Sheryl Sandberg, former chief operating officer of Meta, recently released a documentary about the rapes and sexual abuse committed by Hamas during and after the Oct. 7 massacre, considered the darkest attack in the history of the State of Israel.
The film, called "Screams Before Silence," can be viewed free online. In it, Sandberg tours the targeted communities in southern Israel and the site of the Nova music festival where the brutal terrorist massacre took place.
The hard-hitting documentary also features the harrowing testimonies of survivors and first responders, as well as some of the interrogations of Hamas terrorists by Jewish state security forces.
A volunteer from ZAKA, an organization in charge of identifying disaster victims, is shown in footage recorded on Oct. 7 saying that he found bodies “cut to pieces.” He adds that it was difficult to tell whether they were men or women and that many of them were naked.
Another volunteer from the same organization says that in one house he found the body of a completely naked woman under a mattress with “nails around her female organs. Not only nails, but different plastic, metal things.”
Another ZAKA member expresses that “when you see one woman, then another and another, all with signs of abuse in the groin area, you understand that it was not random.” He adds, “You can't get to that area unintentionally.”
Volunteers not only give harrowing accounts of what they found on Oct. 7, they also show Sandberg photographs to provide more evidence about what happened that fateful Saturday.
Rami Davidian, a paramedic who went to the Nova festival immediately after the massacre, recounts finding women tied to trees. “Someone murdered them, raped them and abused them ... They had their legs spread open.” And he adds: “Anyone who sees this will immediately realize that the young women were abused. Someone stripped them naked, someone raped them.”
“They had all kinds of things inserted into their intimate organs, like wooden boards, iron bars,” Davidian continues with a story that is as hard to tell as it is to listen to. “More than 30 girls were killed and raped here,” he says.
Elad Avraham, a security guard at the Nova festival also claims that sexual violence was committed at the event. The man says he found women lying with their clothes torn off and their legs spread open.
Raz Cohen, a survivor of the massacre at the festival, says that from his hiding place he saw several men around a woman and one of them raping her. “They did whatever they wanted. There were no rules,” he says. And he notes that one even “raped her after he had beheaded her.”
Two former Hamas hostages also give their testimony in the documentary. One of them, Amit Soussana, recounts that her captor had intentions of sexually abusing her, so she tried to deceive him by telling him she was having her period for several days, until she could no longer hide it. Then, Amit claims, the terrorist pulled a gun on her and beat her. “He dragged me to the bedroom and then he forced me to commit a sexual act on him,” she expresses.
Agam Goldstein Almog, a teenager who was also held hostage by Hamas in Gaza, says that half of the hostages she met had suffered sexual violence.
Regarding the interrogations of Hamas terrorists in the documentary, some of them are shown acknowledging acts of sexual violence committed during the Oct. 7 massacre. One of them tells of entering a house, throwing a woman onto a sofa, undressing her and then raping her.
Mirit Ben Mayor, chief superintendent of the Israel Police, says the force has collected more than 2,000 testimonies and 200,000 pieces of visual evidence, among which there is “substantial evidence for sexual violence that took place on October 7.” However, no explicit images appear in the documentary out of respect for the victims and their families.
Sandberg argues in the film that it is the “most important work of my life.” She adds, "We can take that pain and take that trauma, and turn it into hope, turn it into commitment, turn it into conviction, that we are not going to let this happen again.”
Despite accumulating evidence, UN maintains that Hamas does not engage in sexual violence
Recently, Pramila Patten, the U.N. secretary general's special representative on sexual violence in conflict, presented a report confirming that “clear and convincing information” was found about sexual assaults perpetrated by Hamas during the Oct. 7 massacre in Israel.
The report was released following a visit by a team of experts to the Jewish state to collect, analyze and verify allegations of sexual assault committed by the Palestinian terrorist group.
According to the report, “reasonable grounds” were found to believe that Hamas not only committed rapes during the attack, but also committed other “sexualized torture" and other "cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment" against hostages.
“Credible information was obtained regarding multiple incidents whereby victims were subjected to rape and then killed. There are further accounts of individuals who witnessed at least two incidents of rape of corpses of women", the report added.
Despite the amount of evidence of sexual abuse and rape perpetrated by Palestinian terrorists, U.N. Secretary General António Guterres decided not to include the Hamas terrorist organization in a report on groups suspected of committing sexual violence during conflicts.
Guterres argued in his report that there is no evidence that acts of sexual violence were committed by Palestinian terrorist organizations. According to him, this is because Patten's report is not “investigative in nature” and was conducted in a “limited" time frame.
'Guterres has turned the UN into an extremely antisemitic and anti-Israel institution'
Israel Katz, Israel's foreign minister, took aim at Guterres for refusing to hold Hamas accountable for the acts of sexual violence in the Patten report and for refusing to declare the Palestinian group a terrorist organization.
The minister argued that Guterres stands “shoulder to shoulder with Hamas rapists and murderers.”
"I am convinced that if the crimes of the Nazi regime had come up for discussion during his tenure, he would have refused to condemn them as well, if his political interests demanded that," the Israeli minister said. “Guterres has turned the UN into an extremely antisemitic and anti-Israel institution, and his time in office will be remembered as the darkest in the organization’s history,” he added.
