Remembering the Atrocities of Oct. 7th

Sheryl Sandberg's documentary about the 10/7/23 Hamas massacre of Israeli civilians and and my personal reflections on this somber day

It’s been one year since the world fell apart.

One year since Hamas terrorists from Gaza brutally attacked Israeli civilians at the Nova music festival and the nearby kibbutzim, unleashing a level of inhumane brutality on Jewish citizens that led to sexual assault, executions in the form of public hangings and shootings, and then more rapes, which eventually led to murders to quiet the screams of the women being raped. This is not including the public humiliation of the hostages then being paraded around Gaza to roaring and welcoming crowds.

This attack at the Nova Music Festival in the Negev and nearby kibbutzim led to 251 (Israeli men, women, and children) abducted and the murder of over 1200 people. It ranks third in the most fatalities of any terrorist attacks in the last 53 years. Israel is a country of 9 million people, which is roughly 0.12% of the world’s population. To appreciate the numbers below better, compare Israel’s 9 million to U.S. at 333 million and Iraq, at 44.5 million and those numbers below suddenly take on very different proportions.

In August, 6 hostages were executed by Hamas. One of those people was Hersh. We all felt like we knew him and cried for his family’s loss, but also the loss of a guy that oozed menschiness (translation: honor, integrity, goodness) from his entire being. All in all, the 10/7 attacks were the deadliest attack on Jewish people since the Holocaust and the largest attack on Israeli civilians in history.

Hersh Goldberg Polin, who died at age 23.

Screams Before Silence, a documentary just under 60 minutes available on YouTube, focuses on the aftermath of the October 7 attacks in Israel. Filmed four months after the massacre, it explores the devastated kibbutz and festival grounds, giving voice to the victims who can no longer speak for themselves. The film highlights the experiences of surviving women and children.

Sheryl Sandberg, an advocate for women known for her "Lean In" movement, produced this documentary in response to insufficient global reporting on these assaults. The biggest culprit and letdown in the days and months following the 10/7 attacks (and still) was and is the UN (United Nations) who finally admitted in March, 5 months after the attacks, after public scrutiny and outcry, that there was evidence of some sexual assault being perpetrated during the 10/7 attacks. [Vox] If you want more contextual understanding and first and second hand accounts, Screams Before Silence includes powerful testimonies from multiple women who were present at the massacre. To hear the question asked and answered by the majority, the thoughts running through these young women’s minds during the shooting rounds and rapes, were unimaginable, such as if it’s better to raped or murdered. Most responded that they’d prefer to be murdered than raped. Unfortunately for most women they were sexually assaulted and murdered. And in another interview, a survivor recounted a man pleading with a Hamas attacker to "leave her alone" (in Hebrew, "Azov otah") while his wife was being raped.

One particularly striking image shows Naama Levvy, a 20-year-old female soldier, emerging from a Hamas truck with visible facial injuries and blood stains in her crotch area. That image will stay with me. The documentary refrains from extremely graphic content, instead focusing on telling the victims' stories and seeking truth in the aftermath of the attacks. But make no mistake. 10/7 was about hurting Israel and Hamas abusing its women in all sorts of horrific ways, to achieve that end.

🎬 Watch the movie here: Screams Before Silence 📽️

Personal Reflections

In the days that followed 10/7, I remember spending too much time on Instagram and seeing the countless trolls spew their hate against “Zionism” and college students and individuals assert the right to annihilate Israel with their “from the river to the sea” chanting. Zionism, in its simplest form, is the right for the Jewish people to form their own state, something that was a necessary byproduct of WW2 and the Holocaust - that event that led to the state-organized, systematic extermination of 6 million European Jews by people that honestly don’t sound all that different from the social media trolls and campus protestors.

I adopted Israel in my late 20s through marriage, growing to love its people—my family and friends there. Unlike many American Jews, my family had few direct ties to Israel, save for a distant relative, the husband of my great aunt, who moved to Haifa after surviving the Holocaust. Unfortunately my great-aunt wasn’t as lucky. She was murdered during the Holocaust. In Jewish connections, we embrace even tenuous links, acutely aware of our diminished numbers post-Holocaust.

My grandparents on both sides emphasized tzedakah—righteousness or justice in practice. This principle of equitable charity guided their efforts to support Jewish immigrants in Israel, helping with college tuition and economic growth.

As I look to close out my thoughts, Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel's "Never Shall I Forget" resonates deeply. His powerful words about the Holocaust echo the unimaginable horrors of abduction and assault of October 7th, and the current terror in daily life of the Jewish Israeli people.

Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed.
Never shall I forget that smoke.
Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky.
Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith for ever.
Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live.
Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes.
Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live
as long as God Himself.
Never.

From German Jewish artist Charlotte Salomon, who was killed in the Holocaust, a final note, and one that is a solemn, yet hopeful reminder to the people of Israel:

May you never forget that [we] believe in you.

From a panel in “Life? or Theatre?” in which Daberlohn says to Charlotte, “May you never forget that I believe in you.” Courtesy the Jewish Historical Museum © Charlotte Salomon Foundation