Trust me, you don't want to watch “Screams Before Silence,” Sheryl Sandberg's documentary about sexual violence by Hamas terrorists after October 7th.
We should see how rape and gender violence are used as weapons of war and speak out. About the breasts cut from the corpse. About a nail being driven into a woman's vagina.
Regarding the sharp cries of assaulted women and the astonishing silence of prominent individuals and organizations, including women and women's organizations, who would normally be quick to condemn such atrocities, when it comes to gender violence against women. , the reaction is suppressed for some reason. Israeli woman.
None of this alleviates the horrific toll, loss of life, trauma and starvation that has been inflicted on civilians in the Gaza Strip. But the violence depicted in Sandberg's documentary, directed by Israeli filmmaker Anat Stalinsky, takes on another dimension of calculated brutality, a veritable evil.
The world attacking Israel for its war effort in Gaza should speak out about Hamas's concerted attacks on women. Terrorist groups can deny this all they want, but any denial is belied by the facts. Sexual violence was not isolated, but systematically repeated from bloody venue to bloody venue.
Hamas' denial found “reasonable grounds to believe that conflict-related sexual violence, including rape and gang rape, occurred in at least three locations around Gaza on October 7th.” This contradicts the findings of last month's UN report. place. ”
Furthermore, the investigator's poisonous words continued as follows: “At various locations where the October 7 attacks took place, the mission team found that several bodies were recovered, naked or semi-naked from the waist down, with their hands bound and shot multiple times. “was a woman,'' is what I often have in my head. Although circumstantial, this pattern of undressing and restraining victims may indicate some type of sexual violence. ”
Similarly, a United Nations report states that hostages are “subjected to various forms of conflict-related sexual violence, including rape, sexual torture, and sexually cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.” We have clear and convincing information that there are people out there, and we believe that this type of violence may be ongoing.”
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Where is the anger? Where is the blame?
“I think politics has blinded us,” Sandberg, Facebook’s former chief operating officer, told me on a Zoom call. “I think people have become so polarized and so entrenched in their own framework that they can't see information that doesn't fit into that framework.”
Sandberg paused and added, “I think part of that is anti-Semitism.”
Sandberg has called the documentary “the most important work of my life.” You can watch the entire 57 harrowing minutes on YouTube. Hostage Naama Levi, then 19 years old, wearing gray sweatpants with a large blood stain clearly visible around her crotch, was dragged screaming away with her hands tied behind her back when she was abducted from the Nahal Oz military base. You'll see how it goes. of the vehicle.
— Tali Binah hid in a trailer at the Nova Music Festival for seven hours, listening to the endless screams and then silence that gave her film its title. “When I heard someone screaming and then silence, I thought maybe someone had been shot,” Viner said. “But after listening to this chaos for 20 minutes, you realize something much worse is happening over there.”
— Raz Cohen, another survivor of the music festival, watched as a pickup truck arrived at the scene. “Some terrorists came out and grabbed the girl there,” he recalled. “There was like a semi-circle around her and one of them raped her. I remember her pants being halfway down and he was behind her… and When I looked again, she was already dead and he was still doing it. He was still raping her after slaughtering her.”
— Rami Davidian, first responder. “I saw girls with their hands tied behind their backs to all the trees here. … Their legs were spread. … Someone stripped them. Someone raped them. They were tied to wooden planks. and iron rods and all sorts of things were inserted into their intimate organs…I had to close their legs and cover their bodies so that no one else could see what I saw. did not.”
For the first time, Amit Susana, who was kidnapped from Kibbutz Kfar Azha and held hostage for 55 days, can hear on video how he was sexually abused by his captors. “He started touching me, and I resisted, and he dragged me into the bedroom and forced him to perform a sexual act. And all the while I was thinking, I remember saying to myself, “Okay, you can handle this.'' It's really happening. I just want to survive. ”
Susanna was not alone. “Your body is just open to everyone,” said Agam Goldstein Almog, another hostage abducted from Kibbutz Kfar Azha, where his father and sister were killed. 17) said so. “Sometimes they are woken up in the middle of the night and raped, with a gun held to their head the whole time.” Goldstein-Almog estimated that half of the women in captivity had been sexually or physically abused. . “And they're still there, living with their rapists.”
But we will never see or hear the worst because we will never know the whole story. Unlike many situations of wartime sexual violence, most of the victims were killed. They cannot explain what they have endured. Forensic evidence is lacking due to religious practices (Jewish custom of burying bodies immediately) and because responders are overwhelmed by the scale of the massacre.
And the filmmakers decided that some of the most damning evidence was too gruesome and too intrusive to release. “The reality is, it's worse than you can show,” Sandberg said, tears welling up in her eyes. “It's much worse.”
The silence is deafening. The burden is on us to break through it.
