When pressed, a not-so-small percentage of the students participating in the pro-Hamas rallies on college campuses have been unable to name either the river or the sea that border the area they demand be under Palestinian control. Still, others have bought into the lies spread by pro-Hamas groups that the atrocities inflicted upon innocent Israelis on Oct. 7 never happened.
But the most vile protesters of all are those who are well aware of the brutality perpetrated by members of Hamas and their Palestinian accomplices on that fateful day and call for the elimination of Israel anyway.
In a newly released documentary titled Screams Before Silence, Sheryl Sandberg, former chief operating officer of Meta Platforms, interviewed survivors who witnessed the carnage on Oct. 7 firsthand and first responders to the grisly scenes. Included in that group are several women who endured unspeakable sexual violence prior to their release during the November hostage-for-prisoner swaps.
The film’s trailer states that “as heartbreaking as these stories in the documentary are, we cannot afford to look away.”
Sandberg visited the site of the Supernova Music Festival where hundreds were massacred and many women were brutally and repeatedly raped. The title of the documentary comes from one attendee’s account of hearing the victims’ screams during these atrocities that abruptly turned into silence once they’d been shot.
Sandberg also traveled to Kibbutz Kfar Aza, which is located 5 kilometers, or about 3.1 miles, from Gaza, where terrorists moved from house to house, murdering innocent civilians as their helpless family members looked on. The homes had been ransacked and were strewn with bullet holes.
[Note: The following excerpts from eyewitness accounts are graphic and disturbing in nature.]
First responder Rami Davidian said, “I saw girls tied up with their hands behind them to every tree here. … Their legs were spread. … Someone stripped them. Someone raped them. They inserted all kinds of things into their intimate organs, like wooden boards, iron rods. … I had to close their legs and cover their bodies so no one else would see what I saw.”
Amit Soussana, who was kidnapped on Oct. 7 and held hostage for 55 days, described her experience in captivity: “[The Hamas member] started touching me, and I resisted, and then he dragged me to the bedroom, and then he forced me to commit a sexual act on him. And I remember, the entire time, I was thinking: ‘Amit, OK, you knew it’s going to happen. It’s really happening.’ I said to myself: ‘OK, you can handle this. You just want to survive.’”
Sandberg spoke to Dr. Ayelet Levy Shachar, the mother of female Israel Defense Forces soldier Naama Levy, who was kidnapped from the Nahal Oz kibbutz military base on Oct. 7. Video of Levy being led into the backseat of a Hamas vehicle with bloodied sweatpants may be one of the most searing images from the media coverage of the attacks. Shachar emphasized that the video was posted to social media by Hamas members. They were proud of their actions and wanted to show their depravities to the world.
A male survivor of the Supernova Music Festival told Sandberg he witnessed a semicircle of terrorists surround a young woman and take turns raping her. He said the rapes continued even after she had been shot dead.
An unidentified volunteer for disaster victim identification organization ZAKA choked up as he described the aftermath of the Nova massacre to Sandberg. He said, “We’re on Route 232. The street is full of cars. Some are burnt and some aren’t. With dead people inside. Young people who were shot and murdered in cold blood. Everywhere we go, there are bodies on the road. There are bodies everywhere, everywhere. It’s an indescribable catastrophe.”
His colleague told Sandberg, “I don’t have words to explain what we saw.”
The haunting stories continue. What they all have in common is the unmistakable savagery of the Hamas terrorists and their Palestinian accomplices. The Oct. 7 massacre was not merely an invasion of enemy territory. It was an evil, barbaric attack that seems almost inconceivable in a civilized world. These monsters used sexual assault as a weapon of war.
The brainwashed, radicalized student protesters, the professional agitators among them, and every college administrator “negotiating” with them must watch this film to see just what they are fighting for.
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And it almost goes without saying that if the current protests were targeting any other minority group, they would have been shut down by now.
There is nothing noble in this fight. It stopped being about the First Amendment a long time ago.
Elizabeth Stauffer is a contributor to the Washington Examiner, Power Line, and AFNN, and she is a fellow at the Heritage Foundation Academy. She is a past contributor to RedState, Newsmax, the Western Journal, and Bongino.com. Her articles have appeared on RealClearPolitics, MSN, the Federalist, and many other sites. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.
