Warning: This story describes deeply disturbing events and testimonies in graphic detail.
“No independent investigation found that rape took place on October 7,” United Nations special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, Reem Alsalem, falsely claimed on Friday, despite a UN report that detailed Hamas’s use of sexual violence during the October 7 massacre.
“No Palestinian applauded rape in Gaza,” Alsalem further wrote during a social media exchange on the ongoing legal case against soldiers accused of sexually assaulting a Palestinian prisoner in the Sde Teiman detention center.
Last year in March, Alsalem also denied knowing Israel had been a victim of repeated missile attacks by Hamas and Hezbollah as the terrorist groups launched air barrages on civilian communities across Israel.
She also co-authored a February 2024 report with Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the Palestinian territories, accusing the IDF of sexually abusing Palestinian females.
Asked at the time in an interview with Channel 13’s Hazinor, where she received her information for this report from, Alsalem said the “reasonably credible information” had come from sources she could not cite and the nonprofit Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor.
Notably, anti-Israel conspiracist Richard Falk is the chair of Euro-Med’s board. He has previously claimed that Israel was responsible for the Boston Marathon bombing.
Hamas's use of sexual violence on October 7
A United Nations delegation of experts, including Pramila Patten, the UN special rep. of the secretary-general on sexual violence in conflict, visited Israel in February 2024, where they said they had found substantial evidence that Hamas had raped and sexually abused hostages and victims during and after the massacre.
These findings were established following an extensive review of over 50 hours of footage, 5,000 photographs, and 34 independent interviews.
“Nine experts drawn from the UN, including… specialists trained in safe and ethical interviewing of survivors/victims and witnesses of sexual violence crimes, a forensic pathologist, and a digital and open-source information analyst,” confirmed Hamas had raped and committed other acts of sexual violence.
The team also found “that there are reasonable grounds to believe that conflict-related sexual violence occurred in multiple locations during the October 7 attacks, including rape and gang-rape in at least three locations, namely: The Nova music festival site and its surroundings, route 232, and Kibbutz Re’im.”
An investigation launched by the Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel also found significant evidence that Hamas had used sexual abuse as a weapon of war on October 7.
After analyzing confidential and public testimonies, eye-witness accounts, and interviews with victims, first responders, and witnesses, the organization published a report highlighting how Hamas raped, and, in some cases, gang raped, victims. In some instances, Hamas’s victims were raped in front of their families to maximize the trauma and humiliation inflicted.
Most of the people who were sexually assaulted by Hamas terrorists were killed afterward, and some even during the act of rape. Others still were found dead later, their genitals mutilated beyond recognition or penetrated with weapons.
Additionally, despite Alsalem’s assertion of a lack of evidence of sexual violence during Hamas’s invasion, UN Secretary-General António Guterres blacklisted Hamas on the annual conflict-related sexual violence report in August.
The blacklist is specifically made up of parties that are “credibly suspected of committing or being responsible for patterns of rape or other forms of sexual violence in situations of armed conflict.”
Tzvi Joffre, Sarah Ben-Nun, and Tamar Uriel-Beeri contributed to this report.