Former U.S. President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump urged his social-media followers on Tuesday to watch the film “Screams Before Silence,” which documents the sexual crimes committed by the terrorist organization Hamas on Oct. 7.
“The documentary ‘Screams Before Silence’ is incredibly difficult to watch because, sadly, it graphicly portrays the death and destruction that Hamas has unleashed. I urge people to support the documentary and watch, if able,” Trump wrote on his social-media platform, Truth Social, and on X.
The former president has remained firm in his commitment to Israel even as criticism of its Gaza operation grew. In a March interview with Israel Hayom, Trump said he supports Israel’s defensive war against Hamas and that he would have responded to the Oct. 7 attack in a very similar way.
In his post, Trump also demanded that “all hostages taken October 7 from Israel, and being held in Gaza, be released immediately, including eight Americans, and citizens from over twenty other countries, so that the war can come to an end. Peace through strength!”
The Documentary, “Screams before Silence,” is incredibly difficult to watch because, sadly, it graphicly portrays the Death and Destruction that Hamas has unleashed. I urge people to support the Documentary and watch, if able. We demand that all Hostages taken October 7th from… pic.twitter.com/SFEayJwkel
— Donald J. Trump Posts From His Truth Social (@TrumpDailyPosts) June 25, 2024
Despite the overwhelming evidence of sexual crimes committed by Hamas, Israel has faced an uphill battle convincing world bodies to take note.
Shelly Tal Meron, an Israeli lawmaker from the Yesh Atid Party, told JNS that “on Oct. 7, we had a lot of cases of sexual assault, mutilation, rape and different kinds of abuse. We also know that it’s happening right now in Gaza so to hear that people are even doubting it is outrageous.”
“There are a lot of bodies that had sharp objects in the women’s groins; they shot or cut off their intimate parts. We saw that this was a systematic way of Hamas terrorists harming these women,” Meron said.
Professor Ruth Halperin-Kaddari, founding director of the Rackman Center for the Advancement of the Status of Women at Bar-Ilan University’s Faculty of Law—and co-founder of the Dinah Project 7/10, which seeks justice for the victims of Hamas’s sexual crimes—told JNS that the victims’ testimonies she had heard, “from a legal point of view, led me to the conclusion that sexual violence on October 7 was used as a weapon of war.”
“We have the footage, the pictures taken at the scene, the testimonies of eyewitnesses and those of first responders who found all the bodies,” she added.
The documented incidents followed a pattern and were carried out in a similar fashion, she said. “This could not have happened unless there were directions, and unless it was a premeditated part of the plan of the attack of Oct. 7,” she said.
In January, Haim Otmazgin, a volunteer for Israel’s ZAKA Search and Rescue, a non-governmental first-responder group, confirmed the widespread nature of the sexual assaults on Oct. 7.
“One woman is cuffed, another one is stripped, another one has her body parts cut off. It’s like a series of pictures being repeated again and again. We saw the same things at [Kibbutz] Re’im and later in [other] kibbutzim,” he recounted to an Israeli parliamentary committee.
“We found a young girl, on the bed, clothes rolled up, shot in the head and her throat split. Her pants rolled down, without underwear on her. There are too many instances like these. … The images we saw tell a story that cannot be interpreted in any other way,” he added.