An Israeli former hostage has challenged a United Nations Special Rapporteur for ignoring survivors’ testimony from the October 7th Hamas-led pogrom.

Ilana Gritzewsky confronted Reem Alsalem for ignoring survivors’ testimony. In a prepared statement read out within the UN’s New York headquarters, Gritzewsky declared that

Ignoring survivors does not erase the truth. The stories of the survivors and those who were murdered deserve to be heard, believed, and remembered.

Alsalem had previously asserted that there was ‘no evidence’ of sexual violence perpetrated on October 7th. A grim pattern of denial has continued ever since, as personified by the experience of mutilated hostage Emily Damari—who was in a same-sex relationship at the time of her ordeal—being ignored by Hamas-sympathising groups, including “Queers for Palestine.”