United Nations Special Rapporteur on violence against women Reem Alsalem falsely claimed that there was "no rape" committed during the Hamas massacre of October 7, 2023.
In a rant on X on Friday, Alsalem bizarrely claimed that no independent investigation found that rape took place on the 7th of October."
She went on to engage in moral equivalence between Israel and the Hamas rapists and butchers, stating: “For those who naively believe that Israeli perpetrators of sexual violence against Palestinians will ever be investigated and prosecuted, think again."
Despite Alsalem's claims, a UN investigation found in 2024 that there were “reasonable grounds” to believe that Hamas terrorists committed rape during the October 7 massacre.
In August, 2025, the UN added Hamas to its blacklist of organizations that commit sexual crimes in violent conflicts.
Less than two months after the massacre, the British Sunday Times magazine dedicated its front page today to Hamas' assaults on women, including shocking testimonies of rape and other brutality and cruelty perpetrated against young women, female soldiers, and others.
In the article, under the headline 'I saw Hamas rape women before killing them' some of the survivors of the massacre describe the acts of sexual assault against women before murdering them.
Yoni Saadon, one of the witnesses, recounted in the Times: “I saw this beautiful woman with the face of an angel and eight or ten of the fighters beating and raping her. She was screaming, ‘Stop it - already I’m going to die anyway from what you are doing, just kill me!’ When they finished they were laughing and the last one shot her in the head. I pulled her body over me and smeared her blood on me so it would look as if I was dead too. I will never forget her face. Every night I wake to it and apologize to her, saying ‘I’m sorry’."
“I kept thinking it could have been one of my daughters, or my sister - I had bought her a ticket but last minute she couldn’t come.”
"I hid in the bushes and saw that they had caught a young woman near a car and she was fighting back, not allowing them to... They threw her to the ground and one of the terrorists took a shovel and beheaded her and her head rolled along the ground. I see that head too,” he said.
The article also quoted Shelly Harush, the police officer appointed to investigate sexual violence and crimes against women by Hamas.
"It’s clear now that sexual crimes were part of the planning and the purpose was to terrify and humiliate people. We gathered thousands of declarations, photos, and videos. As a Jewish mother, my soul and spirit cannot take this."
Haim Outmezgine, commander of a special unit of Zaka, a voluntary religious organisation that collects the remains of the dead, including their blood, so they can be buried in accordance with Jewish tradition, added his testimony to the article.
“We collected 1,000 bodies in ten days from the festival site and kibbutzim,” he said. “No one saw more than us. “It was clear they were trying to spread as much horror as they could - to kill, to burn alive, to rape … it seemed their mission was to rape as many as possible.”
Among the volunteers in an all-female team to prepare female corpses for burial was Shari, 60, an architect who lives in Jerusalem. Shari commented in the article on how some of the victims arrived:
"Their faces were in anguish and often their fingers clenched as they died. We saw women whose pelvises were broken. Legs broken. There were women who had been shot in … there seems no doubt what happened to them.”
Last week, former Israeli hostages Keith and Aviva Siegel, who were held captive by Hamas, appeared before the UN Committee Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (UNCAT) in Geneva on Wednesday, providing harrowing testimony about the humiliation, violence, and sexual abuse they and other hostages endured in captivity.
Keith Siegel told the committee: “I am not asking for your sympathy. I am asking that you ensure the horrors the terrorists committed against me and others in captivity will never happen again.”
Aviva Siegel testified about sexual abuse against young female hostages: “One day, a young girl came out of the shower trembling. I wasn’t allowed to hug her, but I did anyway. Later she told us that one of the terrorists had touched her.”
“The most terrible thing for me was watching how they tortured my husband Keith and what they did to the girls. I wasn’t allowed to hug, help, or even cry. I tried all that time to hold on to my humanity.”
Earlier this month, captivity survivor Rom Braslavski revealed the grim details of his treatment during his two years in captivity in an interview with Channel 13 News. Braslavski revealed how he was stripped, tied up, and starved by his Hamas captors. In addition, he stated that he was sexually abused.
"Its main purpose was to humiliate me," Braslavski said of the abuse. "The goal was to crush my dignity. And that's exactly what he did."
When asked if there were more incidents like that one, he responded: "Yes. It's hard for me to talk about that part specifically. I don't like to talk about it. It's hard, It was the most horrific thing," he added.
'It's something even the Nazis didn't do. During Hitler's time, they wouldn't have done things like this. You just pray for it to stop. And while I was there - every day, every beating - I'd say to myself, 'I survived another day in hell. Tomorrow morning, I'll wake up to another hell. And another. And another. It doesn't end."
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