New Book Confronts the Moral and Intellectual Battles Unleashed After Hamas' Attack on Israel

October 7: The Wars Over Words and Deeds Released Today by Dr. Asaf Romirowsky and Donna Robinson Divine

PHILADELPHIA and NEW YORK, Oct. 28, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Two years after the devastating Hamas massacre of October 7 and the fallout from the two years of war, October 7: The Wars Over Words and Deeds brings together 17 scholars, journalists, and thought leaders to examine both the atrocities of that day and the ensuing global struggle over truth, morality, and meaning. The book also highlights how these words and images have been used to reframe the historical narrative of this century-long conflict into an avalanche of antisemitism and cultural toxicity that has attempted to reshape American society, impacting politics, media, and academia.

Edited by Dr. Asaf Romirowsky, Executive Director of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME) and the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA) and Donna Robinson Divine, Morningstar Family Professor of Jewish Studies and Professor Emerita of Government at Smith College, the book features essays from some of today's most incisive voices on Middle Eastern politics, antisemitism, and the war of ideas—including Andrew Fox, Henry Jackson Society, Cole Bunzel, Hoover Institution, Isabella Tabarowsky, Wilson Center, KC Johnson, Brooklyn College, and David Adesnik, Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

"October 7 was not only an assault on human life—it was an assault on truth itself," said Dr. Asaf Romirowsky, editor of October 7: The Wars Over Words and Deeds. "This book confronts how the moral relativism of our institutions and media has allowed terror to be rationalized and antisemitism to be repackaged as justice. We cannot heal or move forward without facing the reality of both the deeds committed and the words that followed."

Together, these contributors dissect the dual conflict that emerged after October 7: one of physical violence, and another of moral and linguistic distortion. The essays explore how language, media narratives, and academic discourse have been weaponized to obscure the truth about terror, justify antisemitism, and reshape global perceptions of Israel and the Jewish people.

"October 7: The Wars Over Words and Deeds is more than a chronicle of tragedy—it is a call to intellectual and moral accountability," said Donna Robinson Divine, co-editor of the volume. "The essays examine how the global response to October 7 revealed deep fractures in academia, journalism, and international institutions, and challenge readers to reassert moral clarity in a world of distortion."

October 7: The Wars Over Words and Deeds exposes how Hamas savagery cast a destructive shadow not only over the men, women, and children caught on the battlefields of Gaza but also over the educators and journalists expected to explain why this atrocity occurred. Despite its brutality, Hamas won substantial support on campuses, in the media, and from an array of progressive movements. This terrorist organization's attacks, astonishing in their ambition, can only be fully understood by examining not only what has happened to Israel, Gaza, and to the Middle East, but also to a world forced to respond to domestic protests echoing and supporting Hamas' savagery, the suffering of Gaza civilians, and the devastation of the war.

"This ambitious collection tackles a controversial topic, and it does so boldly and thoroughly.," exclaimed Ron Hassner, Helen Diller Family Chair in Israel Studies, University of California, Berkeley. "The essays provide a rich variety of views, diverse in focus, methodology, and findings. There are scholars of gender here, as well as military strategists, but also those who study terrorism, domestic politics, and antisemitism. There are humanities and social science scholars, quantitative and qualitative. An important, ambitious, and provocative read."

There will be a discussion of the book at the 18th Annual Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA) Conference from November 1-3, 2025 in Washington DC. Registration is open for the conference here.

Publication Date: October 28, 2025
Publisher: Academic Studies Press
To purchase a copy, click here.

About the Editors

Asaf Romirowsky PhD, is the Executive Director of  Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME)  and the  Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA)  Romirowsky is also a senior nonresident research fellow at  the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies (BESA)  and a Professor [Affiliate] at the University of Haifa. Trained as a Middle East historian he holds a PhD in Middle East and Mediterranean Studies from King's College London, UK and has published widely on various aspects of the Arab-Israeli conflict and American foreign policy in the Middle East, as well as on Israeli and Zionist history. Romirowsky is co-author of  Religion, Politics, and the Origins of Palestine Refugee Relief  and a contributor to  The Case Against Academic Boycotts of Israel . Romirowsky's publicly-engaged scholarship has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The National Interest, The American Interest, The New Republic, The Times of Israel, Jerusalem Post, Ynet and Tablet among other online and print media outlets.

Donna Robinson Divine is the Morningstar Family Professor of Jewish Studies and Professor Emerita of Government at Smith College, where she taught comparative politics and Middle East studies. A longtime scholar of Israeli and Palestinian politics, she has written extensively on nation-building, gender, and ideology in the region. Divine is the author of Exiled in the Homeland: Zionism and the Return to Mandate Palestine and Politics and Society in Ottoman Palestine, and has contributed to major academic and policy journals worldwide.

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SOURCE Dr. Asaf Romirowsky and Donna Robinson Divine