(JTA) — Two years after the Hamas attacks on Israel, the tragedy of Oct. 7 has become its own cinematic sub-genre. Filmmakers have rushed to bear witness, survivors have taken up cameras, and streaming platforms are now filled with documentaries and dramatizations that revisit, reimagine, and attempt to process the day’s horrors.

From raw documentaries of the Nova music festival to scripted miniseries debuting this month, these works show how Israelis, and Jews around the world, are still grappling with a single day that reshaped their lives.

The desert rave that became the site of mass murder has inspired a cluster of films, each offering a different register of witness.

“We Will Dance Again” is a documentary that offers a chronological, minute-by-minute account of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on the Supernova Music Festival in Israel. The film is constructed primarily through the first-hand testimonies of over a dozen survivors, interweaving their accounts with footage they recorded on their cell phones and video recovered from the cameras of the attackers. The documentary is available to stream Paramount+.

“#Nova,” now on Prime Video, adds new layers of forensic detail by synchronizing video captured by the victims on their personal cell phones with footage recovered from Hamas body-worn cameras. “Supernova: The Music Festival Massacre,” on Apple TV and YouTube, stitches together real-time footage and interviews to convey the disorienting chaos of the first hours.

A more intimate companion piece, “Tattooed for Life,” which played across many film festivals but is not currently streaming, follows tattoo artist and survivor Liraz Uliel as she memorializes fellow festival-goers through a shared fractal tattoo design, an act of mourning turned into community ritual.

Other filmmakers have turned their attention to what happened in the homes, fields and kibbutzim of southern Israel.

The PBS documentary “After October 7: A Personal Journey to Kfar Aza” offers a close look at one of the hardest-hit communities, combining news footage with deeply personal reflections on grief, displacement and rebuilding. 

Currently in theaters, “The Road Between Us: The Ultimate Rescue” chronicles retired general Noam Tibon’s desperate drive south to save his son, journalist Amir Tibon, and his family. Blending firsthand testimony with security footage of real-time chaos, the film recounts the former general’s 10-hour, high-stakes mission across a country under siege to rescue his loved ones from their home in Kibbutz Nahal Oz. The film won the People’s Choice Award when it premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival after some turmoil.

Two scripted productions expand these same themes. “Red Alert” (known in Hebrew as “First Light”) is a four-part miniseries that dramatizes five intertwined true stories of civilians, police, and first responders, and is executive-produced by Lawrence Bender, of “Pulp Fiction” fame. The series weaves these chaotic narratives together in a race-against-time format and premieres on Paramount+ on Oct. 7, making it one of two major scripted series to debut on the second anniversary of the attack. 

The second series, “One Day in October,” an anthology series based on seven distinct personal stories, will debut on HBO Max on Oct. 7, with all seven episodes available for the U.S. audience.

Many documentaries are meant as a bulwark against denial.

“Bearing Witness to the October 7th Massacre,” a 47-minute film, compiled by the Israeli military, compiles raw footage from multiple sources, including Hamas body-cam recordings, dash cams, CCTV, and victims’ phone videos, to create a chronological record of the atrocities. Due to its graphic nature, the film has not been released to the general public and is only shown in private, invitation-only screenings for policymakers, journalists, diplomats, and community leaders around the world.

A documentary created by Sheryl Sandberg, “Screams before Silence,” address the sexual violence and gender-based atrocities perpetrated by Hamas during the attacks. It is intended to break what critics have described as a moral silence on these war crimes and is streaming on YouTube. 

“The Killing Roads” does narrow its focus to the attacks on Route 232 and Highway 34, which were the main arteries where Hamas gunmen ambushed and killed approximately 250 people fleeing the Nova festival and surrounding communities. The film has been released for free viewing on platforms like YouTube and a dedicated website to combat denial of the massacre.

The PBS documentary “October 7th: Through Their Eyes” is focused on a network of Israeli volunteer archivists who immediately set out to preserve the large volume of digital evidence, including social media posts, videos, and messages, from survivors and victims before the content could be deleted or lost. The goal of their project, October7.org, is to create a widely accessible, permanent database of first-hand testimonies. 

Several recent works focus on the ordeal of captivity and survival.

“The Children of October 7,” streaming on Paramount+ and hosted by activist Montana Tucker, profiles eight young survivors (ages 11-17) who share harrowing, unscripted testimonies of narrowly escaping death, witnessing the murder of family members, or enduring captivity, and highlights their resilience in the face of unspeakable loss. 

Meanwhile, the short documentary “A Letter to David” sees the filmmaker revisit his onetime actor and friend, David Cunio, who remains held in Gaza along with his brother, Ariel Cunio, after being kidnapped from Kibbutz Nir Oz. The film is a collage of family footage and archival material that functions as a cinematic plea for his return.

As the shockwaves of Oct. 7 spread around the world, another crop of films has examined how the attacks reverberated across the Jewish Diaspora and within movements for and against Israel’s war.

The documentary “October 8” (previously titled “October H8te”) captures the anti-Israel protests that erupted across U.S. cities and college campuses in the days and weeks following the attack. It is streaming on Apple TV and Amazon. “The New Jew: Days of War” follows Israeli comedian Guri Alfi as he travels across North America to explore Jewish identity and division in the aftermath. 

“Torn: The Israel-Palestine Poster War on NYC Streets” documents the dueling “Kidnapped” and “Free Gaza” posters that turned city lampposts into symbolic battlefields. And “There Is Another Way” portrays the Israeli–Palestinian group Combatants for Peace, whose members struggle to uphold their belief in nonviolence even as both societies harden in grief.

The post On Paramount+, Apple TV, HBO and more, Oct. 7 emerges as a cinematic subgenre appeared first on The Forward.

(JTA) — Multiple polls have found that about 60% of Americans believe Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, a biting charge that Israel and the United States reject.

Now, for the first time, a poll has taken the pulse of U.S. Jews specifically — and found that 39% of them hold the opinion.

The new poll by the Washington Post, conducted in early September prior to President Donald Trump’s latest breakthrough in ceasefire negotiations between Israel and Hamas, also found that 61% of American Jews said that Israel has committed war crimes against Palestinians.

While allegations that Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza have been lodged against the country by international bodies, human rights groups and pro-Palestinian activists, the poll suggests that charge is now resonating more widely among even U.S. Jews — those who are most likely to have a personal connection to Israel.

The poll found that many American Jews still hold strong ties to Israel. Three-quarters of American Jews surveyed said that Israel’s existence is vital for the long-term future of the Jewish people, while over half said that they were “very” or “somewhat” emotionally attached to Israel.

But emotional ties to Israel were far weaker among younger respondents. While 68% of American Jews over 65 said they were emotionally connection to Israel, among those aged between 18 to 34, that share dropped to 36%. Younger Jews were also more likely to call Israel’s actions in Gaza a genocide, with half of Jews aged 18 to 34 using the term.

The poll found that Jews were almost evenly split over Israel’s actions in Gaza, with 46% approving and 48% opposing. That divide was also split sharply on partisan lines, with 85% of Jewish Republicans approving compared to 31% of Jewish Democrats.

The majority of American Jews also blame Hamas more than Israel for the civilian death toll in Gaza, with two-thirds of American Jews blaming Hamas for starting the war and operating in civilian areas of Gaza, according to the poll.

The poll also found that criticism of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had significantly increased among American Jews in recent years. It found that 68% expressed a negative opinion of the Israeli leader, with 48% rating his leadership as “poor,” compared to 54% disapproving of him in a 2020 Pew Research Center poll.

On the continuation of the conflict between Hamas and Israel, vast majorities of the American Jewish community assigned blame to both Hamas and Netanyahu, with 91% saying Hamas bears responsibility and 86% saying Netanyahu bears responsibility.

As several European countries recognized Palestinian statehood last month, the poll also found that over half of American Jews believe that Israel and an independent Palestinian state can coexist peacefully with each other.

Looking to the relationship between the United States and Israel, about half of respondents said that U.S. support for Israel is at about the right level. A third of respondents said that the United States is too supportive of Israel, a share that jumped 10 percentage points since the 2020 Pew poll, and 20% said it is not supportive enough.

The Washington Post poll surveyed 815 American Jews from Sept. 2 to 9 and had a margin of error of 4.7 percentage points.

The post Poll: 40% of American Jews believe Israel is committing genocide in Gaza appeared first on The Forward.

As we mark the second anniversary of the Hamas attack of Oct. 7, 2023, we will mourn the victims of Hamas’s barbarism that day. We will pray and remember. We will petition for the release of the hostages and an end to the war.

And even as we use our words to mourn, we must recognize that language has itself become a casualty of war, dividing our own Jewish communities. Words have lost their meaning; as many others have noted, they’ve become signals of allegiance. Terms like “Zionism,” “anti-Zionism,” “genocide,” and “intifada” deepen mistrust within our Jewish communities, and fracture the bonds of Jewish peoplehood that should unite us in these perilous times.

This is not new.

The Book of Judges recounts a war between the tribes of Gilead and Ephraim, during which the Gileadites used a linguistic test: They asked travelers to say the word “shibboleth.” Ephraimites, unable to pronounce the letter “shin,” said “sibboleth” and were killed. The word’s meaning didn’t matter — only its sound. Language became a tool to distinguish friend and foe.

Today, we are again only listening for the “shin” — the linguistic suggestion that someone is with us, or against us.

When someone declares that they are an “anti-Zionist,” I, like many others, feel instinctually alarmed. That term has been used by groups calling for Israel’s destruction, often in tandem with phrases like “from the river to the sea” or “globalize the intifada,” that carry associations of violence against Jews. Since Oct. 7, they’ve become rallying cries that evoke deep fear in the Jewish community.

Too often, in the past two years, when I’ve heard these words from friends and family in the Jewish community — or when people have failed to condemn them — I’ve reacted before thinking. I haven’t asked what the speaker means. I haven’t truly listened. I’ve only heard the enemy speaking — the missing “shin.”

My friends and extended family increasingly challenge my reaction as hypocritical.

They ask how I can call myself a “proud Zionist,” as I do and I am, when extremists invoke Zionism to justify the devastation of Gaza and displacement of Palestinians. They know I am distraught by the ongoing destruction of the war. They know I oppose policies that call for the displacement of Palestinians, and have condemned the continued targeting of Palestinians in the West Bank. They know that I am a Zionist because I believe that all peoples have the right to self-determination in the land of their historic origins — including the Palestinians. They know I am devastated by the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, even if we disagree on its causes.

They accept my sincerity, but they think I’m being naïve.

To them, the term “Zionism” is increasingly associated with violence against Palestinians, and an abandonment of democracy. “Zionism,” they explain, no longer means what I believe it does. When they hear someone say they are a Zionist, they react. They hear the enemy speaking. They only listen for the missing “shin.”

This dynamic is tearing families and communities apart. Leaders are cheered or vilified based on whether they use or avoid certain terms, as if they are scoring points at a sporting event in a stadium. But cheering and vilification do little to foster understanding, or build toward actual solutions to release the hostages or end the war.

We would do better to react less and listen more. When someone says, “From the river to the sea,” we might ask what they mean — not instinctively judge them. Admittedly, some don’t know which river or sea the phrase refers to. Rather than mocking their ignorance, we can ask why they use the phrase. Often, they simply see it as meaning that all people should be treated with dignity and given equal rights. I hope that by reacting with curiosity, I’ll invite curiosity in return, and they may become more open to hearing why the phrase itself is so deeply unsettling to many of us — and how it has been used by antisemites to incite violence.

When I stop reacting to the missing “shin,” I can learn that some anti-Zionists don’t reject Jewish self-determination in our historic homeland. Rather, they believe Israel’s government has forfeited its moral legitimacy through its actions in Gaza, its efforts to erode democracy, and its treatment of Palestinians — concerns that many Zionists share. Their objection is not to the Jewish right of self-determination in the land of Israel. They object to the Jewish claim to sovereignty — control of government with special rights and privileges.

Listening does not need to mean agreeing. When I talk to anti-Zionists, we often come out differing: For instance, some who call themselves anti-Zionists advocate for a single state with equal rights for all, an outcome I believe would lead to civil war and humanitarian devastation, imperiling the rights of both Jews and Palestinians. But by not automatically assuming that someone’s professed anti-Zionism must mean their support for the destruction of the Jewish people, we can discuss those differences openly and productively.

We must reclaim our language, and with it the sacred bonds of community that are perilously fraying. It’s time to stop testing one another, as the Gileadites did the Ephraimites. By choosing our words carefully and responding charitably within our own homes, families, and even within congregations, we can take a first step in cultivating understanding and rebuilding trust.

The post There’s a biblical precedent for the rifts opened by Oct. 7 — it should alarm us all appeared first on The Forward.