A former Israeli hostage in Gaza gave emotional testimony on Wednesday at the U.N. Security Council, recalling her captors beating her and pleading with them not to rape her.
At the council’s monthly meeting on the Israeli-Palestinian file, Ilana Gritzewsky recounted being held with other hostages at Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, the site earlier this week of a controversial Israeli military operation.
“They took us through the back entrance and walked us past all the civilians. In the hospital, there was an area that was closed off and used only by Hamas, with an armed guard,” Gritzewsky told the U.N. body. “They locked us in a room, where we met a third hostage.”
Gritzewsky was held for 55 days without medical treatment after suffering injuries during the Hamas-led attacks on Oct. 7, 2023. She and her partner, Matan Zangauker, were kidnapped from Kibbutz Nir Oz, and Zangauker remains a hostage. Gritzewsky was released as part of a ceasefire deal in November 2023, in exchange for Palestinian security prisoners.
“On the way to Gaza, when they started to touch me and sexually abuse me, I passed out physically and mentally. I couldn’t handle it anymore,” she told the council.
She said that her captors starved her, and she emerged from Gaza almost 27 pounds lighter.
Danny Danon, the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, told the council that “Hamas used sexual violence as a weapon of war.”
“Survivors deserve action, not doubt,” he said, telling the body to “blacklist Hamas now. The Security Council must designate them as the terrorist organization they are.”
Israel and the United States remained largely isolated on the issue of the Israel-Hamas war on Wednesday, as all members of the Security Council except Washington issued a joint statement about what they said is a “famine” in Gaza that is a “manmade crisis.”
The other countries said that using starvation as a weapon of war is a violation of international humanitarian law.
“Famine in Gaza must be stopped immediately,” they wrote. “The humanitarian emergency must be addressed without delay, and Israel must reverse course.”
Israel disputes the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification’s view that a famine is occurring in Gaza City and surrounding areas, calling on the U.N.-aligned food security entity to retract its report issued last Friday. It characterized the IPC findings as deliberately inaccurate and biased.
Danon called the report part of “a campaign of diversion” from issues like the plight of the hostages in Gaza and “an echo chamber that swaps facts for slogans.”
‘These are the people cheering you on’
Dorothy Shea, the interim U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, also took aim at the IPC report.
“We can only solve problems with credibility and integrity,” she told the council. “Unfortunately, the recent report from the IPC doesn’t pass the test on either.”
Like Danon, Shea noted that Andrew Seal, an author of the IPC report, posted anti-Israel and pro-Iran statements on social media that came to light after the report was released.
“One of the report’s key authors has a lengthy record of bias against Israel, including openly justifying the Houthis’ terrorist attacks on Israeli civilian targets,” Shea said. “This helps explain why the normal standards were changed for this declaration, raising significant questions.”
Danon also criticized U.N. member states, including Security Council members France and the United Kingdom, which have recently thrown their backing behind recognition of a Palestinian state.
That action “gave Hamas an out” and “encouraged Hamas to disengage and walk away from the negotiations” on a ceasefire, he said.
Danon cited praise by Hamas of Paris’s recognition of Palestinian statehood as the “fruits of Oct. 7.”
“These are the people cheering you on,” Danon said. “Rapists, murderers, kidnappers. You are supposed to stand for Western values.”
