Danny Danon, the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, said on Saturday that the global body ought to remove Reem Alsalem from her post as U.N. special rapporteur on violence against women and girls.
“Any U.N. representative who denies Hamas rape must be removed from their post. Period,” Danon stated. “It is a stain on the U.N.’s reputation” that Alsalem “denies the sexual violence that took place on Oct. 7.”
“This is a moral disgrace, an insult to the victims and their families, and a violation of every basic international standard,” the envoy wrote. “Israel will not allow Hamas’s horrific crimes to be whitewashed.”
Danon was responding to a statement in which Alsalem wrote that “no Palestinian applauded rape in Gaza. No independent investigation found that rape took place on Oct. 7.”
She subsequently claimed that her view had been “deliberately misrepresented.”
U.N. special rapporteurs are considered independent “experts.” The global body has said it cannot control or police what they say.
The Dinah Project at Bar-Ilan University, which published an extensive report on sexual violence during the Oct. 7 attacks, stated that “an independent U.N. fact-finding mission, formally endorsed by the secretary-general, confirmed evidence of sexual violence committed by Hamas on Oct. 7 and against Israeli hostages.”
“This was reaffirmed by the secretary-general’s decision to blacklist Hamas on account of its use of sexual violence as a weapon of war during the attack and in captivity,” the project said. “This makes the special rapporteur’s statements questionable at best.”
The Dinah Project added that it is not a valid critique to minimize or dismiss the findings.
“It distorts the documented record, undermines the dignity of the victims and weakens the global fight against conflict-related sexual violence,” it said.
Alsalem stated during an Oct. 30 interview on a podcast that the “media, certain organizations and the world basically fell into the trap that Israel set up, which is to project that there was barbaric sexual violence being committed by these barbarian Palestinian men.”
That was then “spun around and disseminated and very much used in order to then justify the genocide,” she said.
