The October 7 attack on Israel was 1,500 years in the making.
That’s the theme of Dr. Rafael Medoff’s powerful and unique new book, The Road to October 7: Hamas, the Holocaust, and the Eternal War Against the Jews, which shows how the attack was one segment of the century-long Palestinian Arab war against the Jews—and part of the ongoing, centuries-old international war against the Jewish people.
From the Crusades in medieval Europe to the Cossacks in Czarist Russia, from Hebron in 1929 to Warsaw in 1943 to southern Israel in 2023, anti-Jewish violence has been the product of hate education across the continents and the generations. Dr. Medoff explores the haunting similarities between the violent antisemitism of our own times and its predecessors.
International responses to October 7, too, have echoed previous responses to antisemitic violence. Dr. Medoff reveals shocking new information about how America’s leading universities built relations with Nazi Germany in the 1930s—and why that sordid story is relevant to the explosion of antisemitism on the nation’s campuses since October 7.
The Road to October 7 has been published by the Jewish Publication Society of America together with the University of Nebraska Press. It can be ordered now from: https://jps.org/books/the-
Advance Praise for The Road to October 7:
“Compelling reading for anyone who believes in the security of the State of Israel.”
—Seymour Reich, former chair of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and past president of B’nai B’rith International
“I cannot imagine a more important book for the Jewish community and indeed all human rights advocates than this brilliant volume.”
— Prof. Neil J. Kressel, author of Mass Hate: The Global Rise of Genocide and Terror
“A champion of Jewish memory and an expert on the Jews’ abandonment during the Holocaust, Rafael Medoff confronts the Hamas attack, the global explosion of antisemitism, and the historical lessons that can help guide the Jewish future.”
— Walter Reich, former director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum