In the three years since Hamas’s horrific massacre and kidnapping of Israelis on October 7, a dominant political narrative has taken shape on the American Left and around the world, similar to the narrative surrounding 9/11. It is essentially one that claims that while what happened then was unfortunate, it was ultimately deserved because of actions that preceded it, and what followed is completely unacceptable. The only “solution,” therefore, is to acquiesce to the demands of the attackers. There is a group on the Left, however, that openly rejects that sentiment: the October 8th Jews.
Bret Stephens named the phenomenon weeks after the attack. On October 8, he wrote, Jews learned who their friends were not. The same progressive spaces that had welcomed Jewish participation in every other cause—race, gender, climate, immigration—reacted to the worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust with celebration, equivocation, or silence. Black Lives Matter chapters posted paraglider imagery. College campuses filled with “globalize the intifada” chants while Jewish students were hiding in libraries. Feminist organizations that had spent years cataloguing every microaggression said nothing about the systematic sexual violence that occurred. The Democratic Socialists of America took the lead; the rest of the Democrats followed.
October 8th Jews suddenly found that the home where they placed their political beliefs was no longer safe. Some, like Shabbos Kestenbaum, rose to prominence out of that shocking change. At the time, he was a student at Harvard and a lifelong Democrat, but he saw what was going on and started speaking out about it. Now he is a well-known commentator trying to fight the lies that have been rooted in the Left, while still maintaining a lot of his original beliefs regarding domestic and social issues.
Another voice is one that already had a platform and then realized that he needed to use that platform to advocate for Jewish survival. That is, of course, Sid Rosenberg. Sid was already talking about politics before October 7, but realized that the noise he was hearing from the Left was too loud not to deserve an equivalent reaction. Sid has made multiple trips to Israel since then and become one of the most prominent political voices in New York.
This was not limited to political commentators. Many actors in Hollywood defied the leftist monopoly gripping the entertainment industry to speak out on what was happening—often with professional consequences. Michael Rappaport was one of the loudest early examples. The actor and comedian had lived for decades inside New York’s entertainment and liberal circles. After October 7, he began posting unfiltered videos from the streets, calling out the immediate celebrations in Times Square and the subsequent campus encampments. He did not hedge. He did not parse “context.” He treated the day-after reaction as the clarifying event it was. Like the New Yorker he is, Rappaport’s language was crude and his delivery aggressive; that is why it landed. Plenty of Jews who had spent years softening their own speech recognized the same shock he was describing.
The newest and most high-profile addition is Debra Messing. The Will & Grace actress spent years as a reliable Democratic surrogate. She campaigned for Hillary Clinton and donated to Cynthia Nixon’s 2018 primary challenge against Andrew Cuomo. She was the sort of celebrity who treated progressive causes as the default. Earlier this month, she stood at a Manhattan fundraiser and endorsed Bruce Blakeman, the Republican Nassau County Executive now running for governor against Kathy Hochul.
Messing told Blakeman the decline of New York City over the past four years has been “exponential and devastating—economically, socially and on every level.” She called him “what we need more than anything” and “the affordable candidate.” She spoke as a Brooklyn native who no longer recognizes the city she loved. The endorsement is not a full-throated conversion speech, but it is a public break with the Democratic incumbent at the moment when New York’s progressive wing is strongest. Messing has also been visible since October 7, posting hostage posters and criticizing the campus atmosphere that treated Jewish students as acceptable targets. The through-line is the same one that defines the October 8th Jew: the progressive movement she once inhabited is no longer safe for Jews who do not seek the destruction of Israel—let alone support it.
Blakeman himself treats Jewish safety with paramount importance. As Nassau’s first Jewish county executive, he has treated antisemitism as a governing problem rather than a messaging problem. He created an antisemitism task force, supported buffer zones around houses of worship, and pushed a law that allowed police to unmask people at protests. In addition to that, he has hired over 900 police officers and created Operation Overwatch, which is a visible rapid-response team. Under him, Nassau County has been named the Safest County in America, which is helpful to all, not just the Jewish community.
He is running against a governor who has campaigned with and endorsed Zohran Mamdani, New York City’s DSA-aligned mayor. On the third anniversary of October 7, Mamdani issued a statement that briefly noted Hamas’s “horrific war crimes” before pivoting to accusations that Israel is committing “ongoing genocide” in Gaza. The Left has become so insane that Mamdani was booed at the October 7 vigil by DSA-linked groups, who protested him for insufficient radicalism. That is the environment Messing and others are rejecting.
The broader numbers show the phenomenon is not limited to the listed examples. Jewish Federations of North America surveys have tracked a sustained increase in Jewish engagement since October 7; the latest round found 38 percent of American Jews reporting new or deeper involvement, a “new normal” rather than a temporary spike. Morning Consult tracking showed the share of Jewish Americans identifying as conservative rising from 27 percent in September 2023 to 33 percent by mid-2025. Exit polling and Pew data indicated Donald Trump improved on his 2020 Jewish vote share in 2024, reaching roughly 35 percent. These shifts are still minority movements—most American Jews remain Democrats—but they are directionally consistent with the October 8 pattern.
The Democratic Party’s leftward capture by the DSA is leaving a lot of New Yorkers feeling uneasy about the future of the state. October 8th Jews are not necessarily Republicans, but they are people who looked at their own side and saw hate, then looked at the Right and saw normalcy. If there is anything the body politic has been craving for decades, it’s normalcy. Unfortunately, for nearly all of Jewish history, “normalcy” is a world in which we are persecuted. So we have to find allies where we can and create a new normal, one where we are not the world’s scapegoats.
Moshe Hill is a political analyst and columnist. His work can be found at www.aHillwithaView.com and on X at @HillWithView.