Former Gaza hostage Ilana Gritzewsky took the floor at the UN Human Rights Council on Tuesday in order to confront the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women for her minimization of sexual violence used against victims on October 7, 2023.
“Your report speaks about violence against women. Why is there no mention of Hamas?” Gritzewsky demanded from the Special Rapporteur, Reem Alsalem.
She described her experiences during the October 7 massacre, being beaten by the Hamas terrorists who stormed Kibbutz Nir Oz.
“I woke up half naked with seven terrorists standing over me, not knowing what happened to me in those lost moments,” she said. “I went through days of pain and horror in captivity, and even now the feeling of being powerless and violated still lingers. I came back with a broken hip, a broken jaw, and a shattered soul.”
Gritzewsky accused Alsalem of choosing “silence and denial” when it comes to the Jewish victims of sexual abuse during and after October 7.
“I am standing here today – not as a report, not as a statistic,” Gritzewsky said. “I am a woman who survived. I am the living proof of sexual violence by Hamas. When I and other Israeli women begged not to be raped, why were you silent?”
Gritzewsky had previously visited the UN Security Council in August, 2025 to share her personal story as a former hostage.
During that visit, she recounted that, while she was on the way to Gaza, she lost consciousness when the captors began to touch her and sexually abuse her. She woke up lying naked on rocks surrounded by the Hamas terrorists. To prevent them from assaulting her, she told them she was on her period. They then threw a hijab at her.
In November, 2025, Alsalem stated that “No independent investigation found that rape took place on October 7,” despite a UN report that detailed Hamas’s use of sexual violence during the October 7 massacre.
Alsalem also wrote that “No Palestinian applauded rape in Gaza,” during a social media exchange on the legal case against soldiers accused of sexually assaulting a Palestinian prisoner in the Sde Teiman detention center.
In April, she doubled down on her denial, stating that the allegations of mass sexual violence against Israelis on October 7 were “misinformation” used in order to “justify the genocide against Palestinians.”
Danielle Greyman-Kennard and Darcie Grunblatt contributed to this report.
