Whatever your politics, whatever your opinion is about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, whatever you think about Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the current Israeli government, you must do one thing right now, or sometime today, or tomorrow, or this week.
You must click the link at the end of this column and watch Sheryl Sandberg’s documentary, Screams Before Silence.
The documentary is about the premeditated, unmitigated and inhuman sexual defilement of Israeli women by the Hamas terrorists and their supporters on October 7th, and afterward in hell, in Gaza.
After invading southern Israel, they murdered and mutilated as many women as possible, as many as they could find. They heinously used rape and sexual violence as acts of war.
The documentary runs for about an hour and it is very hard to watch. Very hard. If you can, watch it with someone to hold onto. But watch it, you must.
You will be sickened by the human depravity on display on that awful Saturday. But you also be awed, hearing from survivors and witnesses with superhuman strength. You will cry for the girls and for the women who suffered unspeakable degradation. But you will admire their courage for speaking out.
You must watch Screams Before Silence because it is a huge middle finger to the deniers. Those evil, hate-filled people who say what happened on October 7th, didn’t. And you must watch because Hamas has vowed, if given the chance, to do it again and again.
As one of the people Sandberg interviewed said, every one of us, women and men, must speak up for these women and say we will bear your story, we will bear witness for you, you will not be forgotten and what happened to you will be told.
Sheryl Sandberg is an economist and is one of the most successful and famous women in the tech world. For 14 years, she was the chief operating officer at Facebook, or Meta, as it’s now called. She still sits on the board.
Sandberg is also a best-selling author and a philanthropist.
But she says making Screams Before Silence is the most important work of her life.
A longtime advocate for women, Ms. Sandberg says she was taught by her parents to fight injustice and to be a proud Jew. Growing up she believed that Israel was, in her words, a place that would save me when the world would turn against us.
Sheryl Sandberg says October 7th was a turning point in her life. The savage brutalization of the Israeli women stunned her. The silence from the so-called enlightened western world, shocked her.
Screams Before Silence, as Sandberg says, demands that we not accept the unacceptable.
October 7th changed Sheryl Sandberg. Screams Before Silence will change you.
Please, click the link and watch.
If you want to hear more about how Sheryl Sandberg got involved in making this important film and other insights from the interviews she conducted, click below to watch her talk with Dan Senor on his podcast, Call Me Back.