Reem Alsalem, UN Special Rapporteur on VAWAG is a fucking disgrace

Dead women can't come forward.

Yeah wouldn’t surprise me at all tbh. Often when women are disbelieved the “unfuckable” thing gets shoved at them. It would not surprise me in the least if some people believe an Israeli would never rape a Palestinian for the same reason.

I absolutely despair of women who engage in rape denial.

The Roberts Report contains details of evidence. It's very, very grim reading, and I suggest care and caution.

(I had intended to copy and paste from the report, but I'm not going to, because of the content.)

Reem Alsalem should read it.

https://www.7octparliamentarycommission.co.uk/

' The evidential picture that has emerged to date in Israel has followed a familiar course from previous violent conflicts where sexual violence was present.6 There have been many civil organisations, including the Israel Women's Network (IWN) and the Women & War Research and Documentation Collective7 and the Dinah Project8 who independent of the Israeli Government have mapped, analysed, and studied open-source information related to the CRSV that occurred on 7 October. Collecting evidence and assessing sexual and gender-based violence is already a complicated and extensive process in a standard criminal investigation. However, work on CRSV is arguably more sensitive and complicated and specifically the chaos of the 7 October 2023 attacks has meant gaining a picture of the scale of the CRSV even more challenging. Dr Cochav Elkayam Levy, Chair of The Civil Commission on Oct. 7th Crimes Against Women and Children, has said “We’ll never know everything that has happened to them. We know that most women who were raped and who were sexually assaulted were also murdered.”'

Roberts Report. Chapter 6.6 | Conflict Related Sexual Violence

Like others my views not just of Hamas but if the Palestinians was forever changed by how ordinary Gazans reacted to the hostages and the bodies being brought back to Gaza. The cheering and joy. It was like nothing I’ve ever seen.

men rape all the time. Rape is a known war crime. Gaza is not a bastion of women’s rights. Why wouldn’t these particular men rape women and children? They burned them alive and strangled babies with their bare hands. They are savages.

and yes, that Reem Aslam who has been so cool headed on gender ideology is so blinded by anti semitism that she denies the rapes of 7th October shows you what an appallingly racist organisation the UN are. Like the BBC, nothing they have to say on this issue can now be taken seriously.

It's also disappointing she was stupid enough to write that no Palestinian applauded rape in Gaza. They're a group numbering millions. She couldn't possibly know that. Works the same for any other large group as well, so you should just never do it. I thought she had more sense.

I'm so disappointed. I've really admired Reem's work and her intelligence, courage and integrity. What a let down.

What do you expect from an organisation that appointed Saudi Arabia to chair a women's rights Committee and is just a coalition of various African and Arab dictatorships?

I would have thought finding naked, mutilated women was not circumstantial. Looks like fact.

As the OP has made very clear, currently Reem is under attack by people within the Australian government and its agencies such as Australia’s Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Anna Cody over the past week or so. This is due to the upcoming case where Buckley is taking Jasmine Sussex to discrimination tribunal in QLD because Jasmine said men should not be feeding the secretions from their breasts to infants.

Here is the archive link

“Secret email shows Anna Cody plotted move against UN women’s rights investigator”

Sex Discrimination Commissioner Anna Cody asked about blocking the appointment of a senior UN human rights official who challenged her claims that transgender women are women.

Stephen Rice, November 10, 2025 - 9:30PM

https://archive.is/5v9O6

So there has been a huge support for Reem Alsalem for her amongst women. Of course it is pertinent to discuss her recent tweet to understand what may be going on.

Alsalem posted this on the 14th of November. Why on earth shouldnt OP post about it, today or any day?

Didn't there use to be accusations of Isrealis not raping palestinian women because they were white racists?

That does seem to be a glaring comparison doesn’t it. Or when the Bosnian conflict was happening. No one demanded forensic proof of the atrocities committed against women there. I wonder why it is only Israeli women who must supply forensic proof of their rapes and torture by Hamas?

It's beyond disappointing. I'm shocked. Even if it represents her views, one of the things I admired about her is considered and measured language. This is the opposite of that - I'm think specifically about her letter to the Scottish government regarding the dangers of self-id which was well informed and a model of clarity and precision.

With respect to the assertion itself - the evidence for large scale rapes is very substantial. Many international news organizations have seen it. She appears to be relying on semantics to deny it took place, i.e. all evidence is tightly controlled by Israel at a national level so that investigations can't be conducted without their involvement; so it's impossible for them to be totally independent. Frankly that's the sort of thing that you see in conspiracy theories, notably holocaust denialism. 2) The Palestinians who celebrated the massacre were celebrating the killing of civilians, but not necessarily rape. If that's truly her views it should have been developed carefully and with precision, not in a misleading tweet.

It's always worth suspending final judgement on social media posts because they can be conditioned by emotion, illness, carelessness, occasionally even hacking. But on its face this is appalling and a big blow to GC causes in the UN.

Go back to the Groypers.

Quite.

People just don't realise how deep the rot is at the UN. It's bad. Really bad.

Yep. I'm stunned.

Oh I know that Hamas are no different but I truly didn't want to be part of a world where women who would normally "believe women" will be resort to the old "well where's the evidence" and it's just all lies because they just hate Israel so much. I am genuinely heartbroken than women will disregard another woman's abuse because of her faith, ethnicity or the country she lives in.

Yes, it changed the Palestine issue for me too. I was broadly pro-Palestinian before, and while Hamas obviously don't represent all Palestinians I can't get past what they did.

I agree on Reem Alsalem too. She has done so much for women, I was expecting the thread title to be either sarcastic or some kind of wind-up.

This is one fo the things I’ve found most astounding about this whole thing. I’ve never seen women questioned about whther they were raped before during a terrorist attack or war in a way Israeli women have been questioned. I haven’t seen one person questioning any rapes during the ongoing crisis in Sudan and we have very little independent evidence on that. Just the fucking horrific testimonies of the women and those who bore witness to the crimes.

I think a lot of it is that the people who question it fundamentally support Hamas and don’t want what they see as “the resistance” tarnished with a crime that is basically seen as making you a pervert. It’s very hard to live with the cognitive dissonance that your noble fighters are actually just scrubby little perverts. So people decide the rapes couldn’t possibly have happened. I’ve met Palestinians who heavily engage in rape denial. Which is insane because of the level of martital rape that occurs in Palestine. Between 30-45% of Gazan women in surveys say their husbands have used force during sex. So I mean in that context given how common it is you wouldn’t really be surprised if they did it to someone else.

I think for a lot of these people the idea of a Palestinian man even wanting to rape a Jewish woman (the assumption is here I think it’s motivated by desire for Jewish women) is uncomfortable. I don’t know how to put this in a delicate way or articulate it properly but for a lot of people rape is still about the desirability of the victim. I think for a lot of pro Hamas people their view of Jews is that they are not just an oppressor class but the old tropes about Jews being uniquely ugly and disgusting as well (I feel ill writing that). So when a rape occurs it a) undermines the nobility of the rapist b) undermines the notion of the Jew being so vile that no decent man would touch one. I’m sorry for writing that, it feels so wrong on all levels, but from my conversations with some arab women it feels like they just see it that way. I’m definitely not saying that how all arab women see it at all but the response I’ve got from a few feels a bit like “why would any arab man want to have sex with a Jew”. These are not my friends by the way, these are conversations I’ve accidentally got into by expressing sympathy for the victims of 7th October. It’s the easy way to disbelieve women, “you are too ugly to rape, you are too inhuman to be fuckable”. It’s bothered me for a while but thats the undercurrent that I feel is there.

I feel like I need to have a shower, that made me feel disgusted just for typing it out.

It's the opposite of pertinent and this is pathetic. If you want to discuss a completely different set of human rights abuses, start a thread instead of trying to detract from discussion on this one.

As for the thread topic, hadn't realised Reem was a Hamas rape denials. What a disappointment. Maybe I shouldn't be surprised though, with the UNs record.