Two Irish journalists are putting the words of October 7 survivors in the mouths of actors.
When Hamas invaded Israel on October 7, journalists Ann McElhinney and Phelim McAleer were in their home country of Ireland. The couple was shocked by Hamas’s savage attack, and expected the rest of the world would be as well. But by October 8 they noticed that concern for Israel had tapered. The media narrative had already shifted from what had happened in Israel to what would happen in Gaza.
“People were talking about Gaza, and talking about electricity being turned off, and other things to do with Gaza,” McElhinney told National Review. “And people were not talking about the massacre of Jews and the massive hostage-taking nightmare that had happened.”
As documentary-makers, authors, podcasters, and seasoned journalists, the pair specialize in telling underreported stories. They immediately recognized that Israel’s post–October 7 plight — exacerbated by Western media’s denial of Hamas’s brutality — was an untold story. Maybe the most important story of their career.
“It’s a major world event that’s in danger of not being remembered, and, to us, that’s the most important thing, that this story is reported on,” McAleer said. “It’s our modus operandi,” McElhinney added.
The two, who had never visited Israel before, flew to the country in November to collect first-person accounts of October 7. They were able to get in touch with 20 people, all of whom sat down with the couple to recall the day’s events.
“There were so many victims,” McAleer said. “A lot of them hadn’t been asked . . . so, some of them were glad to talk.”
McElhinney and McAleer are telling 13 of those stories in their play, October 7: In Their Own Words, which runs in New York through June 16.
In an attempt to make the horrific events of October 7 more accessible to audiences, the play features actors reciting the stories of survivors verbatim.
“[A verbatim play] is a very accessible way of receiving information like that. There’s plenty of people who really couldn’t watch the 47-minute Hamas video,” McElhinney said, referencing the footage of Hamas’s atrocities that the Israeli government has screened for journalists, officials, and others.
Much of the footage from October 7 was filmed on terrorists’ body cameras and GoPros, or the security cameras lining Israel’s streets. It’s a bloody video, one that depicts a vicious beheading, scenes from Hamas’s massacre at the Nova music festival, dead or abused women and children, and burnt-alive families. Videos like those are almost impossible to stomach. But McElhinney and McAleer have successfully described the carnage of October 7, without the gore. Their production is free of editorialization, or pomp.
Shani Arditi’s story is told in the play. She’s a young army medic who spent hours hiding in thorny bushes after she escaped from the Nova music festival, where Hamas murdered almost 370 civilians. There’s also Biliya Michal, a grandmother and resident of Ofakim, where terrorists killed 53 residents. Michal almost made 54. When terrorists entered Michal’s house, her family began to escape through a window. But one terrorist caught up with Michal and was close enough for her to see his face. He shot. His weapon jammed. Michal survived yet suffered unimaginable loss: Her son Ariel was murdered trying to evacuate his infant from the family’s home.
The play also tells the story of Zaki, an Orthodox Jew from a moshav near the Nova festival. Zaki broke Shabbat to gather news about the attack online. Luckily, Hamas didn’t infiltrate Zaki’s village. But when he saw what was happening at the nearby festival site, he immediately kissed his wife goodbye, left their home, and drove the family car to the site of the Nova music festival. He said that to honor life is a Jew’s greatest calling — so, while others may have expected a member of the ultra-Orthodox community to keep the Sabbath, he felt it his duty to save Jews that day. He made numerous trips to the festival site, and each time brought back survivors to his home. Zaki saved nearly 100 festival-goers.
Although the play has no narrator to weave the story together, faith serves as a unifying thread. Hidden in the bushes, Shani held on for dear life to her necklace, which she feared the sunlight would reflect off of, giving away her hiding spot to lurking terrorists. Her necklace read “yishmerekha,” part of a Jewish blessing that loosely translated means “may God watch over you.” Since October 7 her faith has been animated, her prayer life reengaged. Other survivors told stories of similar faith reawakenings, post–October 7. Some “started keeping Shabbat.” People, at the worst moment in their lives, McElhinney said, turned to God.
October 7 is performed at Actors Temple Theatre, in a synagogue located off Broadway. McElhinney and McAleer had a difficult time finding a theater that would host their play, and when it opened in May, the New York Police Department told the pair that police would patrol the showings. It is “the only production in New York that the NYPD is protecting, setting up barriers and stationing officers outside, amid campus protests and rising antisemitism in the city,” the play’s press release cautions. Fearing the worst, McElhinney and McAleer have also hired additional security. Attendees must pass through a metal detector before they enter the synagogue.
Having given the project such attention to detail, such care, and such passion, McElhinney and McAleer have been mistaken for Jews many times. They’re both Irish-Catholic, which sometimes surprises their audience. But the couple isn’t animated by religion (alone) or professional pursuit of fame or glory or a spot on Broadway, even. They’re motivated by the truth, and by the simple act of telling the full story of what happened on October 7, at a time when the rest of the world is too apathetic or ignorant to do the same.
McElhinney and McAleer want to take the play to Ivy League campuses next, where they’ve noticed the most disinformation and antisemitic rhetoric over what happened in Israel on October 7. For now, the show plays on Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays, and Sundays, reminding all those who attend that “never again is now.”