More than 300 rabbis and Jewish leaders, including prominent women’s rights advocates, have called on the United Nations to remove Reem Alsalem, the
UN rapporteur on violence against women and girls, following her denial that sexual assaults occurred during Hamas’ October 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
The open letter, addressed to U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres on Tuesday, came two weeks after Alsalem posted on X (formerly Twitter) that “no independent investigation found that rape took place on the 7th of October.”
Signatories of the letter expressed “horror and outrage” at Alsalem’s remarks, citing U.N. reports from March 2024 and July 2025 that found “reasonable grounds” to believe sexual violence, including rape and gang rape, occurred in multiple locations during the attacks.
The petition was spearheaded by Amy Elman, a Kalamazoo College professor specializing in antisemitism and state responses to sexual violence, and Rafael Medoff, director of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies. It was shared with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency shortly after being sent to Guterres.
“The targeted sexual abuse of Israelis by Hamas and its supporters is one weapon in the arsenal of those seeking Israel’s obliteration,” Elman said. “It’s outrageous that deniers such as Reem Alsalem are aiding and abetting the sexual violence by claiming it never happened. These apologists should be ashamed of themselves.”
Among the signatories are Deborah Lipstadt, former U.S. antisemitism envoy; Judith Rosenbaum, head of the Jewish Women’s Archives; Rabbi Irving Greenberg, former chairman of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum; Rabbi Deborah Waxman, president of Reconstructing Judaism; and Hebrew College president Rabbi Sharon Cohen Anisfeld.
The question of whether sexual violence occurred during the Oct. 7 attacks—when roughly 1,200 people were killed by Hamas—has become a flashpoint, with some critics of Israel alleging that claims of rape have been used as propaganda. Even the United Nations has faced scrutiny from pro-Palestinian voices for its handling of the reports, though other UN officials, such as the rapporteur on Palestinian rights, Francesca Albanese, have publicly questioned the allegations.
Independent investigations and research by Israeli nonprofits have also documented sexual assaults on that day, corroborating the findings cited by the U.N. reports.
Alsalem’s comments on X came amid a debate over Israel’s prosecution of soldiers accused of abusing a Palestinian detainee. The following day, she shared a Substack podcast from October criticizing the credibility of the March 2024 U.N. report and claiming she had sought confirmation from the Israeli government but received no response.
“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, and it was spun around and disseminated and very much used in order to then justify the genocide,” Alsalem said on the podcast.
Medoff called Alsalem’s continued employment a double standard. “If a UN official made such a remark concerning rape victims from any other ethnic or religious group, there would be an international uproar,” he said. “The same standard should apply to Israeli Jewish women who were sexually assaulted by Hamas terrorists.” Photo by Dendodge, Wikimedia commons.