Tali Biner spent seven hours hiding from Hamas killers in a small camper on the grounds of the Nova music festival on Oct. 7, 2023. She heard the screams of women being brutalized. When she finally emerged, she found naked bodies, young and old, lying on the ground. Now she has a message for New York City's incoming first lady, who apparently thinks the sexual violence Biner witnessed with her own ears and eyes was made up.
Biner, a former surgical nurse turned Oct. 7 activist, told The Post Friday from a bomb shelter in Israel that she was compelled to speak out after learning that Rama Duwaji, the wife of Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, had "liked" a February 2024 Instagram post by an anonymous pro-Palestine influencer questioning the validity of a New York Times report about sexually violent attacks by Hamas on civilians.
Duwaji, 28, who describes herself as a Syrian-American artist, also liked a celebratory Instagram post that shared images of the assault on the day of the attack itself.
Biner shared to The Post on Friday,
"My message to Mrs. Mamdani is simple: political narratives should never cloud your judgment when it comes to the facts of October 7th. Real people suffered, were raped and were killed."
Then, two words that carry the full weight of firsthand testimony: "I was there."
Biner recalls hearing blood-curdling screams of women from her hiding place. Some screams, she said, seemed to last 20 minutes. She knew what was happening.
"I knew beyond any doubt what was happening was not just torture, it was sexual violence."
She described what Hamas fighters did in explicit terms:
"They dismembered bodies and sexually violated women and men, including rape and the insertion of objects into their bodies."
Her next sentence was the simplest and most devastating: "These are facts."
What Biner described next should stop anyone cold. During those seven hours in hiding, she decided her own fate. Not whether she would escape. Whether she would let them take her alive.
"Deep down, I also knew that if they caught me, I would make sure that they kill me as soon as possible. I would never allow them to sexually violate me. That determination gave me clarity, focus, and the strength to survive, to bear witness, and to remember."
A 28-year-old woman at a music festival, bargaining with herself about the terms of her own death. That is the reality that Rama Duwaji apparently scrolled past on Instagram before tapping a heart on a post calling the whole thing a hoax.
It was Biner's testimony that inspired the title of Sheryl Sandberg's acclaimed film, "Screams Before Silence." Presidential candidate Nikki Haley toured the Nova Festival site with Biner in 2024. Two years later, Biner left nursing because of the trauma and has turned to singing and songwriting to heal. The screams haven't stopped for her.
This is where the contradictions pile up so high they become their own argument.
The same progressive ecosystem that built an entire political identity around "believe women" has spent two years running interference for documented, witnessed, and filmed sexual violence because the victims were Israeli and the perpetrators were Hamas. The same circles that will end a career over an unsubstantiated allegation from decades past will casually like a post calling mass rape a "hoax" when the victims don't fit the narrative.
Biner addressed this directly:
"Hearing people claim that the sexual violence of Oct. 7 was a 'hoax' is deeply painful and disturbing, especially when such claims come from a woman."
She went further, asking Duwaji to exercise the most basic act of empathy:
"I would expect any woman – and especially Mrs. Mamdani – to at least try to imagine. To close her eyes and picture evil people breaking into her home, her safe space, assaulting her and her husband, daring to sexually violate her in front of her family, murdering her children before her eyes. This is exactly what our women and men experienced on Oct. 7th."
The silence from Duwaji and Mamdani speaks its own language.
The Nova music festival was filled with thousands of revelers when Hamas attacked. Around 270 were killed at the festival site. Across the broader assault, 378 were killed, with another 44 taken hostage. These are not contested numbers. They are not political opinions. They are body counts.
And the woman who will soon serve as New York City's first lady double-tapped an Instagram post celebrating the day it happened.
This is not a peripheral controversy. New York City is home to one of the largest Jewish populations in the world. The mayor's household is the symbolic center of civic life. When the person sharing that household endorses, even passively through social media engagement, the denial of sexual atrocities against Jewish civilians, it sends a signal. Not a subtle one.
Biner understands the stakes beyond her own pain:
"Every time sexual violence is politicized or denied, it weakens the protection women everywhere should have."
She's right. Rape denial doesn't stay in one lane. Once you establish that sexual violence can be waved away when the politics are convenient, the precedent is set for everyone. The progressive left has spent years arguing this exact point in every other context. Funny how the principle evaporates when tested.
Biner didn't ask to become an activist. She was a surgical nurse who went to a music festival. Hamas chose for her.
"The pain I witnessed is permanent. But it also gave me a responsibility – to be a voice for those who can no longer speak, to honor the victims, and to make sure the world does not look away. Denying or minimizing these crimes is not just a lie – it is an attack on all of us, and a danger to women everywhere."
She closed with a line that Duwaji and her husband would do well to sit with:
"This is not a matter of politics or ideology – it is a matter of human dignity, accountability, and justice."
Mountains of evidence. Admissions from the attackers themselves. Testimony from survivors who hid for hours listening to women scream. And still, as Biner put it, "some people willfully choose not to believe us." It breaks her heart. It should break a lot more than that.
