Books by Asaf Romirowsky

October 7: The Wars Over Words and Deeds by Asaf Romirowsky (Editor) and Donna Robinson Divine (Editor) Academic Studies Press, 2025. 344 pp, $49. October 28, 2025

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."

Editorial Reviews

"This ambitious collection tackles a controversial topic, and it does so boldly and thoroughly. 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!
—Ron Hassner, Helen Diller Family Chair in Israel Studies, University of California, Berkeley.

"An essential volume for anyone concerned to understand Hamas's October 7 massacre, the ensuing war, and their many ramifications for the Jews, Israel, the West, and the world as a whole. Particularly invaluable for its analyses of the massive failure of the academy, whose professors and students, guided by their corrosive ideology, somehow mistook a barbaric medieval atrocity for virtuous freedom-fighting, while the administrators looked on in effective complicity. When academics openly endorse terror, the surrounding society is in trouble—and this volume is an indispensable first step in mounting a truly appropriate 'resistance' to the ideological capture of the academy."
—Andrew Pessin, Professor of Philosophy, Connecticut College.

"Hamas's 10/7 massacres were the deadliest terrorist atrocity of modern times and the largest massacres of Jews since the Holocaust. Yet rather than awaken the world to the global danger of genocidal jihadism, it stirred an unprecedented wave of antisemitism and glorification of the decades-long Palestinian attempt to destroy the world's only Jewish state. Donna Robinson Divine and Asaf Romirowsky have done an indispensable job in debunking this collective madness by exposing the true nature of the 10/7 monstrosity and its far-reaching regional and global implications. A must read."
—Efraim Karsh, Emeritus Professor of Middle East & Mediterranean Studies, King's College London.

"These rich, compelling, thought-provoking, scholarly essays seek to assess a cataclysmic event which is still unfolding, with an academic rigor increasingly out of fashion. The authors—and the editors—have done a remarkable job of fulfilling both ambitious goals. It's not easy to resist political posturing or moralizing when analyzing the horrific violence of October 7, and the resulting challenges Israel faced, while exposing the global campaign on campuses and elsewhere to demonize the Jewish state and justify mass murder and mass rape. But trusting the facts, their training, and their judgment, these meticulous scholars illuminate the confusing but monumental war over words and deeds that continues to reverberate worldwide, not just in the Middle East. Together, they have produced a volume that should launch the kind of balanced, reflective conversations we need in the classroom, in the media, in government offices, and in the public square."
—Professor Gil Troy, author, To Resist the Academic Intifada: Letters to My Students on Defending the Zionist Dream and The Essential Guide to October 7 and its Aftermath.