Content warning: This article contains mention of war and death.
I woke up the morning of Oct. 7 at around 8 a.m. to a flurry of alerts on my phone coming from a WhatsApp group chat with my family in Israel, mixed in with a chorus of notifications from various news apps. I quickly gathered that there was some sort of attack in Israel.
I was undoubtedly alarmed, but I thought it was just another one of several flare-ups in the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict. At the time, I had an unshakeable confidence in Israel’s elite intelligence and military units to keep my family, along with the greater population of Israel, relatively safe from these attacks.
Then I made one of the most regrettable decisions of my life, and I opened my social media apps.
I was confronted with images that I will never unsee: the brutal and deliberate killing, kidnapping and torture of innocent Israelis. The terrorists flooded social media with horrific documentation of their despicable acts, from a man being decapitated with a garden tool to a young woman, with blood stains on her pants between her legs, being thrown into the back of a van.
I began to comprehend the scope of what was morbidly unfolding. Israel had always been the one safe haven for Jews around the world, the one place we can go where we have guaranteed protection, security and safety. For the first time in my life, this sentiment became seriously challenged. That day, over 1,200 Israelis were murdered and 240 civilians were taken hostage in the most deadly attack on Jews since the Holocaust.
As I processed the gravity of what had just occurred, I wondered how the world would respond. Antisemitism had been on the rise in years prior, but I rightfully assumed such a barbaric act against the Jewish people would surely face widespread condemnation.
I was very, very wrong.
Two days later, on Oct. 9, a sukkah was vandalized on a college campus in California. On Oct. 10, a man in Fresno, California threw rocks through the windows of a synagogue and a cafe, with a note on one of the rocks reading, “All Jewish businesses will be targeted.” On Oct. 11, a woman tearing down posters of kidnapped Israelis at Columbia University assaulted an Israeli man after he confronted her.
The despicable trend of desecrating posters with the faces of kidnapped victims spread across the country, including our campus. It was gut-wrenching to see these posters desecrated with razor cuts and tears across the paper.
On social media, people whom I once considered friends were posting antisemitic content and messages such as “Globalize the Intifada.” The intifadas were two periods of unrest in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, resulting in over 1000 Israelis murdered. And now my peers said they wanted to globalize it. Instagram and X (formerly Twitter) became breeding grounds for antisemitism, and outside of the Jewish community, no one seemed to care. We were alone.
On the morning of Oct. 25, I walked into my calculus class to find newspaper covers, deceptively mimicking The Daily’s design, scattered all over the desks. The fake newspapers were filled with abhorrent antisemitic rhetoric, namely comparing the hostages to OZZI to-go food containers. I heard from my Jewish peers that hundreds of these propaganda-filled leaflets were distributed all across our campus’s dining and lecture halls. Once again, besides the Jewish community, no one cared. Some even praised the act.
Jews across the country sensed the same level of apathy. According to the Anti-Defamation League, between Oct. 7 and the end of 2023, there were over 5,000 incidents of antisemitism — more than all of the recorded incidents in 2022. Recently, the American Jewish Committee reported that 56% of American Jews changed their behaviors to hide their Judaism in response to the dramatic rise in antisemitism, and 77% say they feel less safe as Jews.
Antisemitic rhetoric embedded itself in many pro-Palestine movements and demonstrations. In Evanston, a man brought a Hamas flag to a Nov. 2023 rally. During the encampment on Deering Meadow last spring, a sign of a crossed-out Jewish star was displayed on the fence, as well as a caricature of University President Michael Schill, who is Jewish, with horns and blood on his face. It was textbook antisemitism, and once again, few individuals outside the community spoke up on our behalf.
It very soon became clear to me, and to the Jewish community, that no one else understood our concern. People failed to understand why Jews were making such a big fuss. Within the Jewish community, we recognized this. As ridiculous of a burden as it was, we needed to find a way to reach out and attempt to instill even a fraction of the urgency we felt in the general public.
Cue, October H8TE. Directed by Medill alum and former The Daily writer Wendy Levine Sachs, the film chronicles the dramatic spike in antisemitism after Oct. 7, and is designed to help those outside the Jewish community understand precisely why we were and continue to be in such a state of distress. On Feb. 24, this critical documentary is coming to Northwestern.
I implore every student, faculty member and NU community member to see this film. The Jewish community is small, with only 15 million people in the world identifying as Jews. For perspective, rapper (and early frontrunner for antisemite of the year) Kanye West has over 30 million followers on social media, where he spews absurdly antisemitic rhetoric.
We cannot fight this battle alone. Now more than ever, the Jewish community needs allies. We need our non-Jewish counterparts to understand our cause for concern, and fight with us and for us.
Tobias Khabie is a Medill junior. To register for the film or to contact the contributor, he can be reached at tobiaskhabie2026@u.northwestern.edu. If you would like to respond publicly to this op-ed, send a Letter to the Editor to opinion@dailynorthwestern.com. The views expressed in this piece do not necessarily reflect the views of all staff members of The Daily Northwestern.
