This was not what social media activist Montana Tucker planned to do with her career. Despite being a proud of the roots laid down by her Holocaust survivor grandparents, she gained a huge following due to her dancing and singing ability and had never even really spoken publicly about being Jewish.
Then October 7 happened and, as was the case for so many, it changed her life.
“I just knew that I had to do everything that I could,” she tells Jewish News. “If I have a platform of over 14 million followers [across all social platforms] and I’m not standing up for what I believe in, and I’m not educating, what what’s the point of having these followers?”
Furthermore, she says: “I know my grandparents – if social media was around back then, they would have used their platforms to speak out on what they believed in. So I knew I kind of had to take over the legacy for them, for my ancestors and our future generations.”
Tucker has been to Israel six times since the atrocities of that day in 2023 and made a series about the Holocaust. It’s all led to the documentary The Children of October 7, which is out tomorrow in the UK on Paramount+, having previously only been available in the US.
The film focuses on the effect the attacks had on the Israeli children who experienced them first hand. “These are innocent children who went through the absolute worst of the worst, and everything was live-streamed for the world to see,” explains Tucker. “Hamas purposely wanted the world to see what they did. And now these are the testimonies of these innocent children.”
Nobody can fail to be moved by the Palestinian children caught up in the war triggered by the October 7 atrocities. Tucker certainly is. Yet the horrors endured by their Israeli peers seem to have been almost entirely dismissed by many around the world. “I don’t hear anything about the Israeli children in the media,” the creator says. “I felt it was my responsibility, my duty, to make sure that I at least could bring attention to what was going on with that, what happened to the Israeli children, and what continues to happen to the Israeli children.”
Tucker wasn’t exactly sure what the fate of The Children of October 7 would be after she made it. She was encouraged by many to put it out via YouTube because they felt it would be “too controversial… too political” for a mainstream studio to pick up. Consequently, “I keep making sure that people understand this is not political. This isn’t controversial,” she says. “It’s about the torment inflicted on innocent children.”
Tucker is nonetheless grateful to Paramount and MTV for putting it out.
“We had Andrea Ballas [Vice President Communications] from CBS, who I met with, who believed in this project as well, and got it to Shari Redstone [Paramount non-executive chair], who I am so beyond grateful for. She is a force.”
At not much more than half-an-hour in length, The Children of October 7, the earnings from which Tucker says she sent on to support the children featured, might not be long. That doesn’t stop it being an extremely tough watch.
The film starts with images of some of the victims, including the Bibas family, whose sons Ariel and Kfir were the youngest children taken that day. One of those featured, Yael Idan, says of the attack: “It’s like everything that feels safe wasn’t safe anymore.”
Rotem Mathias lost both parents on Kibbutz Holit and hid under the body of his dead mother for an hour in order to survive. “When [the terrorists] leave, they laugh,” he recalls. We also hear the voicemail he sent to the family WhatsApp group letting them know about the murders.
Among the children there is an amazing sense of resilience. Mathias believes his parents’ deaths gave him a second chance at life. Eitan Yahalomi was kidnapped into Gaza on a motorbike. Released after 50 days in captivity, he now races such bikes for fun.
Perhaps the most painful moment comes from Ella Shani. She was 14 years old on October 7 and lost her father, with whom she says she had a somewhat strained relationship. She reads the text that she wrote for him upon learning about his death a few days after the attack. It brings Tucker to tears and is almost unbearable to watch.
But watch it we must. As the terrible war in Gaza continues, The Children of October 7 is a painful reminder of how it started. Now on a mainstream streamer in several countries, it needs to be seen by as many people as possible – Jews and non-Jews and Jews alike.
The Children of October 7 is available in the UK on Paramount+ from Monday, 2 June
