A new documentary finds orchestrating hands behind online hate after October 7
Times of Israel · LC · trust 40/100
Jessica Steinberg, The Times of Israel's culture and lifestyles editor, covers the Sabra scene from south to north and back to the center
Among a spate of new films exposing different aspects of the October 7 Hamas onslaught, the investigative documentary, “The Campaign,” looks not at the massacre itself, but at the orchestrated social media campaign in its wake that the film alleges has fueled global antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment worldwide.
The 93-minute documentary, directed by Kari Hollend and Cristina Bishai and narrated by Canadian lawyer and author Warren Kinsella, was screened on August 19 during the recent National Library’s Docu.Text film festival.
The film, subtitled “Disinformation in a Time of War,” was made in tandem with Kinsella’s latest book, “The Hidden Hand,” and weaves in-depth interviews with media, political, and diplomatic experts together with Kinsella and Hollend’s reportage in the region to describe the Hamas propaganda campaign in the immediate aftermath of the October 7, 2023, attack.
It’s a hefty piece of investigative reporting, and it also serves as Kinsella and Hollend’s way of showing the dramatic shifts in public opinion emanating from Canada, where they both live.
In early 2024, Hollend met Kinsella, a writer, lawyer, and political consultant who was writing a book about the Hamas disinformation campaign at the time.
Kinsella wanted a documentary to accompany his writing, which digs into the anti-Israel messaging machine and explores how Canada became ground zero for the global propaganda campaign.
Hollend, a Jewish Torontonian who has worked in film production for the last 20 years, was reeling from the shifts she was experiencing in her community as opinion turned against Israel for waging war against the Hamas terror group in Gaza after October 7.
“I was in shock at what I was seeing with so many people in my world,” said Hollend. “There was so much hatred without any empathy; there was no balance. They had nothing to say about October 7, and this kept growing.”
Hollend found that being Jewish meant being left out of the equation. After decades of supporting minority rights, she discovered she was now the minority, but without a voice that could be heard.
“The Campaign” opens with a brief, personal look at Kinsella, a Catholic by birth, who shares a story from his youth as a Canadian punk rocker that brought him into a brief conflict with neo-Nazis, to show his lifelong distaste for campaigns of hatred.
From there, the film expands, showing what happened on October 7 with the Hamas invasion of Israel’s south and the immediate, intensive anti-Israel social media campaign that followed.
A series of smart, insightful interviews with a long list of experts follows; the speakers include former CIA director and US defense secretary Leon Panetta, political strategist Brianna Wu, educator Aviva Klompas, former Israeli spokesman Eylon Levy, Syrian-born activist Rawan Osman, journalists Noam Sheizaf and Matti Friedman, and other experts from the social media, AI and public relations world.
Each one aims to broaden the viewers’ understanding of how the disinformation campaign was created and spread globally.
The film briefly dips into the involvement of Qatar in the disinformation campaign, tracking the heavy Qatari financial backing that helped shape ideological narratives, fostering anti-Israel or anti-Western advocacy, and correlating with rising campus antisemitism.
“It was horrifying and also comforting in knowing this was orchestrated,” said Hollend. “When you know what the problem is, you can address it.”
Anti-Israeli voices are included as well, meant to “show a mosaic of opinions on all sides,” said Hollend, who hopes anti-Israel audiences will also watch the film.
“Otherwise it’s just another piece of propaganda,” she said. “It holds up a mirror to what is uncomfortable in this conversation. It forces people to ask questions and to listen to the other side because there are so many sides watching this.”
The documentary is being rolled out globally, with screenings at schools and universities.
While Hollend wants the film to inform audiences about what’s happening online, the process of making it was personal for her.
Creating “The Campaign” has helped the filmmaker grapple with the profound changes in her life and country, where she now feels like an outsider, unprotected against the waves of anti-Israel and antisemitic hatred.
“I’ve really found a renewed sense of purpose and connection with my own people, with an ancestral lens of what it means to be Jewish in this world,” said Hollend. “I had the privilege of being Generation X, the one generation that didn’t grow up in a lens of antisemitism, and now I have to be the warrior that my ancestors were.”
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