Screams Before Silence

This past Thursday evening I attended the premiere of a new documentary film.  The screening took place in the theater at The Times Center in midtown, the elegant crowd comprising leaders of the New York Jewish community and well-placed members of the business and cultural elite.  At the reception preceding the film, people milled about in conversation – much of it on the evolving pro-Hamas demonstrations at Columbia, NYU and a growing number of leading universities across the country.  Many had anticipated protesters outside the theater, though the area remained quiet both before and after the event.

The evening’s guests were hosted by the central figure in the film, hi-tech powerhouse Sheryl Sandberg, who’d become notably outspoken about the lack of condemnation of the horrific sexual crimes committed during the October 7 assault on Israel and those perpetrated against the hostages in Gaza in the weeks and months since.  Sandberg was warm and engaging as she greeted her guests – friends, colleagues, and a large majority of the crowd it was clear she did not know personally.

At the sound of the tones indicating that it was time to take our seats, we dutifully filed into the theater in nervous anticipation of the experience to come.  Sandberg took the stage to offer a few opening remarks.  She praised the director, the production company and the members of the crew.  The bulk of the footage, she explained. was shot during a four-day visit to Israel and the Gaza Envelope she’d made weeks after October 7.  Kastina Communications, the production company that brought us Fauda, had contributed its extraordinary skills and resources to the project and the entirety of the production was funded by New York philanthropists Joey and Carol Low, making it possible for the next day’s release to make the film available on YouTube – at no cost to anyone.

Sandberg’s remarks were brief, but one comment stood out.  This woman, this titan of Silicon Valley, for 14 years the number-two at Facebook/Meta, a former chief of staff to Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, the founder of LeanIn.Org paused before stating in the clearest of terms that “this has become the most important work of my life.  Maybe everything else has led me to this.”  “This” is what we were about to see.

The film runs just short of an hour during which Sandberg takes us to Reim, the location of the Nova Music Festival and to Kibbutz Kfar Aza – both among the sites of the massacres – and introduces us to a handful of first-person accounts of the sexual assaults systematically carried out by perpetrators bent on far more than brutality.  We hear from Dr. Ayelet Levy Shachar, whose daughter, Naama, was seen on Hamas video, barefoot, the seat of her pants stained with blood, being dragged into Gaza from whence she has still not returned.  From Amit Soussana, an attorney, who was held hostage for 53 days of constant torment and abuse and assaulted at the hands of her captor in a private family home. 

Tali Binner and two others lay motionless in a derelict trailer at the Nova site, seemingly overlooked, as they listened to sounds all around them of women being brutalized in what could only be described in the most horrific and merciless ways.  The screams.  The screams she can’t get out of her head.  Some, brief and frantic, were quickly followed by gunshots.  Others were seemingly interminable – as victims begged and pleaded while they were gang-raped.  They screamed for maybe fifteen or twenty minutes before they were silenced.  The sounds came into the trailer from every direction – for hours…

We hear from ZAKA volunteers, who are tasked with collecting human remains after automobile accidents, fires, floods and other natural disasters, so that they can be properly buried in keeping with Jewish tradition.  They have also taken it upon themselves to carry out their grim tasks in the aftermath of terror attacks, which has brought them to sites of mass shootings, car rammings and suicide bombings.  But nothing, it seems, prepared them for what they saw at the scenes of the October 7 massacre.  Simcha Greinman said, through tears – a near vacant look of pure horror on his face as he spoke with Sandberg - “I don’t have the words to explain what we saw.”

Rami Davidian was among the heroes of October 7, traveling back and forth to the area of the music festival rescuing desperate survivors – including the wounded and injured.  This mountain of a man, a hard-edged Israeli who’d served his country in combat as a soldier, broke as he stood among trees to which the naked, raped, and mutilated bodies of innocent girls had been tied.

That was a thread that followed the entirety of Screams Before Silence. Victims, eyewitnesses, first responders, rescuers, and heroes, each of whom came forward to make possible this film – sharing intimate details, photographs and video-recordings, experiences seared into their eyes, their hearts, and their souls.  Experiences they will carry with them for rest of their tormented lives.  All to help Sheryl and her colleagues and partners who are determined to give voice to the voiceless – the overwhelming majority of the victims whose lives were snuffed out in an orgy of sadism.

When they set out to make this film, the goal was to create a vehicle through which to share the magnitude of the crimes perpetrated against these young women, and more than a few young men.  To document it for time immemorial.  But that was then.  Nearly seven months later, it is another silence that must be addressed.  The silence of those who hypocritically trumpet their conviction that sexual assault is never justifiable, but whose voices are strangely absent when it comes to October 7^th.  Where are they?  The women’s groups.  The human rights advocates. The powerful women who have become role models for a generation.  Their silence is deafening – and this film can be the instrument with which it is shattered.

During the months I spent in Israel following the single darkest day in its history, I had many occasions to spend time in the Gaza Envelope and to speak with the people who’d borne the brunt of the attack.  Each one, to a person, implored me and those who’d joined me there, to share what we’d seen and heard.  To make sure that people knew what had happened there.  “Tell them!”  “Don’t let them forget!”  “Make them see us – see me!”  These proud and unbroken members of our extended family seemed to be screaming – and around us, back home in the U.S., in Canada, and in places throughout the Western world – in far too many places, silence…

With thanks to the remarkable Sheryl Sandberg, we now have a powerful instrument at our disposal.  Screams Before Silence needs to be seen by everyone.  I ask that you follow the link and watch this film – then share it with everyone you know and urge that they do the same.  Join us.  Add your voice to our collective scream, and maybe, just maybe - for the victims of October 7, we can raise the curtain of silence.