Former hostage Moran Stella Yanai called out U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, claiming that he was not interested in hearing her claims of sexual violence while in Hamas captivity.
Yanai was selling jewelry at the Nova Music Festival when she was kidnapped by Hamas terrorists during the group’s invasion of southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. She was held for 54 days before her release as part of a ceasefire.
Yanai told Israel’s Channel 12 that she and fellow hostage Nili Margalit, a nurse taken from her home in Kibbutz Nir Oz and released at the same time as she was, met with Guterres on Jan. 17, 2024, on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
“He didn’t want to talk at all and almost canceled the meeting,” Yanai said. “After that, he limited us to half an hour.”
Yanai said she hasn’t “watched the news for 13 years. I don’t know who this idiot guy is. But in the end, I made him stay for more than an hour and listen to the testimony of Agam Goldstein-Almog, about the sexual harassment of the abductees—testimony that at first he didn’t want to hear.”
Goldstein-Almog was also kidnapped on Oct. 7 along with her mother and two brothers after Hamas terrorists broke into their home in Kibbutz Kfar Aza, and killed her father and sister. It was not immediately clear how Goldstein-Almog’s testimony was delivered to Guterres.
Stéphane Dujarric, spokesman for Guterres, disputed Yanai’s claim and told JNS, “We do not want to enter into a polemic with someone whose trauma we cannot even begin to imagine, but I do want to offer some context.”
Dujarric said Guterres has “never turned down a meeting with families of hostages or released hostages” since Hamas’s Oct. 7 invasion, and that he has taken over a dozen such meetings in various locations, in addition to “the dialogue he initiated with those who, for a time, were demonstrating in front of his residence.”
Regarding Yanai’s claims, Dujarric said the original timing of the meeting, which was attended by about ten family members and former hostages, “may have shifted due to the demands on the secretary-general’s time in Davos, but like other meetings on this issue, the secretary-general was committed to making it happen.”
“It was that much more important to him because it was going to be the first time he would be able to hear from someone who had just been released by Hamas,” Dujarric told JNS.
Dujarric confirmed that the meeting, which started at 9 p.m. and was scheduled to last 30 minutes, lasted an hour, as Yanai said.
“Much like the other meetings with families of hostages and former hostages, the secretary-general was there to listen to them and to share his personal solidarity as well as what he was doing to help end this tragedy. No topic was off-limits. Ever,” Dujarric told JNS, in response to Yanai’s sentiment that Guterres was not interested in hearing about the sexual violence carried out by Hamas.
Dujarric said in hostage meetings that he’s attended with Guterres, “some of the family members and former hostages expressed their anger at him, some expressed thanks to him for taking the time to meet and listen, and some just wanted to be heard by a world leader.”
Guterres “can be criticized for what he said or not said about the war in Gaza, but his personal interaction with the hostages and their families is real, and it comes from the heart,” Dujarric told JNS.
