Sheryl Sandberg on October 7th attack: 'Rape is never resistance'

As we mentioned at the top of the hour, Andrea is traveling with Secretary of State Tony Blinken in the Middle East. Before she left, Andrea sat down with Sheryl Sandberg and talked with her about her new documentary. Just to note, parts of this conversation, this documentary, will be difficult. Watch. Rape as a weapon of war, most recently by Hamas against Israeli women during the October 7th attack, and against hostages since. Atrocities confirmed by an NBC News investigation, and now the State Department in a new report, as well as a focus by the United Nations thanks to women activists. And joining me now is Sheryl Sandberg, the founder of Lean In and the former COO of Meta. Platforms sent her new documentary, Screams Before Silence, including interviews with former women hostages in Gaza and survivors in Israel, returning to their homes for the first time since the massacre. Sheryl, I'm gonna play a clip from the documentary. Let's watch. There were 10 men around me. My instinct was just to fight, to do what I can. I was really scared that they're gonna rape me there and that they're gonna drag me through Gaza streets and parade my body around. I feared that more than being killed. I was chained for three weeks in Gaza. I was kept in a really dark room without being able to move. His name was Muhammad. He untied me. I knew that he's up to something. I knew that something bad is gonna happen. Tell me more about your conversation with Amit. She's so brave. I mean, Amit Sosanna was kidnapped to Gaza. You just saw the clip of her being kidnapped. She was held. She was chained in a room for weeks, and she was sexually assaulted by her captor, and she is telling her story now because there are still hostages there, and we know they're being sexually assaulted, too. The important thing to remember here, Andrea, is that most of the victims of this sexual assault are dead. They were killed on October 7th. In this documentary, in Brave People Like Amit, their voices are all we have to remember these victims and make sure this never happens again. I, last October, saw the IDF video that they have not released publicly, and I saw all of the evidence that the women in the kibbutzim had been raped, had been assaulted. They were naked. The positions they were in, it was very clear. These were dead women. So you have found live testimonies. That is what's so extraordinary about this, and brought them back to their homes. How difficult was that experience for them? How important was it? I think for the released hostages, I went with Shem and Agam back to their home where her husband, her father, and daughter were killed in front of them. They were taken to Gaza. And Agam, she's 18 years old. She, in this documentary, testifies that half the hostages that she met in captivity, some of whom were still there, were sexually assaulted and being sexually assaulted. In another part of the documentary, this amazing man, Rami, this guy's a hero. He's a private citizen. On October 7th, the sirens go off. He drove to the battleground with the terrorists there, saved hundreds of people. But I went with him to a forest. This huge man is sitting there amongst trees crying. And he said on these trees, there were woman after woman, naked, tied to the tree, leg spread, bloodied, clearly raped. And he was crying that he didn't get there in time to save them. And I think we are blind in this moment to what happened here. The politics of today are making us not realize that sexual violence is not okay. Rape is never resistance. And this is one thing, no matter what else you think should happen in the Middle East, we can all be united in standing against. I've been told, credibly, that some of the women still being held in Gaza are pregnant from these rapes. And how horrifying is that? I don't know that. I do know that woman after woman, after woman and men were raped, killed, killed and then raped, raped and then killed, brutally mutilated. Some of the pictures that I saw making this documentary, I'll never, ever be able to unsee. And it didn't happen to me, it happened to them. But people with nails in their groin, genital mutilation, and this happened over and over and over again at multiple locations. This was systematic. This is rape as a tool of war. And it is something that everyone should be firmly against, everyone. And we have been covering extensively the horrors, the atrocities in Gaza against civilians. This documentary, your reporting, does not change that. It doesn't negate any of that. So this is just another aspect of the hideous nature of this war on both sides. The title of the documentary is Screams Before Silence. So why do you think the international community as a whole has been so silent about these atrocities since you, until you and some other women went to the United Nations? These are crazy polarized time. And when people are polarized, they have one view and they want every single fact to fit into their narrative. What's happening in Gaza is awful. Any civilian life lost on any side is too many. None of us should want war. But even if you believe what happened on October 7th is resistance, and I don't, I wanna be clear, but even if you believe that, sexual violence is still not okay because rape is never resistance. And people have to be able to see the truth here. And if it doesn't neatly fit into your narrative, that's okay because things are not so black and white. And I think we have to recognize that until just 30 years ago, rape was just considered part of war. It's only been 30 years since Yugoslavia, Bosnia, the DRC, where rape started getting prosecuted as a war crime, as a crime against humanity. So in this moment, no matter what else we believe, we have to hold that and not turn a blind eye because if we backslide on rape, women all over the world lose. Right now, as we do this interview, this is happening. Ukraine, Sudan, Ethiopia, around the world. We cannot let the politics of today backslide on this critically important point. You've said that this is the most important work of your life. You've done a lot of work in public service and the corporate world, obviously in IT, but this is the most important work that you've done. Screams before silence. Yes, I believe it is because women's bodies need to be protected. Men's bodies need to be protected. Women should never be raped. Women should never be brutalized and neither should men. And we cannot let today's politics make us blind to that. I really hope people watch this documentary because you can hear it for yourself, from first responders, from released hostages. Just watch with an open mind so you can see what happens. And Sheryl Sandberg again. The documentary is Screams Before Silence. Sheryl Sandberg, thank you. Thank you. And you can watch the full documentary on YouTube. It's called Screams Before Silence.