US VP Harris to host White House screening of documentary on Hamas sexual violence on Oct 7

U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris will host a White House event on Monday that will partially screen the film, "Screams Before Silence," a documentary that explores the systematic sexual assaults and violence committed by Hamas terrorists against Israeli women on Oct. 7.

The vice president has become a powerful voice for women worldwide and is expected to address the issue of sexual violence against women in a war context.

Hamas’ unprecedented crimes against women included mass rape and genital mutilation.

The documentary was produced by American businesswoman Sheryl Sandberg, who is expected to attend the White House screening. The film will be supplemented with a panel discussion with survivors and various international experts.

“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,” Sandberg said.

“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,” she added.

Former Israeli hostage Amit Soussana is scheduled to speak about the trauma she experienced being sexually assaulted by a Hamas terrorist.

Most Israeli victims of Hamas’ atrocities have so far refrained from speaking publicly about their traumatic experiences. In March, Soussana became the first Israeli woman to speak publicly about how one of her Hamas captors assaulted her and threatened to kill her.

“He came towards me and shoved the gun at my forehead,” Soussana recalled. “Then he, with the gun pointed at me, forced me to commit a sexual act on him."

Hamas terrorists proudly documented their unprecedented crimes on Oct. 7 with body cameras. However, the terrorists later denied their activities. Israel countered this “Holocaust-denial phenomenon” by screening the videos to foreign press representatives.

In January, Pramila Patten, UN Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict, visited Israel to learn firsthand about the crimes committed on Oct. 7.

“I’m here for a week, I’m prepared to meet you in a safe and enabling environment and to listen to your stories, the world needs to know what really happened on October 7,” Patten said at the time.

In March, Patten's office released a report concluding that were “reasonable grounds to believe” that Hamas terrorists had perpetrated sexual assaults against Israeli women.

However, in April, the UN nevertheless excluded Hamas from its international sexual violence "black list" despite overwhelming evidence of Hamas’ crimes against women.

Foreign Minister Israel Katz said he was “disgusted” with the report's results and blasted UN Sec.-Gen. António Gutteres for turning the UN into "an extremely anti-Semitic and anti-Israel institution during his tenure, which will be remembered as the darkest in the organization’s history.”

“If the crimes of the Nazis had come up for debate, he [Guterres] would have refused to denounce them if it suited his political interests,” Katz added.