it was possible to bring a democracy on its knees.
And any Hamas win will not be only a threat
to the state of Israel and to the Jewish people.
It will be a threat against all civilized people
who want to live in harmony, who believe in tolerance,
who believe in peaceful dialogue
with their neighbors, who believe in diversity.
And Hamas is anti all that.
Since October 7th, all this mob,
the angry people you saw on the streets,
they want to globalize the intifada.
Globalizing intifada means global disorder.
People define it as uprise, but it is not.
My definition of intifada is chaos.
[cheering]
People here in the West,
what they don't understand
that shortly after adapting
the concept of intifada...
ALL: Globalize the intifada!
...violence will follow.
Killing,
mass shooting,
bus derailing,
suicide bombings.
It's anti-civilization.
So, to bring intifada to the United States?
Intifada contradicts with the American Constitution.
Intifada contradicts with all the values of the free world.
SENOR: Less than two weeks after October 7th,
The New York Times posts an article saying
this hospital's been bombed.
Within minutes of it, quote, unquote, "being bombed,"
they already know how many casualties there were.
Buried in the piece was, to me,
the most revealing part of the article.
The IDF does not believe it was responsible,
but is looking into it to get to the bottom of it.
And The New York Times said, "Sorry,
"we don't have time for you to get back to us.
We'll take the Hamas version."
And then boom, it goes out to The New York Times--
seven, eight million subscribers,
notifications on everyone's phone.
Intelligence from few sources
that we have in our hands indicates
that the Islamic Jihad is responsible
for the failed rocket launch,
which hit the hospital in Gaza.
Soon after, the IDF and the State Department
and other news organizations started to put together
that it wasn't Israel.
I need to show you what The New York Times just did.
They updated their headline three times.
The first headline says,
"Israeli Strike Kills Hundreds in Hospital."
The next headline says,
"At Least 500 Dead in Strike on Gaza Hospital."
The third one says, "At Least 500 Dead in Blast."
When it's Hamas--
they realize it's Hamas--
it's no longer a strike,
it's just a blast.
We're learning more today
about that explosion at a Gaza city hospital.
REPORTER: Israel released what it says is
an intercepted conversation between two militants.
"It's from us?" asks one.
"It looks like it," replies the other.
SENOR: After The New York Times
jumped the gun, they said they were wrong,
but it was too late.
God knows how many TikTok videos were created
and circulating off that headline.
And there we go.
RASHIDA TLAIB: To bomb a hospital...
...where children...
HEN MAZZIG: People don't really notice the correction.
They hear some headline that
triggers this emotional response.
Protests erupted around the world,
calling to kill the Jews, attack the Jews.
MAZZIG: One of the most important symbols for my family
in Tunisia, the oldest Jewish synagogue,
was burned to the ground.
Wasn't just the media that ran with the story.
Leading NGOs--
Human Rights Watch,
Amnesty International,
the Red Cross on their Twitter account,
the World Health Organization--
all of them were pushing out the false story.
So the demonization of Israel is not only being put out
by governments that have their own self-interests,
but human rights groups,
which should have no particular interest--
they're acting by ideology.
DANIELLE HAAS: Human Rights Watch has become,
in recent years,
one of the world's major human rights organizations,
both in size and influence.
As the senior editor, I oversaw the production
of the World Report, which was
annual review of human rights abuses
in more than 100 countries around the world.
On October the 7th,
I was the only Jewish
Israeli staff member in the 600-plus-strong organization
who actually lived in Israel.
The first public response by the organization was a tweet.
It was not unequivocal condemnation
of the massacre that had just happened.
It was wrapped up with the language of apartheid
and oppression.
[notification chimes]
It was my first indication that something was kind of awry
of not only my organization,
but rather many organizations.
Failing to call a spade a spade,
calling a massacre a "military offensive"
or an "escalation in violence."
I think what really tipped me over the edge
was this meeting on October the 23rd.
There was a great deal of space given
to what was going on in Gaza.
And not one mention was made of a Jewish Israeli victim
or a hostage.
It felt sinister.
I had a very strong visceral, physical reaction
after that meeting. I was in a public space.
I shut my computer and I-I-I went hysterical.
I just, I-I just, I just kneeled by a wall
and I-I was really, I don't-- I was really upset
because it just seemed like something
profoundly wrong had engulfed the organization.
♪ ♪
I was there for 13 and a half years,
and when I left Human Rights Watch,
I wrote an internal email laying out what I thought
was so problematic about its Israel/Palestine work.
They have had a conscious strategy to establish
in the public mind that Israel is an apartheid state.
We're here precisely because
of years of impunity for grave abuses,
including Israel's apartheid against Palestinians.
HAAS: There were individuals
that were slowly beginning to absorb others
into really seeing Israel as some sort of exceptional
demonic country amongst all others.
It flattened all complexities about Israel.
These organizations are now conflated,
by virtue of their moral message,
with being moral themselves.
And I think conscientious people think
we are getting this from a reputable source.
If a human rights organization is saying it,
it must be true.
And that's an incredibly dangerous assumption to make.
♪ ♪
MESSING: We went to Times Square
and we hung posters of all the hostages.
People stayed away, but they were taking it in.
And I thought, "Good...
"...just take it in,
just do not forget the hostages."
Children, it's innocent people.
Okay, what about the children in Palestine?
They're not innocent civilians
if they're profiting from the genocide.
You just ripped off a kid.
I thought you said the kids are-are innocent.
SENOR: The infamous image of the posters
of the hostages being torn down was, to me,
one of the most powerful events to happen so soon
after October 7th.
And that's when I started to say, "Wait a minute.
Something is really wrong here."
You're taking the kidnapped posters down.
'Cause fuck Israel. That's why.
MESSING: Please stop ripping our posters down.
These are innocent civilians in Israel.
[bleep] you and Israel.
MESSING: There was so much happening,
all of these horrendous narratives,
that the hostages were being completely forgotten.
We sent out a letter,
a plea
to our government
and all governments around the world
to prioritize
getting the hostages back.
And people wouldn't sign it.
I thought that there would be an army of activists
and celebrities who would be out,
and I felt completely
betrayed by Hollywood.
The hostages must come home.
Free every single one of them.
I spoke at the rally in Washington, D.C.,
and I was so humbly appreciative
with the response of the way I spoke.
And I appreciate you guys. Thank you.
I know where I am on the pecking order.
There's so many other bigger names, bigger celebrities,
the fact that I,
Michael Rapaport, was the big Hollywood name
outside from the great
Debra Messing,
it's some real fucking
disappointing fucking shit.
Hollywood celebrities
speak out about so many different things.
If it isn't the planet, Black Lives Matter, Ukraine,
LGBTQ, trans community,
inclusion, diversity.
But if you're gonna say things about trees being cut down
and penguins dying,
you should be ashamed of yourself not saying anything
about the fact that there's hostages.
Just that.
MURRAY: About ten years ago, I covered the conflict
in northern Nigeria, which is where,
famously, the Chibok schoolgirls were abducted
by Boko Haram, an Islamist group very,
very similar to Hamas.
There was a huge campaign internationally,
"Bring Back Our Girls."
♪ ♪
When Israeli children were abducted,
silence from the world.
I know that many of my peers faced with so much hatred
and anti-Semitism on campus are feeling helpless
and hopeless.
As I started speaking out, Barnard students were
calling me names and saying that I-I support terrorism
and that I support genocide because I'm a Zionist
and that my residents are afraid
to have a Zionist RA on their floor
and they don't feel safe.
Students started harassing me
in the middle of the night,
banging on my door.
I felt a sense of isolation. Honestly,
I-I really, I did fall into a very deep depression.
No one expected the United States
to enter into a ceasefire with the Empire of Japan
when 2,400 Americans were murdered in Pearl Harbor.
[crowd cheering]
No one expected the United States to enter into a ceasefire
with Al-Qaeda and the Taliban when 3,000 Americans
were murdered on 9/11.
And so, those who insist
that Israel should no longer defend itself
are holding the Jewish state to a dangerous double standard
that no other country,
including the United States, would ever impose on itself.
[crowd cheers]
TORRES: I'm commonly asked
why would a gay Black Latino
from the South Bronx speak out
so forcefully against anti-Semitism?
The right question is, why have others chosen silence
amid the deadliest day for Jews
since the Holocaust?
Dr. King once said
that the greatest tragedy is not only the striding clamor
of the bad people,
but it's the appalling silence of the good people.
And what we've seen after October 7th
is widespread silence and indifference
and cowardice from so-called leaders in our society,
from college and university presidents and deans,
from self-proclaimed progressives
and human rights activists.
[notification chimes]
When I express an opinion on Twitter
that Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish state
and to be a sanctuary for the Jewish people,
what often follows is an endless stream
of anti-Semitic, homophobic, racist hate.
There's no issue on which I face more harassment
and death threats than on the subject of Israel.
It's terrifying.
Social media enables
the virus of anti-Semitism to spread on a scale
and at a pace and to an extent that we've never seen before.
♪ ♪
[notification chimes]
SEGAL: For over 20 years, I've been tracking
extremist movements across the ideological spectrum.
I remember in the first three weeks after October 7th,
in the online spaces
that we monitor for... for just threats against Jews,
we saw a 400% increase.
MICHAEL MASTERS: Fantasies of violence, rape fantasies,
mutilation fantasies,
statements of, "I'm gonna go
"into a synagogue
and blow off the heads of as many Jews as I can find."
That level of visualization of violence
we've now seen become much more common
and normalized.
SEGAL: When Jews die, a lot of people get excited.
That is not uncommon on social media platforms.
But then we started seeing
how certain online platforms
were creating almost like a connective
online space for "activists"
and terrorists.
Not only is there calls for events
by American anti-Israel activists,
but, like, Hamas communiques and other terrorist propaganda.
[singing "Hezbollah Hezbollah Hezbollah"]
I mean, it's mixing it all up
so that people don't even recognize what is extremist
and anti-Semitic anymore,
'cause it's all existing in the same space.
I mean, let's just face it, the imagery
and the language of revolution and of change
that they're putting into their pro-terror narratives,
it creates something that is intriguing to people.
It doesn't get more clear than the immediate embrace
of iconography from that day.
So whether it was paragliders
that were appearing on event notices
to protest Israel
or red triangles.
A red triangle is used in Hamas propaganda
to show Israeli targets
before they are killed.
♪ ♪
[explosions]
This red triangle was "reappropriated"
by pro-Palestinian groups as a symbol of resistance.
SEGAL: The use of that red triangle now
is-is almost like a threat.
If somebody is being pro-Israel,
you just reply with the red triangle
as a substitute for the funny words
that social media won't let me say anymore.
SEGAL: It connotes that this is a legitimate target
for this protest movement
because they are either perceived to be,
you know, Jewish or Zionists or pro-Israel.
GALLOWAY: 70% of people my age support Israel.
And the reality is 20% of people under the age of 25
support Israel.
We've never seen this sort of generational divide
on a conflict.
And the question is, well, why is it happening?
♪ ♪
If you go on TikTok, for every one video that's
served to young people that is pro-Israeli,
there's 54 pro-Hamas
and pro-Palestine videos served.
54 to 1.
So you might say, "Well, Scott, you're being paranoid.
"This is just a function, a reflection of
how young people feel who've come to their own conclusions."
It's not. The ratio is wildly skewed.
Any thoughtful analysis of what is going on here
is basically saying the people controlling the algorithms
at TikTok
have decided it is in their interests
to get young people more pro-Palestine and pro-Hamas.
MASTERS: Foreign state and non-state actors
are trying to influence and foment hate,
extremism, anti-Semitism.
And to include anti-American, anti-Western,
anti-U.S. sentiment.
GALLOWAY: If the Chinese Communist Party owned Sky,
the BBC, ABC, NBC, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Apple TV+,
would we be okay with that?
Because they do for people under the age of 25.
VEKSLER: People my age do not read the news.
They do not read books. They do not read
scholarly articles. They watch short-form content
on apps like TikTok and Instagram
and they take what they see to be true.
The fact that we have put the leading news source
for the most impressionable minds in our society,
in the hands of our leading foreign adversary...
Like, historians will remember that
as a colossal strategic miscalculation
that we will live to regret.
MASTERS: Iran, North Korea, China
and Russia are amongst the largest
and perhaps most dangerous of those
that are actively engaged in fomenting misinformation,
disinformation,
seeding the world of the online space
with deepfakes
and false narratives in order to sow division and distrust.
It impacts the national security of-of our country
and the stability of Western democracy.
Raise your hands if you're a Zionist!
OTHERS: Raise your hands if you're a Zionist!
This is your chance to get out.
REPORTER: Flags of terror groups
Hamas and Hezbollah were waved.
Another saying, "Long live October 7th."
Last year we had over 500 incidents reported to us
that occurred on college campuses.
That was a 141% increase from the year prior.
62% of those incidents
occurred in the three months post October 7th.
And that pace has not abated at all.
SEGAL: What we see online animates real-world activity
and both the online space
and the real-world space
are so brazen in terms of
their embrace of terrorist organizations
and of denial of Jewish suffering,
that my big concern is that somebody is going to get killed.
REPORTER: Violence that turns deadly
at a pro-Palestinian rally.
A Jewish man in his 60s seen here holding the flag
of Israel one moment, and the next
he's down on the ground bleeding
after being hit in the head with a megaphone.
MASTERS: In the last reporting period,
over 1,100 religiously motivated
hate crimes in the United States
are directed against the Jewish community.
The next highest group was under 150.
So there is no question by the data
that the Jewish community is the most targeted group
in the United States as a religious minority.
And we are a minority.
In the United States, we make up only 2.4% of the population,
but we are disproportionately targeted by hate and violence.
55% of all religiously motivated hate crimes
in the United States
are directed against the Jewish community.
[loud banging on glass]
PROTESTORS [chanting]: Free, free, free Palestine.
[chanting continues]
GREENBLATT: Jewish students were barricaded in the library
because of a mob outside
that banged on the doors
and yelled, "Globalize the intifada."
[loud banging]
Freedom of speech is not the freedom
to incite violence.
Over the past few weeks at Cornell,
there's been a surge like never before
in anti-Semitic acts.
AMANDA SILBERSTEIN: At Cornell, a student had posted
on a message board called Greekrank
that he wanted to attack Jews on campus,
to shoot up our kosher dining hall,
to gang-rape all Jew pig women on campus,
to follow Jews home and slit their throats.
TALIA DROR: We received advice
from police and administration to stay in our dorms
because of potential security threats.
And essentially, everyone was just locked up
in their houses that night, terrified.
Two friends of mine and I
published an article in The New York Times
entitled "What's Happening on Campuses Right Now
Isn't Free Speech."
We made our way around the news.
I mean, you had students
fearing to go into the kosher dining hall
'cause they were afraid they were gonna get shot.
We spoke on multiple different shows
about our personal experiences.
♪ ♪
My mother grew up in Iran.
She used to get slapped at school for being Jewish.
My grandfather was stabbed on a bus one day
after someone called him "a dirty Jew."
I should never have to walk around campus listening
to my peers scream that I and my family should be killed.
- And that's happening? - Yes.
- At Cornell? - Yes.
DROR: My mom always says that
the hardest thing right now
is watching me go through
inherent Jew hatred
after she abandoned everything to come to a country
where she didn't think she would have to deal with that.
After all the news appearances, I was reached out to by someone
in D.C. calling me to testify.
Universities have failed to uphold
their self-proclaimed values of equity and belonging
when it comes to Jewish students.
I really wanted to communicate what it was like
to be a student when you're watching
350 people in front of you
scream that Jews should be killed
for Palestinian liberation.
This atmosphere is intolerable.
Jewish students do not believe that the MIT administration
has done an adequate job to make students feel safe on campus.
MIT is not doing anything
to make anybody feel safe on campus
is the problem.
And the fact that they're unwilling to say
there are ten times more anti-Semitic incidents
happening on MIT's campus than Islamophobic incidents.
It's not saying that we value Jewish students more, it's not.
It's just saying this is a bigger problem
that we need to focus on.
My mother is Jewish
and my father is an Afghan Muslim from Afghanistan.
Obviously, as the daughter of a Muslim,
and half of my family is Muslim,
I totally empathize with people who are hijabi, for example,
being scared.
But it's-- it's not an either-or.
President Kornbluth,
please let me go back to being a scientist.
Let me go back to being a student.
I don't want to have to keep advocating
for Jewish student safety on campus.
It's not my job. It's your job.
Please do your job and act now.
And if you can't, I'm asking Congress to do it for you.
Thank you.
There's no way we're gonna get any change
unless people from the top, you know,
people from the White House, people from Capitol Hill,
bring these university presidents
to the principal's office.
ELISE STEFANIK: Dr. Kornbluth, at MIT,
does calling for the genocide of Jews
violate MIT's code of conduct
or rules regarding bullying and harassment, yes or no?
I have not heard calling for the genocide for Jews
- on our campus. - But you've heard chants
for intifada.
I've heard chants, which can be anti-Semitic
depending on the context.
It is a context-dependent decision, Congresswoman.
Depending on the context.
What's the context?
- Targeted as-- at an individual. - It's targeted
at Jewish students, Jewish individuals.
GALLOWAY: We saw really well-educated,
highly esteemed, very intelligent
university presidents
unable to condemn
language that calls for genocide.
And in a different setting, if they'd been asked,
well, if people started chanting "Lynch the Blacks,"
they would have had no problem finding the words to say,
"This is unacceptable."
It just would've been unacceptable, full stop.
It wouldn't have been context-dependent.
So we've gotten to a point where the hard-fought victories
against racism, against bigotry, against persecution
don't apply to this small group of people.
DAVIDAI: We see these videos
of book burnings in Germany
and we're shocked by that.
Where did those books come from?
They came from university libraries.
Who brought those books out from the library?
Student organizations. Who looked the other way?
The administration and the presidents.
NEWSCASTER: The University of Pennsylvania president
has resigned.
REPORTER: Harvard president Claudine Gay has announced
she is resigning from office.
WOLPE: Over the past 30 years,
these universities have geared up to make sure
nobody is anti-LGBTQ, nobody is anti-Black.
But the idea that anti-Semitism was in that same category
was foreign to many of them, and they wouldn't see it
even though the evidence stared them in the face.
STUDENTS [chanting]: Rape is rape!
Rape is rape! Rape is rape!
Rape is rape!
[all chanting]: Me too, unless you are a Jew!
One of the least-discussed atrocities
in the October 7th Hamas attack on Israel
is coming into horrifying focus tonight.
Stories of women sexually assaulted and brutally killed.
RUTH HALPERIN-KADDARI: Immediately after October 7th,
it was clear to me that sexual violence
was also part of the massacre.
On the-the Monday following that Saturday of October 7th,
we gathered more than 800 signatures
of international gender and law professors
from all over the world.
We requested U.N. agencies-- and U.N. Women, of course--
that they issue statements condemning Hamas.
[notification chimes]
But the statements that came out
were extremely disappointing,
especially U.N. Women,
who resorted to familiar symmetry
between the two sides of the conflict.
The report that they issued
hardly even mentioned Israeli women.
Proper comparison should be
to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Global outrage grew today
as more horrific revelations surfaced from Bucha, Ukraine.
HALPERIN-KADDARI: After the Bucha massacre,
you see that U.N. Women reacted immediately, within days.
There was no need to wait
for firsthand accounts.
They immediately called for investigation
and called for a resolute condemnation.
And that didn't happen after October 7th.
MICHAL COTLER-WUNSH: Women of the world united
around #MeToo and "we believe you."
#MeToo, unless you're a Jew/Zionist/live in Israel.
That is the ultimate,
most painful double standard.
FAY: Their silence was not surprising to me.
Even at my school,
the refusal of my Barnard sisterhood
to support the women who had been raped
and sexually assaulted
was incredibly shocking to me.
If an all-women's college cannot support
our fellow women around the world
because we're Jewish,
it really, if nothing else, showed me
that I truly did not know
what anti-Semitism was before October 7th.
[notification chimes]
DAYANI: What is the point
of you sitting this one out?
Do we say
some people's suffering is more valuable than others?
That certain victims deserve more rights than others?
Like, either you say, "We believe women,"
and then you believe all women.
When you say, "we stand for women,"
and then you stand for all women,
or do you just get to sit there and choose?
SHERYL SANDBERG: As the reports started to come out
about the sexual violence,
and people weren't speaking out, you know,
I did what I know how to do: I wrote an op-ed.
And my husband said to me, "We should make a video,"
so, over a weekend, we made a video.
No matter
which marches you attend, which religion you practice,
or none at all, there is one thing we should all agree on:
rape should never be used as an act of war.
U.N. Women, it was like
their core job to speak out
on any international situation on women, so for them,
late is totally unacceptable.
DAYANI: At this point, it has been
well over 50 days since the attack.
There were so many women's organizations
that had not said a word.
So, we had to call this session at the United Nations.
We had to force their hand.
♪ ♪
HALPERIN-KADDARI: It took them almost eight weeks
after the attack to acknowledge
that there are concerning reports
of severe sexual violence and sexual atrocities.
DAYANI: What is it about these women and girls
that makes them so unworthy
of your otherwise limitless capacity for outrage,
solidarity and justice?
Once again, I am afraid the reason is quite simple.
Because they're Jews.
We have come so far in establishing
that rape is a crime against humanity.
And we have come so far
in believing survivors of sexual assault
in so many situations.
That's why the silence on these war crimes is dangerous.
I think one of the most important things
that happened at the U.N.
was not just people who were Jewish speaking out,
but the people who really are the allies and joined us.
When I saw the list of women's rights organizations
who have said nothing, I nearly choked.
I think it's shocking.
I am mystified
by the lack of solidarity
for women's rights by women's rights organizations.
That, in some way, Israeli women don't count
or are not women or are not human.
There's no room for doing nothing.
♪ ♪
VEKSLER: On February 25th, I got a message
that there was a sign on the door
of the multicultural center
that said "Zionists not allowed."
The Jewish community obviously was freaking out about this.
Not only because of the irony of this happening
at a multicultural center
but because it was scary.
The next morning, the Jewish students chose to go,
and they chose to sit in the exact room
where they were told they were not allowed to be.
Half of the room was Jewish students doing their homework,
and then the other half
was a bunch of students wrapped in keffiyehs making posters.
I went to the side of the room with the keffiyehs
because I wanted to understand
what they were trying to accomplish.
And while I was trying to speak
to these students very calmly, they were trying
to intimidate me to get me out of the room.
So what they started to do was to make posters
targeting me directly with my full name.
"Tessa Veksler supports genocide."
"You can run, but you can't hide, Tessa Veksler."
After that, I mean, it only got worse.
I remember getting a text at, like, 2:00 a.m.,
"There's people walking around in masks,
putting flyers in mailboxes near your house."
UCSB is investigating signs and social media posts
that appear to single out the student body president.
I honestly thought that administration was on my side.
They issued a couple of statements,
but nothing about me directly.
The urgency of this situation cannot be overstated.
We must act decisively and demand accountability
to ensure the safety and well-being of all students.
I, Tessa Veksler, will not stand for this on my campus,
in my community or in my workplace.
Want to see what Rutgers Jewish students
dealt with last night?
Watch this.
STUDENT: All Zionists are racists!
STUDENTS [chanting]: All Zionists are racists!
STUDENT: We don't want two states...
SCHANZER: We now are in a situation
where Jewish students on campus feel unsafe.
They feel attacked, they feel alienated and ostracized,
and it is because of this growing movement of anti-Zionism
that has taken on a different life
since the October 7th attacks.
♪ ♪
TISHBY: The first phase of anti-Semitism is peoplehood.
There are reports of Alexandria, 300 BC,
of people saying, "Who is this weird people?"
When Christianity appeared,
anti-Semitism turned into religious anti-Semitism.
So, the whole concept of "the Jews killed Christ."
It was all about religious persecution
of the Jewish people.
Then anti-Semitism morphed again,
into racial anti-Semitism.
The tricky part about that shape-shifting
is that you can't convert out of it.
So once you're racially Jewish, it doesn't matter
what percentage of Jew you have in you, you're done.
That was the third iteration.
Obviously, it created the Holocaust.
The fourth iteration of anti-Semitism is anti-Zionism.
PROTESTOR: Smash the settler Zionist state!
PROTESTORS [chanting]: Smash the settler Zionist state!
PROTESTOR: Smash-smash the settler Zionist state!
SENOR: Once you normalize
Zionism equals apartheid,
Zionism equals genocide,
and that person is a Zionist,
"then I can do a lot to that person."
That justifies a lot.
And attacking that person, in any way I choose
to attack them becomes defensible.
Zionists don't deserve to live.
The existence of Nazis, white supremacists,
Zionists-- these are all the same people--
the existence of them...
The anti-Semitism we see from the left
doesn't surprise me, 'cause I've been tracking it for years.
But I used to talk about a political spectrum
from far right to far left and where you find
the anti-Semitism on the political spectrum.
I've changed that. I now talk about a horseshoe.
And you know, the two ends of a horseshoe are magnetic.
And you would think, how would the far, far left
and the far, far right share views on anything?
They don't, except in this regard.
TISHBY: In recent years, when I would try to tell people
that anti-Zionism is the worst part of anti-Semitism today,
they would point out to an easy-to-identify
anti-Semitism like Marjorie Taylor Greene.
It's very easy for every one of us to be like,
"Oh, yeah, that's anti-Semitism."
Or "Jews will not replace us."
That's overtly right-wing anti-Semitism.
We understand this, we know this.
It's very easy for us to point that out.
But what was very difficult for a lot of people
in polite society is to identify what it changed to today.
♪ ♪
DAYANI: We have raised this generation
to stand up against social injustice.
And I think that they have understood
a lot of oppression through a construct of race.
That construct does not apply to the Middle East.
Like, I am not white, and most people in Israel are not white.
Hey, this is me, the Zionist Israeli.
The white colonialist, settler, occupier.
When you describe Zionism as this white imperialist idea,
you actively delete the history of Black and brown Jews.
My name is Ashager,
I'm 33 years old, uh, I live in Tel Aviv.
I educate people about Israel,
about the Ethiopian Jewish community.
Uh, I tell stories of my family, my community,
in order to connect people to who we are as people.
My family came from Ethiopia,
my grandparents looked like any other Ethiopian.
But their Black skin didn't protect them from anti-Semitism.
They were still looked at as "the Jews."
They were treated as "Jews," they were othering
by their own society, by people who look like them.
So, a lot of people that I meet who ask me to choose,
what are you, Black or Jewish? Black or Jewish?
Like one comes at the expense of another.
To be Black and Jewish,
you live in this intersection of identities.
When BLM said, "You cannot be
pro-Black lives and be a Zionist,"
you were saying to me,
"You have to choose one of your identities."
Like, either you accept me,
me being Black and me being Jewish.
That's it, I'm not gonna give up
on any identity that I have.
I am both at the same time. That's it.
♪ ♪
FAY: Before October 7th,
I thought we were all on the same page,
that I am supported
because I'm Black, because I'm a woman,
because I'm Native American and because I'm Jewish.
But as I've now seen,
this-this never included my Jewish identity.
I know what it's like to be discriminated against.
Nobody would've questioned me if I were to say,
as a Black woman, I-I'm feeling as though I am being aggressed.
And I'm telling you now, that is what I'm facing.
So why are you not listening to me?
These ideas had been germinating in the ivory tower
for a very long time.
And I remember encountering these ideas
from the very first days
when I was a student at Columbia University.
I was a political progressive.
I was, you know, dating women, I was pro-choice.
I was all of the things that I thought made me
totally part of progressive milieu, let's say, on campus.
But what I was encountering was an ideology that said to me,
"No, no, you're not part of us."
And the reason that I wasn't part of them was because I was
unabashed in my support of Israel.
I was hearing that in order to be accepted
into the groups that traveled under the banner
of progress and social justice,
I was gonna have to disavow something
that was absolutely fundamental to my Jewish identity,
and I would argue, the Jewish identity
of the vast majority of Jews in the world.
TISHBY: It's very important to understand
why Zionism is a big part of who we are.
Judaism, it's an indigenous religion
that is inseparable from a place,
from a land, from a country.
For thousands of years,
we were saying, "Next year in Jerusalem."
That's connected to a place.
We became a people in that place.
So there is no separating Zionism from Judaism.
GREENBLATT: Zionism is not some philosophical idea
just born out of the 19th century.
Zionism is a Jewish value
that's 3,000 years old.
There's a reason why,
at every synagogue on the planet Earth,
Jews pray toward the east, toward Jerusalem.
There's a reason why, in every prayer book,
there are words like "Eretz Yisrael,"
or "Yerushalaim" or "Zion."
So the return to Zion is not new.
It is as old as the Jewish people.
EMILY SCHRADER: Zionism does not negate
the existence of the state of Palestine,
it does not deny anyone else's right to exist inherently.
It is not mutually exclusive.
It is simply a civil rights movement for the Jewish people.
VIDINO: The definition of-of any form of bigotry
is exceptionalizing or applying a different standard
to a different population.
So if any people have a right of self-determination,
a right of creating a-a country, a homeland for-for themselves,
that's what Zionism is.
So, if we say that Jews are the only people
that don't have that right, that becomes anti-Semitism.
DEMONSTRATORS [chanting]: Free, free Palestine!
- Free, free Palestine! - MAN: Hey!
EINAT WILF: When anti-Zionism
becomes the defining feature of a society,
what happens to Jews? Practically.
And here, the record is clear.
As soon as anti-Zionism became the ideology
of the Arab world in the '30s and '40s and '50s,
no Jews were left.
And you are talking about Jewish communities
that predated the Arab and Muslim conquests
of North Africa and the Levant in the Middle East.
And the mechanism is always the same.
They say, "We have nothing against Jews.
It's not about Jews, it's only Zionists,"
but then they blame Jews for harboring Zionist sympathies.
And then they turn on the Jews,
and the Jews understand and they leave.
And the same thing that we're seeing right now
on American campuses.
When anti-Zionism begins to become a dominant feature
of campus ideology, of academic ideology,
the environment turns hostile to Jewish life.
JAMES: We have Zionists...
PROTESTORS: We have Zionists...
JAMES: ...who have entered the camp.
PROTESTORS: ...who have entered the camp.
JAMES: We are going to create a human chain...
PROTESTORS: We are going to create a human chain...
JAMES: ...so that we can...
PROTESTORS: ...so that we can...
JAMES: ...start to push them...
PROTESTORS: ...start to push them...
JAMES: ...out of the camp.
PROTESTORS: ...out of the camp.
JAMES: One step forward.
PROTESTORS: One step forward.
JAMES: Another step forward.
PROTESTORS: Another step forward.
♪ ♪
REPORTER: They're turning the campus into what they're calling
a "Gaza solidarity encampment."
STUDENTS [chanting]: Shut it down! Shut it down!
Shut it down!
STUDENT PROTESTOR: By setting up this encampment in the heart
of the Zionist stronghold of Columbia University,
we intend to tear down the iron gates
of this institution.
SEGAL: What the encampments did
was ratchet up that activity to a level of saying...
...we're not leaving.
- [whistle blowing] - STUDENT: Fuck you! Fuck you!
We are Hamas!
SEGAL: They were stopping people
and asking them, "Are you a Zionist?"
It was more explicit.
STUDENT: You guys want to prevent Jewish students
from entering? Fine.
Yeah, of course I'm Zionist.
SEGAL: You can't walk
safely or without fear of intimidation or harassment.
[students chanting]
REPORTER: Intensifying anti-Israel protests
at Columbia University this week now prompting the school rabbi
to warn Jewish students to leave campus and return home.
FAY: I received this notice from our rabbi.
He believed it was no longer safe for Jewish students.
But whether or not it was naive,
I stayed on campus the entire second semester.
I was not going to let these people push me out.
STUDENT [chanting]: Intifada, intifada.
STUDENTS: Intifada, intifada.
STUDENT: Long live the intifada.
STUDENTS: Long live the intifada.
WEISS: What does it mean,
that the future leaders
of the most important democracy in the world
are chanting for revolution and intifada?
What is the country gonna look like a decade from now?
VEKSLER: Their petition for my removal
had reached enough signatures, and it was going to be
on the agenda for that senate meeting.
They got about 850.
- SACHS: 850? - Yes.
- That's a lot. - It is a lot.
♪ ♪
VEKSLER: I remember I had to miss
all my final exams in person,
I had to take all my exams online
because campus was just not safe for me.
The vote took place on April 10th, 2024.
The student senate votes whether or not
they want to proceed with a recall election
where the entire student body would be asked
to vote on my removal.
The administration was advocating
for the vote to take place on Zoom.
So, I couldn't even look these people in the eyes and say
my speech out loud to them.
They voted at 1:00 in the morning.
It was a six-hour-long meeting,
and they needed a two-thirds vote.
STUDENT: The final count was 11 yes's...
VEKSLER: 11 yes's,
seven no's, one abstention.
- STUDENT: Fuck yeah. - [cheering]
STUDENT: The Veksler isn't going anywhere!
VEKSLER: I fought till the very last second.
And the recall effort failed by one vote.
[cheering continues]
It was a feeling of relief,
but also a deep sadness
that it ever had to happen in the first place.
Also, a lot of betrayal,
for 11 people that I worked side by side with
to vote for something like that.
♪ ♪
Usually, the student body president speaks
at one of the graduation ceremonies,
and I'm not partaking.
I really didn't want the one day
that my family is supposed to be proud of me into...
be watching a bunch of students scream at me.
To see your daughter
facing the thing that you once fled...
...I can't even imagine how painful that must be.
LAHAV: It's been eight months since, uh, the attack.
I don't live here.
Every time I come here,
I take the key,
I open the door quietly,
and I look to all the sides,
I make sure that there is no terrorist inside,
and then I relax.
We hid under the table here.
I made a wall of books that were here,
thinking that once somebody would open
and the Palestinian terrorist would shoot us,
the books will slow down the bullets
and we will not die.
So, it was like this.
And I tied this part to the door handle, so it,
they couldn't, uh, move it, they couldn't open it.
We stayed here from 6:30 in the morning
until 6:00 in the evening.
- I'll turn off the light, okay? - [switch clicks]
Like this.
When you only can hear outside,
shooting and grenades all the time.
[switch clicks]
It was just my workroom.
But now when I come here, I feel it's my safe haven.
I feel this is the-the most secured...
...the most secured place on Earth for me.
That's how it feels. It feels like a home, you know?
A nest, maybe, whatever.
♪ ♪
MAYA BENTWICH: We're in kibbutz Kfar Aza,
which is one of the 22 points-- kibbutzs, communities--
that were infiltrated on the 7th of October.
And we're currently standing in the Itamari family house,
which is or was the childhood home
of a close friend of mine, Raz Itamari.
I'm gonna take you inside her room,
which was the MAMAD, the bomb shelter.
And that's the room that's supposed to be safest,
supposed to protect you from bombs, missiles,
not from terrorists.
And that's where both her parents,
Lili and Ram Itamari Z"L were murdered.
This is the MAMAD.
You would have ashes up to here
'cause everything was burned.
And you see it, like, you see, there's nothing left.
We had families that would go to the Gazan border
almost every Shabbat and fly out kites as a peace gesture
that often had written on them "Peace, Salam, Shalom."
Five family members-- the parents were Americans--
were found shot to death in their MAMADs,
the father hugging his family, trying to protect them.
And right outside in the living room, we found the kite
that they were planning to fly out on that Saturday.
One of the organizer of the flying of the kites
is Lili, my friend's mom.
These people believed in peace and worked towards peace.
The world needs to know and to understand
what happened here.
Because if you're a human being,
you can't be ignorant to what happened.
You can't be ignorant to the sexual assault
and to the raping and to the murdering,
and to the kidnapping.
♪ ♪
KHAN: It's June, um...
we're at the Nova site,
uh, the site of the now infamous
Nova festival massacre.
Uh, and we're standing--
I'm sorry...
amongst pictures of the people who were killed,
murdered-- brutally murdered--
and kidnapped... [sniffles]
...on October 7th.
♪ ♪
Hearing the stories over the past few months
about what happened here
is, you know, it-it's gutting.
Being here and seeing their faces
and seeing, like, the face of this girl...
♪ ♪
I think, it's so important to bear witness
and to humanize these innocent people.
A lot of these people were, you know, anti-war
and believed in peace,
- you know... - [distant explosion]
So, like, we're really close to the war.
I mean, we're hearing the bombs overhead
that are being sent into Gaza.
It is horrific thinking that--
or knowing, that there are innocent people
who are dying in Gaza, um, you know, young children.
That's why I really do empathize
with the people protesting on campuses.
I mean, war is horrible.
Nobody wants to see these people dying.
That's one thing that these students on campuses get wrong,
is they're saying that we want a war.
We don't want a war.
We want to just live in peace.
PROTESTORS [chanting]: Fuck Israel.
Israel's a bitch.
Fuck Israel.
Israel's a bitch.
Fuck Israel.
Israel's a bitch.
PROTESTOR: Smash the settler Zionist state!
PROTESTORS: Smash the settler Zionist state!
- [horn honking] - [whistle blowing]
DAVIDAI: When historians write this dark chapter
in American history,
there will be a very clear chronological,
temporal narrative.
And it will start in October 8th,
with the justification, excusal and celebration
of the massacre of more than 1,200 civilians by Hamas.
It will go through the violent protests
and the crazy resolutions we're seeing in the U.N.
and in city councils.
It will go through Congress and we hear
university presidents that are unable to say
that calling for genocide is bad.
It will go through mobs
storming restaurants just because
they are owned by Israelis and Jews.
And when I can't fall asleep at night,
that's what runs in my mind.
What if what we're seeing now
is the 1930s,
but we're unable to steer the train off the tracks?
And I just hope that enough Americans
will wake up and realize that this is not about Jews.
It never ends with the Jews.
This is about democracy,
this is about human decency.
YOUSEF: The United States of America
took me in
when my own family rejected me
and, uh, condemned me to death.
Today, I'm an American.
I have obligation to my country, to my Constitution,
to be the eyewitness
and to speak up, not to be afraid.
TORRES: You know, it's not lost on me
that throughout history, there have been Jews
who gave their lives for the cause of civil rights.
Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner,
were brutally murdered in the Mississippi Burning
so that Black Americans could vote and live freely,
unencumbered by the cruelty of Jim Crow.
And so, for me,
the lesson learned from history
is that we're all in this together.
We all have a moral obligation to fight extremism,
hate and fear,
no matter what form it takes.
And that obligation is based not only
on the particularity of our identity,
it's based on something more universal,
which is our common humanity.
And for me, October 7th was so barbaric
that it was a frontal assault on our common humanity.
College campuses and social media platforms
are indoctrinating young Americans
with a hatred for Israel
that is so visceral and so fanatical
that it renders them indifferent
to the butchering of Israeli babies,
to the cold-blooded murder
of Israeli children and civilians.
And so, if we as a society
cannot bring ourselves to condemn
the cold-blooded murder of children and civilians
with moral clarity,
then we should ask ourselves, "What are we becoming
as a society?"
You know, this is not only about Israel,
and this is not only about the Jewish community.
What is at stake is the soul of America.
I was on a walk with one of my closest friends
who's not Jewish,
and just out of nowhere, not expecting to say this,
what came out of my mouth was, "Will you hide me?"
Like, "If it comes to that, will you hide me and my family?"
And like, do I really think that's gonna happen
in the United States? No.
And it was interesting, 'cause she didn't really know
what I was talking about.
She said, "What do you mean, hide you?"
And I explained that there are these righteous people
that hid Jews, this is the story of Anne Frank.
And then, of course, she said, "Oh, I know what you mean,"
but any Jew would've known what I meant immediately.
♪ ♪
I feel like I'm grieving for the security I thought we had.
And I'm grieving for the sense of protection
I thought my children had.
And I'm working hard to find, in that grief, our strength.
And so, if all of the anti-Semitism
was true on October 6th, we just didn't know it,
at least we're awake now.
And we're not alone.
The friend that I said, "Will you hide me?"
She cried.
Not for me, with me.
She said, "I'm not gonna let that happen
to this world either," and I believe her.
VEKSLER: Our history shows us
that Jews always make it out.
I look at young people who are the future,
and they are ready.
They are proud, they are ready to fight.
They are smart,
they are brave,
and they inspire me.
The shared resilience and the future resilience
that I can see forming in front of my eyes,
that's what gives me hope.
MESSING: We can't fight the tsunami of Jew hatred
that has exploded across our country
since October 7th alone.
We have partners who believe
in pluralism and peace and freedom
and we have to lock arms together.
If we do that, we can change minds and hearts.
And ultimately, that will change the world.
And so, we have to live
by Hatikvah.
We have to live from a place of hope
because that is going to bring us together
and that is going to help us
light up the dark.
♪ ♪
♪ They told me ♪
♪ It would be impossible ♪
♪ And for many, they would be right ♪
♪ But for every dark cloud ♪
♪ Cast I ask ♪
♪ Have you seen my light? ♪
♪ Hold my head up ♪
♪ When I'm feeling down ♪
♪ 'Cause hope's all I need ♪
♪ To survive ♪
♪ No, you can't break ♪
♪ What's born to stand ♪
♪ Have you seen my light? ♪
♪ Seen my light ♪
♪ Life could make me hard and solitaire ♪
♪ Instead I choose to be kind ♪
♪ I thank God ♪
♪ For the love that I bear ♪
♪ Have you seen my light? ♪
♪ As the sun shines in Jerusalem ♪
♪ No prayer shall be left behind ♪
♪ No prayer should be left behind ♪
♪ Gratitude hymns ♪
♪ As I cross each bridge ♪
♪ Have you seen my light? ♪
- ♪ Seen my light ♪ - ♪ Seen my light ♪
♪ Seen my light ♪
- ♪ Seen my light ♪ - ♪ Seen my light ♪
♪ Seen my light ♪
♪ Hmm ♪
- ♪ Seen my light ♪ - ♪ Seen my light ♪
♪ Shine a little bit ♪
♪ The sun is always shining on me, yeah ♪
♪ Seen my light ♪
- ♪ Seen my light ♪ - ♪ Seen my light ♪
♪ Ooh. ♪