Editor’s note: This story includes disturbing details of violence and sexual assault.
Gayle Kaplan felt she needed to watch “Screams Before Silence,” the Sheryl Sandberg-fronted documentary about Hamas’ sexual violence against Israeli civilians on Oct. 7.
But “I didn’t want to watch it alone, because I was nervous about my reaction, that I’d be too overcome, or I wouldn’t watch it to the end,” she said.
So she approached Rabbi David Locketz at Bet Shalom Congregation with an idea: Would the synagogue be willing to host a group screening of the documentary?
Locketz said yes, even as some community members approached Kaplan with confusion.
“Most of the people I know…have seen it, and some said, ‘Why is Bet Shalom doing this?’ And I said, well, it was actually my idea, and it was because I thought maybe there are other people out there like me,” she said.
“They’ve heard about [the documentary] and they go, ‘Oh, you know, there’s so much garbage going on. I really don’t want to see this. I know it was bad. I don’t need to hear anymore, to see anymore.’”
Watching with a supportive group would be a way to address some of that trepidation. So on the evening of July 9, roughly 30 people – including some not affiliated with Bet Shalom – gathered at the back of the synagogue’s sanctuary to watch “Screams Before Silence.”
The documentary, as expected, is a difficult watch. It shows footage of destruction from the southern Israeli communities invaded by Hamas, when roughly 1,200 people were killed and 250 taken hostage back to Gaza. The opening montage includes blood stains next to a child’s bed, burned out cars stacked together, and fire-damaged houses torn up with bullet holes and explosions.
Sandberg toured one of those homes, on Kibbutz Kfar Azza, with Agam Goldstein Almog. Goldstein Almog had been taken hostage by Hamas, along with her mother and two younger brothers, while her father and older sister were murdered. Now, she was back at the scene of this terrible day: her family home.
“Are you ok,” Sandberg asked Goldstein Almog as they entered the house. “I’m trying to be ok,” she responded.
Goldstein Almog recalled seeing her father shot, and his last breaths as he lay on the floor. Within minutes of being taken hostage, there was already a video of the family being driven into Gaza – a hallmark of how openly Hamas celebrated and publicized its attack across social media.
Goldstein Almog and her family were released during the November Israel-Hamas ceasefire. But for roughly 50 days, she, along with other female hostages, endured threats of sexual assault and a variety of forceful sexual advances by the Hamas terrorists that held them captive.
Amit Soussana, another former hostage, told how she was sexually assaulted at gunpoint after trying desperately to fake her period long enough to prevent anyone from taking advantage of her.
Much of the documentary also focuses on the Nova Music Festival, where roughly 360 participants were massacred. But before they were murdered, many of the women were sexually assaulted, raped, and mutilated.
One survivor of the festival spoke of hiding in a trailer with friends, hearing what Hamas terrorists all around them were doing. From the trailer she heard a woman screaming to stop. “There’s no way that women will scream that way for so long” if it isn’t sexual violence, the survivor said. She heard many screams from many women – then silence after gunshots that executed the women.
The trauma is still clearly visible. Another survivor, walking in the area of the Nova Festival – now a memorial ground to those who were killed – was telling her story of Oct. 7 when, in the distance, there was a loud boom. In an instant, she started crying into the shoulder of one of the documentary producers. “I can’t,” she said, clearly terrified.
Sandberg also spoke with volunteers from ZAKA, the Israeli organization that gathers the bodies of people killed during terror attacks and helps prepare them for burial.
The volunteers told of seeing people mutilated, burned, limbs and breasts cut off. Many women were naked, with clothes ripped off, and clear signs of rape and torture – including at least one instance in which nails were driven into one woman’s genitals. “What more can you do to someone,” one volunteer said.
One United Nations official, interviewed for the documentary, succinctly explained why this kind of sexual violence was so prized by Hamas and targeted against Israelis.
“When the body of the woman is violated, it symbolizes the body of the whole nation,” she said.
There is much, much more in the nearly hour-long documentary. Toward the end, Sandberg gives a message that echoes the post-Holocaust rallying cry: That the documentary is an important part of making sure the world doesn’t forget these crimes.
While laser focused on the evidence of sexual violence, the documentary does steer clear of the wider picture that survivors and former hostages now face. Nova festival survivors recently alleged to a Knesset committee that the Israeli government is abandoning them, making it difficult to access help and trauma support.
A coalition made up of families of survivors, hostages, and those killed on Oct. 7 also created a civil commission to investigate the Israeli government’s failure to protect them on Oct. 7. The coalition felt the need to do their own investigation – nine months after the Hamas attack – because Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has so far refused to make an official government inquiry.
Perhaps the Israeli government’s role in Oct. 7, and its treatment of survivors, is a subject for a later documentary. This one, after all, is firmly about addressing widespread denialism – compared by many to Holocaust denialism – about Oct. 7 and the atrocities Hamas committed against Israelis.
After the documentary screening, the group had a brief discussion, sharing their initial reactions and emotions to the film.
Gayle Kaplan encouraged the group at Bet Shalom to take some kind of action, like contacting lawmakers and politicians to make sure they don’t forget about Oct. 7 and the hostages still in Hamas captivity.
“Part of me is feeling sick, because I think of what those women were going through,” Kaplan said. “We have to take action. And even if it doesn’t seem that our politicians are listening to us, I know they count…it’s important to keep telling them that we have not forgotten and we are not silent.”
But some people, like David Burton, struggle with whether such action can actually help.
“How is [this situation] going to get fixed?” Burton said. “What is going to make the Israelis and the Palestinians live on that land together? I just don’t know.”
Writing letters to, say, Amy Klobuchar doesn’t feel particularly useful when she has next to no input on the Israel-Hamas war or prospects for Israeli-Palestinian peace.
“I can write a letter to politicians to say, ‘We need the State of Israel to exist, okay, and please [address] that,” Burton said. But “I feel a little skeptical that it’s going to help…because I don’t know what the answer is” to the conflict.
Still, Burton found it a powerful and deeply sad experience to watch “Screams Before Silence,” and plans to talk about the documentary with his friends.
“It’s a very moving thing to listen to the people who survived, and let them tell their stories,” he said. “It’s really just disheartening, to get a feel for what it was like [on Oct. 7].”
