JoshuaL-255

I watched this documentary about October 7th expecting a sober reckoning with the day's horrors-not just the pain of one side, but the full, agonizing truth of what unfolded. Instead, I was given a carefully curated narrative, one that wielded grief as both weapon and shield. The film captured, with unflinching intimacy, the terror of Israeli civilians-the children hiding in fear, the families torn apart, the raw anguish of a community under attack. Their suffering was undeniable, their trauma visceral.

But the documentary refused to acknowledge a harder, more essential truth: October 7th was not a one-sided atrocity. While Hamas militants attacked in kibbutzim and at a music festival, Israeli forces responded with airstrikes that killed Israeli and Palestinian civilians in both kibbutzim and Gaza-including children who had no part in the attack. The film framed the violence as a sudden, inexplicable eruption, as if it existed outside of history, outside of cause and effect. It never paused to ask: What led here? It never dared to show the Palestinian parents digging their own children from rubble that same day, or the decades of occupation, blockade, and despair that shaped this moment.

This wasn't just an oversight, it was an active erasure. The documentary placed all blame on one side, all innocence on the other, as if war and retaliation could ever be so simple. It asked us to mourn some children while ignoring others. It demanded outrage at some deaths while treating others as inevitable, even justified.

If the goal was truth, then the film failed. Because the real story of October 7th is not a tale of monsters and martyrs. It is a story of cycles, of vengeance, of two peoples trapped in a struggle where violence only begets more violence. To tell it any other way isn't just dishonest. It's dangerous.