Rabbis, Jewish leaders call for removal of UN official who denied October 7 rapes

JTA — Over 300 Jewish leaders, including women’s rights advocates and rabbis, urged the United Nations on Tuesday to remove Reem Alsalem, the UN rapporteur on violence against women and girls, for denying that rape occurred during the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, attack on Israel.

The letter, which was addressed to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, came two weeks after Alsalem claimed in a post on X that “No independent investigation found that rape took place on the 7th of October.”

In the letter, the signatories express their “horror and outrage” at Alsalem’s rhetoric, and cite two UN reports from March 2024 and July 2025 that concluded that there were “reasonable grounds” to believe that sexual violence had taken place during the attacks “in multiple locations, including rape and gang rape.”

The petition was organized by Amy Elman, a professor at Kalamazoo College who has authored books on antisemitism and state responses to sexual violence, and Rafael Medoff, the director of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies. It was shared with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency soon 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 in a statement. “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.”

The letter’s signatories include Deborah Lipstadt, the former antisemitism envoy; Judith Rosenbaum, the head of the Jewish Women’s Archive; Rabbi Irving Greenberg, the former chairman of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum; Rabbi Deborah Waxman, the president of the Reconstructing Judaism movement; and Hebrew College president Rabbi Sharon Cohen Anisfeld.

Dispute over whether sexual violence took place as Hamas murdered some 1,200 people in Israel on October 7 has continued, despite evidence of the assaults, among some of Israel’s staunchest critics, who allege that Israel and its supporters are using claims of rape as propaganda.

The UN rapporteur on Palestinian rights, Francesca Albanese, a harsh critic of Israel who has faced accusations of antisemitism, as well as her own calls for dismissal from the Trump administration, has also publicly questioned the claims.

In addition to the UN reports, independent reporting and research by an Israeli nonprofit have validated claims of sexual violence on Oct. 7.

In the social media exchange that spurred the new letter, Alsalem was arguing with another user about the Israeli government’s prosecution of soldiers accused of abusing a Palestinian detainee.

A day later, Alsalem posted a link to a podcast from October where she criticized the credibility of the March 2024 UN report. She said she had sought contact with the Israeli government to confirm its findings, but had not received a 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,” said Alsalem on the podcast. Israel adamantly rejects the accusation that it has committed genocide.

Medoff said in a statement that Alsalem’s continued employment reflected inconsistent standards when it comes to Israel and antisemitism.

“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.”