The Horrible, Unspoken Truth About October 7 — Terrorism Works

I had been meaning to watch Sheryl Sandberg’s film about the events of October 7th, Screams Before Silence, ever since it came out on YouTube roughly two weeks ago. It has taken me those two weeks to muster the courage and will to endure what I knew would be a painful and harrowing 57 minutes.

I have now watched the film. It was, indeed, painful and harrowing. Not because it provided information I didn’t already know; I knew that on October 7th, Hamas terrorists murdered and raped and mutilated (sometimes in that order) hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of Israeli men, women and children. But hearing about it directly from the mouths of those who witnessed and experienced it was absolutely gut-wrenching.

Hearing a young girl tell of having to step over the body of her father, who had just been murdered, as the family was led out of their safe-room by kidnappers, only to have her young sister shot in the face and killed as well, because she kept fainting, thus inconveniencing the kidnappers, is something I don’t think I will ever forget.

Sandberg’s focus, however, is not the murders of the fathers and children, but rather the rapes and sexual assaults of the women. And as horrific as the individual stories are, perhaps even more shocking is the picture the film paints of the degree to which these rapes and sexual assaults were not spontaneous acts of barbarity. They were planned and orchestrated.

At one point, Sandberg interviews Shari Mendes, an IDF reservist at the October 7th military morgue who helped process the hundreds of body bags that came in. As Mendes describes the evidence of sexual violence she discovered in so many of those body bags, Sandberg asks: “Did this feel systematic to you?”

Mendes replies: “Yes, it did seem systematic, to use sexual violence as a weapon of war. I can’t imagine why anyone in the world would have a reason to shoot a woman in the vagina or in the breast — a deliberate genital mutilation of this specific population of women.”

Professor Ruth Halperin-Kaddari, a former Vice-President of the UN Committee on Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, tells Sandberg: “The bodies whose breasts were cut were found in several other locations. That could not have been unless it was premeditated and preconceived by Hamas themselves.”

Dr. Cochav Elkayam-Levy, head of the Civil Commission on Oct. 7th Crimes by Hamas against Women and Children, further tells Sandberg: “It wasn’t incidental, it wasn’t just happening. They learned, they did their homework. This is kind of a pattern that we’re seeing, that it’s not only sexual abuse, but it’s sexual abuse in its worst form. It’s like they wanted to inflict pain in the cruelest manner possible.”

Sandberg follows up, asking Professor Halperin-Kaddari why Hamas would use sexual violence “as part of their remit for this attack?” The Professor answers: “Using sexual violence as a tool of war, of weaponizing women, sadly is [as] old as the history of humanity. Because when the body of the woman is violated, it symbolizes the body of the whole nation.”

It is possible that this is precisely the explanation for why Hamas undertook a raid of rape and mutilation with a brutality more consistent with the tactics of Genghis Khan than of any modern army. It is possible that the depth of their hatred of Jews, coupled with a religious fervor, resulted in a desire to inflict as much pain, not just physically but emotionally, on the Israeli populace as they could. They clearly thought using sexual violence to “weaponize women” would help achieve that goal.

But as I watched Screams Before Silence this week, in the context of more recent news — the widespread campus protests, the Biden administration stopping military aid to Israel — I was struck by a disturbing thought: the actions of Hamas on October 7th worked.

They worked not just in terms of inflicting pain upon their enemies, but in terms of leading to tangible public relations and geopolitical gains.

It was the very brutality of the attack on October 7th that resulted in the massive scale of Israel’s response, and it is the scale of Israel’s response that has resulted in unprecedented pro-Palestinian (and even pro-Hamas) protests on college campuses and throughout the United States and Europe. Protests of this magnitude have never occurred in the history of the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

It is also the scale of Israel’s response that has driven a wedge between Israel and the US — as reflected in the US failing to veto a UN ceasefire resolution biased against Israel, in Biden halting military aid, and in the recent Biden administration report making the preposterous claim that Israel had likely violated international law during the Gaza war.

Further, it is clear that there is now more pressure on Israel from the US and the international community for a two-state solution than there has been for decades. This would also qualify as a major victory for Hamas, were it not for the fact that Hamas opposes a two-state solution. Still, if history is a guide, the pressure will all be directed at Israel to make concessions, not at the Palestinians, so in that sense, it very much is a Hamas victory.

In order for Hamas to reap the rewards for their October 7th atrocities, there was one thing they counted on in addition to the scale of Israel’s response — they counted on the equally predictable anti-Israel bias of the UN, most of the Western press, and most of the Western leaders. Everyone played their part in a very predictable manner.

I say predictable, because it is not new. Yasser Arafat figured out the formula long ago: commit terrorist attacks, then wait for Israel’s response to prompt the West to force concessions on Israel, not the Palestinians. Hamas just took it to another level.

What the Western press and political leaders don’t seem to appreciate — or more likely, don’t seem to care about — is that by rewarding Hamas for October 7th, they reinforce the notion that terrorism works. As every economist (and every parent) knows, when you reward a behavior, you will get more of it. And so, rather than breaking the cycle of violence, the appeasement of Iran and Hamas only perpetuates it.

I can anticipate an argument that some might have at this point: “If Hamas committed such barbaric atrocities in order to provoke an extreme response by Israel, then wouldn’t Israel have been wiser not to have made such a response? Couldn’t Israel have won by responding in a limited fashion and leaving Hamas looking like the bad guy?”

My answer to that argument is: watch just 15 minutes of Sheryl Sandberg’s film, and then see if you can say that Israel’s response was excessive. Furthermore, Hamas has promised to repeat October 7th again and again and again. No nation could continue to exist with such a threat hanging over its head. Israel has no choice but to finish the job of destroying Hamas, whatever the cost in terms of its international reputation or relationship with the US.

And this is the diabolical genius of what Hamas did on October 7th. It worked. But only because the Western leaders, the Western press, and college students are all playing their parts. To those who frustratedly decry the never ending cycle of violence in the Middle East — terrorism followed by reprisal followed by terrorism followed by reprisal — I’d like to suggest a solution that has yet to be tried: stop rewarding terrorism and perhaps we’ll get a lot less of it.

Michael Kaplan is a TV writer-producer, playwright, and children’s book author. For his TV work, he has been nominated for four Emmy Awards, winning one.

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