The following analysis examines the omissions, distortions, and double standards in UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women Reem Alsalem’s June 2026 report to the Human Rights Council.
By UN Watch Legal Advisor Dina Rovner
UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women Reem Alsalem has a history of applying double standards to Israel. In her June 2026 report to the Human Rights Council titled Violence against Mothers, Alsalem makes one-sided accusations against Israel based on misleading and incomplete facts. Most outrageously, despite purporting to examine violence against mothers, the report fails to mention Hamas’s October 7 attack targeting Israeli mothers, children, and families, or the prolonged psychological torture inflicted on mothers and relatives of hostages.
A December 2024 report by Israel’s Civil Commission on October 7 Crimes by Hamas Against Women and Children documented how Hamas killed parents and children in front of each other, violently kidnapped families from their homes-including infants and mothers-separated mothers and children in captivity, and used digital and social media to broadcast their abuses to family members as a form of psychological torture. This targeted abuse of families was so deliberate and severe that it led to the coining of a new term-“kinocide.” Additionally, Hamas continued its torture of hostage families throughout the more than two years during which it held Israeli captives. For example, it forced hostage Daniella Gilboa to stage her own death for a propaganda video; staged a video of emaciated hostage Evyatar David digging his own grave; and filmed a video showing a visibly weakened Elkana Bokhbot lying on the floor after he allegedly tried to harm himself. In March 2025, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Alice Jill Edwards published a report recognizing hostage families as victims of Hamas psychological torture.
This omission is consistent with Alsalem’s documented record of minimizing or dismissing Hamas atrocities committed on October 7. As recently as April 2026, she dismissed allegations of Hamas sexual crimes against Israelis as “misinformation” used to “justify the genocide against Palestinians.” In November 2025, she asserted that “no independent investigation found that rape took place on October 7th,” despite the March 2024 UN report finding reasonable grounds to believe conflict-related sexual violence occurred during the October 7 attack, alongside extensive documentation by Israeli investigators and victims’ groups.
Meanwhile, Alsalem issued a joint statement with Francesca Albanese accusing Israeli soldiers of sexually abusing Palestinian women based on unsubstantiated allegations promoted by Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, an NGO known for advancing extreme and unverified claims. In April 2025, she penned a tweet effectively suggesting that Israel’s conduct exceeded even the depravity captured by terms associated with the Holocaust. She wrote that “genocide,” “Holocaust,” “war crime,” and “forced starvation” were inadequate to capture the “sheer depravity and heinousness” of Israel’s crimes.
Astoundingly, Alsalem portrays the Islamic Republic of Iran-which persecutes women for violating compulsory hijab laws-as a defender of women’s rights when she laments that the “aggression of the US and Israel in 2026” may reverse Iran’s purported achievements in girls’ education and maternal health (para. 31). This stands in stark contrast to the views of prominent Iranian women’s rights activist Masih Alinejad, who publicly supported the U.S. and Israeli strikes and urged President Trump to “finish the job.” She described family members of the regime’s victims celebrating reports of Khamenei’s death, including women blinded by Iranian security forces who took to the streets “dancing and saying … even with one eye, we’re able to see justice.”
The report’s distortions extend beyond omission. Alsalem alleges that reproductive violence was used as a “tool of genocide” in Gaza (para. 30), specifically citing the destruction of an IVF clinic in Gaza in 2023. Yet, as UN Watch documented in its September 2025 legal rebuttal to the Pillay Commission’s genocide report, there is no evidence that Israel intentionally targeted the clinic-or even that Israel was responsible for the strike. The incident therefore cannot credibly support allegations that Israel engaged in intentional “reproductive violence” or genocidal conduct.
Likewise, Alsalem’s evidence for the claim that Israel employed “genocidal language” specifically targeting “Palestinian mothers and their children” (para. 30) consists of a single article published by the openly anti-Israel Mondoweiss website quoting Giora Eiland, a retired senior IDF officer who neither represents the Israeli government nor determines state policy.
Moreover, while citing as evidence of genocide that “most health care facilities in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed” (para. 31), Alsalem ignores countervailing facts. For example, she omits any mention of Israeli efforts-in coordination with donor countries and aid organizations-to facilitate an adequate medical response in Gaza. This included field hospitals that provided women’s health services, including maternal health and fertility treatments. Likewise, Alsalem ignores Hamas’s well-documented use of Gaza’s medical facilities for military purposes, making them legitimate military targets under international humanitarian law. In such circumstances, attacks on those facilities cannot credibly serve as evidence of genocidal intent.
Similarly, in Lebanon in 2026, Israel did not engage in “deliberate attacks on healthcare services” (para. 42). Its attacks targeted Hezbollah operatives using healthcare infrastructure for military purposes, in violation of international humanitarian law. Responsibility for endangering healthcare services in such circumstances lies with Hezbollah’s unlawful military use of civilian infrastructure, not with Israel’s targeting of military objectives.
This report’s omissions and distortions are particularly striking given its stated focus on violence against mothers. A report that accuses Israel of reproductive violence and genocide, yet remains silent on Hamas’s deliberate targeting, torture, and psychological abuse of Israeli mothers and families, cannot credibly claim to reflect a principled concern for women and children.
