More than a year and a half has passed since the Hamas-led attacks of October 7, 2023, and the global response remains fractured—divided, though unevenly, between those who support Israel and those sympathetic to the suffering endured by the Palestinians. The brutality of the attack, broadcast in real-time through harrowing social media videos, unleashed not only a military retaliation but also a psychological war—one that revived long-dormant cultural archetypes and biases, especially concerning the Jewish people.

In the Middle East, these subconscious associations didn’t emerge from nowhere. For generations, children in the Arab world have encountered negative depictions of Jews in school curricula, on television, in theater, and in song. Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, for instance, has long been taught with an emphasis on the character of Shylock—a Jewish moneylender cast as villain. This literary portrayal has dovetailed neatly with state-sponsored propaganda that presents Jews as the source of humanity’s ills. Such narratives have been embedded, often deliberately, into children’s minds and then reinforced into adulthood.

Psychologists know that the subconscious never forgets. These imprints linger, buried beneath the surface, until some external event resurrects them. For many in the region, the October 7 attacks served precisely as that trigger. The imagery of bloodshed and violence reawakened the age-old specter of Shylock and replaced it with an even darker caricature. People who might otherwise consider themselves reasonable were swept into a current of misinformation and rage, their perceptions shaped by decades of narrative engineering.

Hamas and its ideological allies knew exactly where to aim their propaganda. College students, especially in the West, became prime targets—not just in the Middle East but also in the United States. These students were flooded with carefully crafted messaging, not only by Hamas but also by proxy groups aligned with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Behind the curtain of solidarity with Gaza, many of these campaigns had little to do with defending Palestinian civilians and everything to do with advancing an apocalyptic ideological vision promoted by the IRGC and the Muslim Brotherhood.

But propaganda is never invincible. Some began to question the prevailing narratives. They asked who Hamas truly serves, who funds them, and their objectives. Through these investigations, a more unsettling truth emerged: the violence of October 7 had less to do with Palestinian liberation and more with a strategic agenda guided by theocratic authoritarianism. The goal was not peace or justice—it was the establishment of a dystopia starting in the Middle East and radiating outward.

For those who saw through the smokescreen, the response was not apathy but activism. They began using social media, public debates, and private conversations to expose the ideological architecture of groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, and their IRGC benefactors. But digital resistance alone isn’t enough. As history has shown, the Jewish people are not outsiders in the Middle East. They are an indigenous part of the region’s tapestry—alongside Muslims, Christians, Mandaeans, Yezidis, Kurds, and Druze. This shared cultural and religious heritage was once a strength. It can be again.

Reclaiming this legacy means discarding inherited myths, like the image of Shylock, and embracing coexistence. It also requires identifying and uprooting the real forces sowing chaos in the region—not Israel, and certainly not ordinary Jewish citizens, but the regimes and networks that perpetuate violence for ideological gain. The IRGC and the Muslim Brotherhood have played central roles in nurturing terrorist groups across the region: al-Qaeda, ISIS, Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and militias in Iraq and Yemen. Their collective impact has not only destabilized the Middle East but also posed a growing threat to the United States.

In fact, many Arab Americans—recognizing the regional threat posed by Tehran—cast their votes for President Trump, viewing him as someone capable of confronting the “head of the octopus” that is the IRGC. Iran’s pursuit of nuclear capabilities adds another layer of urgency. A nuclear-armed Tehran isn’t merely a threat to Israel—it would fundamentally alter global security, especially for the United States.

This is a wake-up call for patriotic Americans, Arab Americans included. If there is a path toward peace and prosperity in the Middle East, it lies through coalitions like the Abraham Accords—agreements that reimagine diplomacy not through the lens of perpetual conflict but through shared opportunity. Such frameworks promise economic growth, regional stability, and, most importantly, security for future generations.

Shakespeare was a master of human drama, but he got Shylock wrong—or rather, we got Shylock wrong. It’s time to unlearn what centuries of narrative have taught us. The real villain is not the Jewish people but those who weaponize ideology to sow hatred and violence. And those villains don’t reside in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem. They reside in Tehran.