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As the world’s attention is drawn to the mobs of anti-Israel and anti-American protesters setting up encampments on major universities around the country, remember that the actors in these performative campus intifadas are in full-throated support of what they call the justifiable “resistance” against Israel committed by Hamas terrorists last October 7. A new documentary takes us back to the scenes of those atrocities for an unflinching look at what the “anti-colonialist” resistance they support looks like.
Sheryl Sandberg, the former COO of Meta and founder of LeanIn.org, hosts Screams Before Silence, available to watch for free on YouTube, which shines a harsh spotlight on the barbaric violence intentionally waged on that day by thousands of Hamas terrorists against unarmed men, women, and children. “As heartbreaking as these stories in the documentary are,” the description reads, “we cannot afford to look away.”
In a Facebook post urging everyone to watch the film, Sandberg wrote,
This is the most important post I will write all year.
Earlier this year I went to Israel to bear witness. I heard the horrific stories of the sexual violence that occurred on October 7th. I sat with released hostages who were sexually assaulted at the hands of their captors. And I cried with real-life heroes who saw the naked bodies of women tied to trees. Screams Before Silence tells their stories so we know the truth about what happened on that day.
It is our responsibility to collectively bear witness so their screams are heard. We must stand together to demand justice for the victims and the survivors, and make sure this never happens again, anywhere in the world.
Regardless of your politics, rape is never ok. Rape is not resistance.
Rape is not resistance. This simple declaration flies in the face of the rabid, self-righteous, pro-Hamas mobs that have overrun Ivy League universities to demand that Israel be eradicated “from the river to the sea.” It runs directly counter to the Left’s defiant insistence that, as some protesters’ banners read, “You don’t get to choose how we resist.” It runs directly counter to the Left’s conviction that nothing done in the service of revolution against the purported oppressor is criminal or even immoral – and that includes actions which by any sane measure would be considered the most heinous of war crimes.
Produced by the Israeli production company Kastina Communications, Screams Before Silence features interviews with survivors, first responders, and even captured Hamas terrorists. As you would expect, it is grim viewing, despite the fact that it is not visually explicit (dead bodies are shown in video footage but blurred out). The intensity and horror are such that I had to take a break halfway through the film’s 56-minute runtime. The witness testimonies are harrowing, even unimaginable.
“We would like to think that this couldn’t be possible, that nobody would harm a young girl,” Dr. Ayelet Levy Schachar tells Sandberg. Schacher is the mother of Naama Levy, kidnapped at 19 and still (presumably) held hostage by Hamas. “But then you just see it there,” she continues, meaning the infamous viral video of her bloodied daughter being abducted by feral killers. “They’re the ones who posted the video, the Hamas.”
One survivor of the Nova Music festival massacre related hiding in a trailer for seven hours, all the while hearing many women outside screaming and begging for the abuse to stop. Then there was silence. “And how did the screaming end in those cases?” Sandberg asks her. “They got shot,” was the reply.
A male survivor of the music festival killing field tells Sandberg he witnessed a semi-circle of terrorists raping a girl: “They did whatever they wanted. There were no rules.” The Hamas animals then began slaughtering the girl, but even then did not stop raping her. “I wish I’d had a gun,” the survivor tells Sandberg.
Another Israeli man Sandberg interviewed, an IDF officer, did have a gun. He woke that morning to news of the terrorist attack and said to himself, “I must do something.” He grabbed his weapon, lied to his wife about where he was going, and drove two-and-a-half hours to the festival site, only to find hundreds of bodies, not one still alive. He breaks down in tears describing one particularly horrific discovery.
To a man, the first responders – some of them courageous volunteers – who are trained to deal with the most gruesome of tragedies, tell Sandberg that they “don’t have words to explain what we saw” when they came upon the mutilated victims. They show Sandberg, at her request, pictures of the aftermath of savage sexual atrocities that no sane human being could possibly imagine. The viewer does not clearly see the photos, but the first responders give her rough descriptions of what she is looking at, some of which she cannot even comprehend. Sandberg is clearly aghast, but does not look away.
Authorities that Sandberg interviews, such as an IDF reservist at the military morgue where all the bodies from October 7 were brought, state that the evidence is overwhelming that the sexual violence directed at women was premeditated, planned, and systematic. We will never know the full extent of it, though, because so many of the victims were silenced, often accompanied by the obliteration of their faces through gunfire, to erase the identity and existence of the women they treated as less than human. One woman tells Sandberg that Hamas “has redefined evil,” such that “we will even need to redefine international criminal law.”
Sandberg refrains from commentary until the end of the film, limiting herself to listening and occasionally offering helpless consolation to the brave men and women whose voices and stories she is trying to amplify. There is no need for commentary – the testimony of the survivors and first responders makes more than enough impact.
After being expelled from the universities they have colonized, Hamas supporters (both student and faculty) who are threatening Jews and chanting for intifada should all be forced to watch this documentary in their jail cells, to give them just a glimpse of the actual human cost of the genocidal slogans they sling with such revolutionary fervor. Perhaps a few may even begin to realize that perhaps they’re not on the right side of history after all; instead, they’re complicit in the dehumanizing, mass sexual torture and ecstatic terrorism of the most barbaric ideology on the planet.
But I am skeptical. The ideologues among them will dismiss the documentary and the evidence of war crimes as Israeli propaganda, or justify Hamas’ actions as necessary “resistance.” Nonetheless, the least the rest of can do is watch Screams Before Silence, know the full truth and share it, and remember that Hamas has vowed there will be many more such onslaughts. The victims and survivors of October 7 have done their part; now we must honor them by doing ours.
Follow Mark Tapson at Culture Warrior.
