The United Nations said it found “reasonable grounds” to believe that Israeli women were subjected to sexual violence, including rape, gang rape and “sexualized torture,” across “several locations” on Oct. 7 during the attack by Hamas in southern Israel. The sexual abuse occurred in “at least” three locations, the report noted, describing two detailed incidents in one area, based on “credible information,” and a third “verified” instance.

The report also noted that the number of survivors and victims of sexual violence is unknown and that the “true prevalence” of such atrocities “may take months or years to emerge and may never be fully known.”

The findings were released by the UN in a 24-page report on March 4, a result of a visit, at the invitation of the Israeli government, by Pramila Patten, the UN special representative on sexual violence in conflict. Her aim was to “gather, analyze and verify information,” she said at a press briefing on Monday, on the allegations that Hamas and others reportedly committed sexual violence on that October day and “its aftermath.”

Patten said that the government had talked about hundreds, if not thousands of cases of “brutal sexual violence perpetrated against men, women and children,” but she added: “I have not found anything like that.”

Some aspects of Patten’s report were welcomed by the Israeli government.

“The report issued by UN Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict, Pramila Patten, and her team is of immense importance,” said Israeli President Isaac Herzog in a press release, on March 4. “It substantiates with moral clarity and integrity the systematic, premeditated, and ongoing sexual crimes committed by Hamas terrorists against Israeli women.”

Patten met with Herzog and his wife, Michal Herzog, while she was on her trip in Israel.

Yet others in the Israeli government, such as Israel Katz, the foreign minister, were critical not of the report but of UN Secretary-General António Guterres.

“Despite the authority granted to him, the UN Secretary General did not order the convening of the Security Council in view of the [reports] findings, in order to declare the Hamas organization a terrorist organization and impose sanctions on its supporters,” Katz said on X. (The secretary-general does not order meetings of the Council.)

In further protest, Katz recalled Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan, from New York City on Monday. [UPDATE, MARCH 7: According to the Jerusalem Post, Katz has ordered Israeli embassies “to begin a large-scale hasbara (public diplomacy) campaign” on March 7, “in light of the findings of the UN report on sexual violence in the Hamas massacre on October 7.” The Post said: “The aim is to put pressure on the UN to define Hamas as a terrorist organization and to ensure an emergency meeting of the Security Council in order to discuss the findings of the report.” PassBlue has been told by a source familiar with the effort that the Council may meet on March 11 to discuss the report]

When asked about Katz’s criticisms of Guterres, Stéphane Dujarric, the secretary-general’s spokesperson, told reporters on March 5: “Frankly, I’m not sure I know how to answer that question. That announcement which was accusing the Secretary-General of trying to bury a report was made literally an hour, two hours before a press conference presenting the report.”

Referring to Patten, Dujarric said she was “as transparent as possible, while protecting information she was given by victims of sexual violence as her practice is. The Secretary-General’s only instructions to Ms. Patten before going on this mission was tell the truth.”

According to the BBC, Hamas has rejected the UN report as “baseless and only aimed at demonizing the Palestinian resistance.” The militia has denied allegations of sexual violence against women, including hostages, on Oct. 7.

For her report, Patten traveled to Israel in February with a UN technical team of nine experts to meet with survivors and witnesses of the Oct. 7 assault, as well as some released Israeli hostages, first responders, health care providers and Israeli officials.

She paid for the trip from her own office, the UN said. She also visited the West Bank but did not go to Gaza because it is a war zone. Patten, a lawyer originally from Mauritius, was appointed to the UN post in 2017 by Guterres.

According to the report, Patten’s team reviewed more than 5,000 photos and around 50 hours of video footage and audio of the attacks, as well as information that was provided by the Israeli government, independent sources and open-source material. Yet the “information,” Patten stressed, is not “evidence” to be used, say, in a court of law.  

The Patten team also held 33 meetings with Israeli institutions, including government ministries, the Israel Defense Forces and the Shin Bet security agency.

Despite the probing nature of her visit with her team of UN experts, including forensics and human rights specialists, Patten said, “We did not conduct an investigation,” as she does not have a mandate to do so. That role falls to the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and its commission of inquiry on Israel and Palestine.

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At the Nova music festival on Oct. 7, one of the locations where Hamas shot and killed partygoers in the early morning, the report said that “credible sources and information,” based on witness accounts, described bodies of women being found naked from the waist down — and some completely naked — with their hands tied behind their backs and some shot in the head. In the report, Patten’s group also described similar scenes found along Route 232, a road in southern Israel, and in the Kibbutz Kfar Aza.

On Route 232, according to the report, the team found “credible information” based on witness accounts describing the rape of two women by “armed elements.” Additionally, in Kibbutz Re’im, the UN team verified the rape of a woman outside a bomb shelter but was told about other allegations of rape in the kibbutz “that could not yet be verified.” (The team did not visit the kibbutz.)

Complicating the work of Patten’s group, according to the report, the Israeli authorities faced “numerous challenges” in collecting evidence of potential crimes committed on Oct. 7 — including survivor and witness testimonies and forensic evidence — due primarily to the chaos that day. Patten’s team was therefore limited in its ability to “draw definitive forensic conclusions in many instances.”

Patten and her team also visited Kibbutz Be’eri, where allegations of sexual violence that were broadcast widely in mainstream media right after the Hamas massacre — including a pregnant woman found with her stomach ripped open and her fetus stabbed — as “unfounded.”

Unlike what has been reported in mostly international media, including The New York Times, Patten clarified that her team did not find a pattern of widespread sexual violence by Hamas on Oct. 7 as “they did not look into attribution.”

Patten said that her team had not dealt with the attribution of crimes to a specific group that participated in the attack. She noted that Islamic Jihad and other organizations, as well as civilians, had taken part in the onslaught. She added that she hadn’t thought about attribution, given the amount of time she had and that she was not engaged in “an investigation.”

In recent weeks, several reports, including further claims of sexual violence and rape committed by Hamas on Oct. 7 in Israel, have flooded mainstream media outlets. However, some findings are being questioned. The most notable scrutiny has zeroed in on an investigation published by The New York Times on Dec. 28, 2023.

Regarding the hostages held by Hamas in Gaza, the report gathered “clear and convincing information” that while in captivity, some hostages were subjected to sexualized torture, including rape. Without citing sources, the report said there were “reasonable grounds” to “believe that such violence may be ongoing.” (Patten’s team said in the report that it met with released hostages.)

In the briefing on Monday, however, Patten clarified that she did not “meet with any survivors of sexual violence of the seventh of October attacks, or its aftermath,” while in Israel.

“We tried,” she said. “But we received information that a handful of survivors were receiving very specialized trauma treatment, and we’re too traumatized to speak.” Patten would not say how she knew these survivors existed and declined to share more information.

During her trip, Patten and her team also visited Ramallah, the de facto capital of the West Bank, where members of Palestinian civil society and women’s rights groups raised concerns about “inhuman and degrading” treatment of Palestinian women in Israeli detention. Such treatment includes incidents of sexual violence, which were briefly mentioned in the report released on Monday. Patten was not conducting an inquiry in the territory.

Randa Siniora, general director of the Women’s Center for Legal Aid and Counseling, a Palestinian nonprofit, said that the small attention given to the plight of Palestinian women in Israeli detention undermines “the suffering of Palestinian women in Gaza and the traumatization of a whole population.” She met with Patten and her colleagues while they were in Ramallah.

Patten’s report comes as the UN — and Guterres himself — face ever harsher criticism from Israeli government officials as the country’s armed forces crush the Palestinian enclave to eradicate Hamas.

The reason the UN is being targeted relentlessly by Israel is because it is “bearing witness to the war in Gaza,” a senior UN official told PassBlue, and it is calling for a “two-state solution.”

The most persistent condemnations against the UN and Guterres come from Gilad Erdan, Israel’s envoy to the UN who, from the rostrum in the General Assembly on Monday morning, announced the pending release of Patten’s report while ripping into the UN for becoming a “collaborator with rapists and perverts,” referring to Hamas.

One key recommendation in Patten’s report encourages the Israeli government to cooperate with the independent Commission of Inquiry on the Occupation Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, set up by the UN human rights office, “to carry-out fully-fledged investigations” into allegations of sexual violence on Oct. 7, an offer Erdan has refused.

“Israel will not cooperate in any way with such a discriminatory and antisemitic body,” he tweeted on Nov. 20.

On Monday, Patten was asked if she was concerned that her report, based primarily on what she called “circumstantial” information, would be weaponized by the Israeli government to justify further mass violence in Gaza — where 30,000 people have been killed, most of them women and children.

“On the one hand, we have the fog of war that often silences crimes of sexual violence, but we have also seen in the history of war instances where sexual violence can be weaponized,” she said.

We welcome your comments on this article.  What are your thoughts on the UN report?

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Dawn Clancy

Dawn Clancy is a New York City based reporter who focuses on women’s issues, international conflict and diplomacy. She holds a master’s degree from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. Previously, she has written for The Washington Post and HuffPost.