Norman G. Finkelstein received his doctorate from the Department of Politics at Princeton University. For many years he taught political theory and the Israel-Palestine conflict. His books have been translated into some fifty foreign editions. They include Gaza: An Inquest into Its Martyrdom; I’ll Burn That Bridge When I Get to It: Heretical Thoughts on Identity Politics, Cancel Culture, and Academic Freedom; Knowing Too Much: Why the American Jewish Romance with Israel Is Coming to an End; What Gandhi Says: About Nonviolence, Resistance, and Courage; Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History; and The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering.

It might be wondered why Israel feverishly propagated the myth of mass rape on 7 October. On the one hand, even without this specious allegation, the UN Commission’s report left little room for doubt that Palestinian armed groups committed numerous war crimes on 7 October. On the other hand, it wasn’t as if Israeli Jews required the artificial stimulus of Amalek’s sexual rapacity to incite their genocidal rampage in Gaza. However, the target audience of Israeli hasbara has ever been US public opinion. There, the rape allegation fell on fertile ground. It resonated with both “family-values” conservatives and #MeToo liberals, while the phantasmagoria of Jewish maidens being violated by “sand niggers” sent shivers of revulsion up and down the spines of Jews and WASPs alike. Enter billionaire Jewish supremacist Sheryl Sandberg.

Channeling her muse, Leni Riefenstahl, the former Meta chief executive rolled out Screams before Silence in April 2024, a “documentary” luridly memorializing Hamas mass rape on 7 October and starring Sandberg herself as she alternately preened and emoted on cue, breaking down in tears, letting out anguished sighs, and exclaiming “Oh my god.” (Memo to Sandberg: when doing a documentary on rape, Gucci heels is a bad look; try Uggs.) The UN Commission of Inquiry “was not able to reach a definitive conclusion with regards to rape” on 7 October, while Human Rights Watch stated that it “did not document any cases of rape.” But Sandberg knows better. She’s certain that Hamas perpetrated mass rape. Indeed, she’s so convinced that she produced an hour-long documentary allegedly chronicling it.

Sandberg studied economics at Harvard and was ranked the top student in her department. She must surely be sensitive to evidentiary standards, and so must be aware that the case assembled by her possessed the probative value of gefilte fish. Neither the UN Commission nor HRW was persuaded by tearful and tremulous “eyewitness” accounts uncorroborated by any survivor testimony or any digital evidence or any forensic evidence. In a report published well after Sandberg released her documentary, Amnesty was still reporting that it “has neither obtained nor heard of images or video footage depicting acts of sexual violence,” and that, fully fourteen months after 7 October, it “has so far been able to speak to only one person who gave an account of surviving sexual violence and no direct witnesses.”

It doesn’t surprise that Israelis, these “eyewitnesses,” are convinced that they “saw” mass rape. (An Israeli investigative team would later reveal that one of Sandberg’s star witnesses was a serial liar.) They are also convinced, and would, if need be, swear to and by it, that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), in which each and all of them served, is “the most moral army in the world.” A September 2024 poll found that 83 percent of Israeli Jews awarded the IDF “high marks” for its “moral conduct” in wartime even as a distinguished member of the UN Commission of Inquiry, after scrutinizing the evidence, concluded that the IDF was “one of the most criminal armies in the world.”

If raison d’etat recommended it, for the sake of their state, their army, the army in which each and all of them served and, individually and collectively, committed criminal acts attendant on maintaining the criminal occupation; for the sake of their people, the Chosen People, and the compounding familial bond forged by having all served and committed crimes together in the IDF—thus, they would be simultaneously defending their own integrity (if one dares employ this word in this context) as they defended the others’ immaculateness—for the sake of all this, they can be made, or will pretend, to believe any self-serving lie, the “self” being constituted by each in their individual and collective capacities. If not a nation of murderers, then a nation of war criminals: that is the root cause from which springs the relentless, delusional lies and self-deceptions of Israeli society—it is a defense mechanism not just in the psychological and moral but also the legal sense. The social solidarity made palpable in Israeli society is, at bottom, the esprit de corps of a death cult.

As Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wages in broad daylight an outright war of extermination, as the genocide descends from one diabolical nadir to the next, the corpses keep piling up and his popularity soars as Israelis relish every moment of it. He dishes out what they covet; and whenever the occasion warrants it, they intercede to deceive the world and themselves. So, yes, these Israeli “eyewitnesses” “saw” mass rape on 7 October. But why was the American-born and -bred Sandberg so persuaded—or, out of fidelity to The (Zionist) Cause, did she reckon rational proof beside the point?

Sheryl Sandberg’s US audience was already primed as she “leaned in” on the primordial trope of the feral, dark-hued rapist. She reacts tearfully aghast as an Israeli first-responder shows her an iPhone photograph of nails driven into a female victim’s groin. But it turns out that the photographic evidence “is definitely of poor quality” so didn’t prove this. One alleged victim recalled on camera that her Hamas assailant “was huffing and breathing heavily and he had a face like a monster, a beast.” Pity that King Kong wasn’t around to do a cameo. If there were an Oscar for Best Dramatic Performance by a Race-Supremacist Nation, Israel would win hands down every year.

Just as D. W. Griffiths’ Birth of a Nation incited lynchings in the former Confederacy as it glorified the Ku Klux Klan protecting virginal white womanhood from primal Black predators, so this triumph of Sandberg’s will—“the most important work of my life”—galvanized American support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza by manipulating our psychic demons. Birth of a Nation was the first motion picture screened in the White House at the behest of notoriously racist President Woodrow Wilson while, the stars being perfectly aligned, Sandberg’s film was screened in President Joe Biden’s White House. If this film marked her crowning achievement, then it must be said that Sandberg’s was a squandered life. For better or worse, Birth of a Nation and Triumph of the Will were cinematic milestones, whereas Sandberg’s magnum opus, Screams before Silence, amounted or reduced to Shlock before Scheiss.

It is impossible to prove a negative, so it cannot be said with certainty that no rapes occurred on 7 October. In the innermost recesses of a remote subterranean cave, a Gazan ruffian might have perpetrated a rape. But it can be said with certainty that Hamas did not commit mass rape as a weapon of war on 7 October. Sandberg’s either a colossal dupe—which, in light of her impressive academic credentials and professional pedigree, seems most unlikely—or she’s a shameless and shameful liar. In either case, she was de facto an enabler of genocide. How could Sandberg rationalize this? She’s a true-believer. There’s the transcendent Cause, and there are the mundane facts: the fleeting truth of the latter must cede place to the ultimate Truth of the former. The fact that Hamas didn’t commit mass rape be damned, Am Yisrael Chai!

 Norman G. Finkelstein received his doctorate from the Department of Politics at Princeton University. For many years he taught political theory and the Israel-Palestine conflict. His books have been translated into some fifty foreign editions. They include Gaza: An Inquest into Its Martyrdom; I’ll Burn That Bridge When I Get to It: Heretical Thoughts on Identity Politics, Cancel Culture, and Academic Freedom; Knowing Too Much: Why the American Jewish Romance with Israel Is Coming to an End; What Gandhi Says: About Nonviolence, Resistance, and Courage; Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History; and The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering.

It might be wondered why Israel feverishly propagated the myth of mass rape on 7 October. On the one hand, even without this specious allegation, the UN Commission’s report left little room for doubt that Palestinian armed groups committed numerous war crimes on 7 October. On the other hand, it wasn’t as if Israeli Jews required the artificial stimulus of Amalek’s sexual rapacity to incite their genocidal rampage in Gaza. However, the target audience of Israeli hasbara has ever been US public opinion. There, the rape allegation fell on fertile ground. It resonated with both “family-values” conservatives and #MeToo liberals, while the phantasmagoria of Jewish maidens being violated by “sand niggers” sent shivers of revulsion up and down the spines of Jews and WASPs alike. Enter billionaire Jewish supremacist Sheryl Sandberg.

Channeling her muse, Leni Riefenstahl, the former Meta chief executive rolled out Screams before Silence in April 2024, a “documentary” luridly memorializing Hamas mass rape on 7 October and starring Sandberg herself as she alternately preened and emoted on cue, breaking down in tears, letting out anguished sighs, and exclaiming “Oh my god.” (Memo to Sandberg: when doing a documentary on rape, Gucci heels is a bad look; try Uggs.) The UN Commission of Inquiry “was not able to reach a definitive conclusion with regards to rape” on 7 October, while Human Rights Watch stated that it “did not document any cases of rape.” But Sandberg knows better. She’s certain that Hamas perpetrated mass rape. Indeed, she’s so convinced that she produced an hour-long documentary allegedly chronicling it.

Sandberg studied economics at Harvard and was ranked the top student in her department. She must surely be sensitive to evidentiary standards, and so must be aware that the case assembled by her possessed the probative value of gefilte fish. Neither the UN Commission nor HRW was persuaded by tearful and tremulous “eyewitness” accounts uncorroborated by any survivor testimony or any digital evidence or any forensic evidence. In a report published well after Sandberg released her documentary, Amnesty was still reporting that it “has neither obtained nor heard of images or video footage depicting acts of sexual violence,” and that, fully fourteen months after 7 October, it “has so far been able to speak to only one person who gave an account of surviving sexual violence and no direct witnesses.”

It doesn’t surprise that Israelis, these “eyewitnesses,” are convinced that they “saw” mass rape. (An Israeli investigative team would later reveal that one of Sandberg’s star witnesses was a serial liar.) They are also convinced, and would, if need be, swear to and by it, that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), in which each and all of them served, is “the most moral army in the world.” A September 2024 poll found that 83 percent of Israeli Jews awarded the IDF “high marks” for its “moral conduct” in wartime even as a distinguished member of the UN Commission of Inquiry, after scrutinizing the evidence, concluded that the IDF was “one of the most criminal armies in the world.”

If raison d’etat recommended it, for the sake of their state, their army, the army in which each and all of them served and, individually and collectively, committed criminal acts attendant on maintaining the criminal occupation; for the sake of their people, the Chosen People, and the compounding familial bond forged by having all served and committed crimes together in the IDF—thus, they would be simultaneously defending their own integrity (if one dares employ this word in this context) as they defended the others’ immaculateness—for the sake of all this, they can be made, or will pretend, to believe any self-serving lie, the “self” being constituted by each in their individual and collective capacities. If not a nation of murderers, then a nation of war criminals: that is the root cause from which springs the relentless, delusional lies and self-deceptions of Israeli society—it is a defense mechanism not just in the psychological and moral but also the legal sense. The social solidarity made palpable in Israeli society is, at bottom, the esprit de corps of a death cult.

As Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wages in broad daylight an outright war of extermination, as the genocide descends from one diabolical nadir to the next, the corpses keep piling up and his popularity soars as Israelis relish every moment of it. He dishes out what they covet; and whenever the occasion warrants it, they intercede to deceive the world and themselves. So, yes, these Israeli “eyewitnesses” “saw” mass rape on 7 October. But why was the American-born and -bred Sandberg so persuaded—or, out of fidelity to The (Zionist) Cause, did she reckon rational proof beside the point?

Sheryl Sandberg’s US audience was already primed as she “leaned in” on the primordial trope of the feral, dark-hued rapist. She reacts tearfully aghast as an Israeli first-responder shows her an iPhone photograph of nails driven into a female victim’s groin. But it turns out that the photographic evidence “is definitely of poor quality” so didn’t prove this. One alleged victim recalled on camera that her Hamas assailant “was huffing and breathing heavily and he had a face like a monster, a beast.” Pity that King Kong wasn’t around to do a cameo. If there were an Oscar for Best Dramatic Performance by a Race-Supremacist Nation, Israel would win hands down every year.

Just as D. W. Griffiths’ Birth of a Nation incited lynchings in the former Confederacy as it glorified the Ku Klux Klan protecting virginal white womanhood from primal Black predators, so this triumph of Sandberg’s will—“the most important work of my life”—galvanized American support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza by manipulating our psychic demons. Birth of a Nation was the first motion picture screened in the White House at the behest of notoriously racist President Woodrow Wilson while, the stars being perfectly aligned, Sandberg’s film was screened in President Joe Biden’s White House. If this film marked her crowning achievement, then it must be said that Sandberg’s was a squandered life. For better or worse, Birth of a Nation and Triumph of the Will were cinematic milestones, whereas Sandberg’s magnum opus, Screams before Silence, amounted or reduced to Shlock before Scheiss.

It is impossible to prove a negative, so it cannot be said with certainty that no rapes occurred on 7 October. In the innermost recesses of a remote subterranean cave, a Gazan ruffian might have perpetrated a rape. But it can be said with certainty that Hamas did not commit mass rape as a weapon of war on 7 October. Sandberg’s either a colossal dupe—which, in light of her impressive academic credentials and professional pedigree, seems most unlikely—or she’s a shameless and shameful liar. In either case, she was de facto an enabler of genocide. How could Sandberg rationalize this? She’s a true-believer. There’s the transcendent Cause, and there are the mundane facts: the fleeting truth of the latter must cede place to the ultimate Truth of the former. The fact that Hamas didn’t commit mass rape be damned, Am Yisrael Chai!