Sisters

LA is drowning in warrior women this weekend. And tonight while I attended Sheryl Sandberg’s LA screening of her documentary Screams Before Silence at the Museum of Tolerance, there was one question in the film that will stick with me for as long as I shall live. Why did Hamas use systemic acts of sexual violence as a tool of war on October 7 (and since upon the hostages in captivity)? The answer had me crying tears of rage, once more:

To brutalise the women in this way is to attack the very soul of a nation.

Since October 7, it has been women who have led us in an existential war for our survival. So many of whom I have had the privilege and honor of meeting and working with. Female police officers. Female soldiers. Female intelligence agents. Female lawyers. Female journalists and war reporters. Female activists. Female voices. As I watched the documentary, I saw women on-screen that I have interviewed, hugged, written about, and whose names I know before they are even introduced. Like family. And I saw many other women too. Some of whom I will never meet. But whose images and names and faces became those I bore witness to and wrote about since October 7.

In the above photo, this Scottish Jew stands tall next to (from left) Dr Cochav-Elkayam-Levi, Chair of the Civil Commission on October 7th Crimes by Hamas. Cochav has become a dear friend and has worked tirelessly for the last 11 months finding her calling to bring this conversation, and all of the evidence and survivor testimonies to international bodies around the world. To her right is Natasha Hausdorff, British barrister and international law expert, who you will know from her flawless appearances schooling various reporters on BBC and Sky News since last October. Then we have Emily Schrader, one of the most prolific war correspondents and journalists working in Israeli media today. On my right is one of my best friends, Eden Cohen, who is an editor and journalist, and the owner of breaking news outlet A Wider Frame. Together, with these sisters of mine, we have dedicated every spare moment of the last year to gathering the truth, and with fang and claw imparting it upon a reluctant, hostile and hateful world.

“This has become the most important work of my life,” said Sheryl Sandberg, as she took to the stage of the auditorium tonight. We need inifinitely more Sheryls but we are so lucky to have her. “No matter what,” she said, “we must all condemn the sexual violence of October 7.”

Sandberg could not hold back tears in the presentation of the film or in the Q&A afterwards. Her work on this film has been her calling, and it should be gripping the entire world. It is a collective effort to share it and impart the discomfort on our friends and neighbors. We need all hands on deck. “We cannot make the unacceptable acceptable,” said Sandberg.

Earlier this week, I met with Natasha Hausdorff and we shared some of our memories of the last year. I recalled that on October 6 at 10.20pm, LA time, the red alerts blew up my phone. I was alone on Shabbat on the couch, and I knew that something was wrong. I instantly wrote a post here that Israel was under attack. I was up all night. Given my huge Instagram following, I was personally receiving distress calls in my direct messages from Israelis in the South. They were trapped and desperate, sending frantic voice messages. That desperate they were reaching out to a person with an Instagram account thousands of miles away. I don’t know if those people survived. One friend of Shani Louk’s identified her disfigured body on the back of the Hamas pick-up truck, sent me a photo of her, and said: That is my friend Shani Louk. It must have been the middle of the night, and that was the first time I had to run to throw up. I remember seeing the video of Na’ama Levy with bloodied pants being bundled into the Jeep by a Hamas terrorist, her achilles tendon slashed, her face a mess of hair and blood. I remember it all. And I was up all night chaotically tracking information and posting as much as I could, but I couldn’t think straight, and I couldn’t compute the full extent of what was going on. It was hell. I went out the next morning after being awake all night, and I remember walking in Hollywood, pulling up Twitter, and reading a tweet about many, many women being taken from near Sderot and raped.

I saw that word: raped.

I knew in my body that women had been raped, but I had not arrived there yet in my mind. I hadn’t allowed my brain to reach that destination yet. Because that was the unthinkable. That was more than massacre. That was more than murder. That was torture. That was sadism. That was defiling. That was the annihilation of a person’s neshama. And I saw that tweet, and I thought about women alive. Alive. In the hands of Hamas. Who could do anything they wanted with them. And I dropped to my knees on an empty street and I let out a wail, like an animal. Hurt, angry, terrified, helpless, hopeless, and in absolute recognition of the genocide that Hamas undertook on October 7. That was the moment I comprehended the evil that breached our borders. The failure to protect the Jewish people. The broken promise of never again.

[If you are nervous of being triggered or traumatized skip this next paragraph]

In Screams Before Silence (which is available on YouTube), you will learn about how Hamas committed unspeakably horrific sexual crimes against women and girls on October 7. You will hear unbearable testimony from the first responders who found dismembered bodies, strewn across expanses. Hands. Limbs. Ears cut off. Breasts. Women who had been shot in the face so many times so as to become unrecognizable. In Re’im, where Nova festival took place, the festival goers ran through the woods. I have stood in those woods among those trees, and had shivers go down my legs amid the stillness, imagining the horror that took place in those killing fields. The responders found thirty women naked and tied up around the trees, shot in the neck after being gang-raped, metallic objects placed in their genitals. Women left tied up to their beds in their homes in kibbutzim, legs spread, naked.

**

The sexual violence was systemic. It was preconceived. It was planned. It was not for pleasure but for humiliation. To cause maximum pain. To totally and utterly terrorise.

In the film you see brave survivors speak words to the indesribable, talking through what they witnessed and endured on October 7. We also hear from women who have returned from Hamas captivity, and we are crucially aware that there remain women in Hamas captivity who are experiencing the same, or worse. Living with their rapists, in constant fear every single moment. “They do whatever they want” were words that kept repeating from the mouths of witnesses and survivors. Hamas took ultimate power over the bodies of innocents. You see men who have spent lifetimes as first responders break down from their recollections, having seen things nobody should ever see, or have to understand. The film does not show the graphic images, out of respect for the families. But you don’t need to see the images. The testimony is enough. And I say that, having seen some of those images.

We will never know the extent of it. We will never know who screamed before they became silent. But I’m telling you this as loud as I can: the silence of women around the world who pretend they care about women, and specifically who pretend that they represent and advocate for sexual abuse and assault survivors, is not only a betrayal of us, it is an undeniable evil that lives, breathes and is rewarded in this world.

[Click here to watch the documentary]

Women like Cochav and Natasha, below, who I have come to know over the course of the last year are dedicating their lives to annihilating this poisoned well of falsehoods and conspiracy fantasy; one that has once again gripped the world and resulted in a total denial of the humanity and reality of the Jewish people, and of Jewish victims of rape. I too have found purpose. My purpose is this. It’s the words I can put to page. These words are how I am overcoming everything I have witnessed, everything I have bared, everything I have smelled and heard and seen. And had to - against all natural instinct - comprehend as our reality.

Earlier this weekend, I had contact with the Yerushalmi family and their team after Maya and Shani’s appearance on CNN with Anderson Cooper on Friday night. Having lost their sister Eden, who was murdered in the tunnels of Rafah only weeks ago, the sisters appeared with great fortitude from their home in Israel on the broadcast, to not just tell Eden’s story, but to cry out for the remaining women, children and men still held in captivity in Gaza. We cannot allow them to meet the same fate as Eden. Watch them, please, and share their testimony:

Are you a sister to someone in blood, or in the chosen circumstances of life? Are you a mother or a brother or a father? Sisterhood is what I hold most dear. Hear the courage of Maya and Shani. Their sister Eden survived eleven months in the tunnels of Rafah in Gaza. Eden, who was bartending at a music festival, had her life stolen by a terrorist organization. The Yerushalmi family have been a pillar of strength for almost a year, not just for Eden but for every single family who have relatives kidnapped in Gaza. The Yerushalmi family will not promote their own GoFundMe page, but if you feel inclined to help this family get back on their feet after a year of relentless advocacy that has met unspeakable tragedy, please click here. The page is official and was initiated by another sister and friend – Ofir Caspi, formerly from the Hostage Forum – who has been with the Yerushalmi family every step of the way, and whose bravery also knows no limits.

At the very least please share their clip and their story so that they can begin to heal from this unbearable trauma, and so that we can do our part to help save the lives of many others who are still alive and trapped in Gaza. To bring back Romi. Emily. Na’ama. Liri. The names that have been in my brain for almost a year. We must apply pressure on Hamas to release them. It costs nothing for people to use their voice to save these innocent civilians from the murderous terror regime of Hamas. It costs nothing but it will cost them their dignity and their righteousness to remain silent.

Yesterday, The IDF announced that the two terrorists who held and murdered Eden, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Ori Danino, Alex Lobanov, Carmel Gat, and Almog Sarusi have been eliminated.

We will get every single last one of them.

This week I saw “humanitarians” outraged that Israel took out Hezbollahh terrorists in Lebanon in a precision strike. The same people who have never said a word about women and children being raped and murdered and starved in captivity. Who have never even dared to watch a documentary like Screams Before Silence. I am so ashamed of them. In Screams Before Silence you see women from the Red Cross handing back female hostages in the ceasefire exchange last November, like Nazi assailants. In their blank faces you see zero compassion or empathy for the victims of terror that they are now passing back to Israeli forces for safe passage home. You actually see contempt.

Some poetic justice, however. In my post last week, I imagined who was behind the beeper explosions, aka Operation Below The Belt. And I was correct. It’s official. The Mossad agent who came up with the idea of blowing up thousands of terrorists via their electronic devices in their pockets was a woman.

Oh.

No it wasn’t me. I have an alibi…