US VP: I fear testimony on Hamas sexual violence will increase as more hostages freed
White House hosts event to combat denial of Hamas atrocities, screening ex-Facebook COO’s film; ex-captive who disclosed abuse tells attendees she can’t recover until all hostages freed
US Vice President Kamala Harris expressed her concern Monday that testimony on Hamas’s use of sexual violence will pile up when additional hostages are released.
Harris made the comment at a White House event marking International Day for the Elimination of Sexual Violence in Conflict. The vice president was joined by Amit Soussana, the first released hostage to come forward about the sexual abuse she endured during her captivity, and former Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, who screened her film about this aspect of Hamas’s October 7 onslaught.
“We cannot look away and we will not be silent,” Harris said ahead of the screening of “Screams Without Words” to a room packed with representatives of women’s and human rights groups. “My heart breaks for all these survivors and their families and for all the pain and suffering from the past eight months in Israel and in Gaza.”
Sandberg produced the film to counter denialism of sexual violence that took place on October 7, when Hamas terrorists massacred more than 1,200 people in Israel and took 251 hostage into Gaza.
“Some pretty mainstream people are either ignoring or worse denying this happened,” Sandberg told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency after the screening. “So this aspect, I think, gets to the heart of what people need to believe to understand what happened and what this kind of terror really is.”
“Being in captivity means having no control over your mind, body or soul,” Soussana said in her remarks. “You have absolutely no control over what happens to you. All your basic human rights are taken from you. Even your feelings are completely controlled by someone else.”
“The sexual assault I experienced should never happen to any human being under any circumstances. No one should ever be sexually violated, and there are no justifying circumstances for these crimes,” she said.
Soussana seemed to want to reassure the audience she was in recovery. “I don’t see myself as a victim. I am a strong, independent woman, and no one can change that,” she said, adding, “It will always be a part of my story, but in time the trauma will subside.”
She later acknowledged, though, that her full recovery was contingent on the release of the remaining 120 hostages, expressing hope that Israel and Hamas would agree to the hostage release-ceasefire proposal laid out by US President Joe Biden last month.
“When I was in Gaza during the first days of the war, I saw President Biden’s plane landing in Israel. It gave me such hope and strengthened me knowing that Israel’s best friend was coming to our aid,” Soussana said.
Harris also called on Hamas to accept the proposal but admitted her fear that testimonies on Hamas sexual violence “will only increase as more hostages are released.”
Harris framed the event as part of an initiative she is spearheading to raise awareness about conflict-related sexual violence. A panel of speakers on experts on sexual violence spoke that included Nadia Murad, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate who is a survivor of the Islamic State’s genocide of the Yazidi people.
But the conflict that seemed to receive the most focus in Harris’s remarks was the Israel-Hamas war.
“In the days after October 7, I saw images of bloodied Israeli women abducted… Hamas committed rape and gang rape at the Nova music festival, and women’s bodies were found naked from the waist down, hands tied behind their back[s] and shot in the head.”
In an apparent indirect reference to allegations of sexual violence perpetrated against Palestinian terror suspects by Israeli security forces — charges Israel has denied — Harris said, “We are deeply concerned by all reports of sexual violence and degradation, and we mourn every innocent life lost in this conflict.”
Soussana, who met privately with Harris before the event, told the crowd, “If someone had told me a few months ago while I was sitting in a dark room in Gaza tied up by my ankle and unable to move that I would be standing here today before you all, I would have thought that they were out of their mind.”
