US Vice President Kamala Harris will host a partial screening at the White House on June 17 of Screams Before Silence, the documentary created by Sheryl Sandberg about the horrific sexual violence committed by Hamas on October 7, with Sandberg in attendance.
The vice president will deliver remarks on conflict-related sexual violence beginning at 4:30 p.m. ET followed by a panel discussion of survivors and experts from around the world, and a screening of part of the documentary.The event can be viewed on a livestream at the White House website. The full Screams Before Silence documentary can be seen on YouTube. More than a million people have viewed Screams Before Silence since it was released in late April.
The silence of most women’s and human rights organization about the sexual assaults committed by Hamas on October 7, which included mass rape and genital mutilation, prompted former Meta COO and author Sandberg to make this documentary, which was directed by Anat Stalinsky. It features testimony from first responders and survivors of the massacre, as well as an account by Amit Soussana, a released hostage who was sexually assaulted by one of her Hamas captors.
"Reasonable grounds to believe that sexual violence took place"
Although the UN’s office of sexual violence in conflict released a report in March that said it found “reasonable grounds to believe” that such assaults had been perpetrated by Hamas terrorists, some have denied that these crimes took place, citing the fact that Soussana is the only victim who has come forward to testify.The documentary makes it crystal clear that the tragic truth is that almost all the rape victims were murdered following, and sometimes during, the assaults. Sandberg visited Israel to make this film so that she could “let those silenced voices be heard.”
Nevertheless, many still insist that they have not seen any convincing evidence of the assaults, in sharp contrast to the way rape victims in other conflicts such as the Bosnian War in the 1990s have been treated, so showing this documentary at the White House will bring much-needed attention to this issue.
Out of respect for the victims and their families, the film does not contain any explicit images, but it does feature graphic descriptions of sexual violence. Sandberg said in the documentary that “this is the most important work of my life and maybe everything I’ve done has led to this moment. . . Rape is not resistance. Sexual violence is never acceptable.”
By letting the victims and witnesses tell their stories, Sandberg said she hoped, “We can take the pain and trauma and turn it into hope, turn it into commitment, turn it into conviction that we are not going to let this happen again.”