On October 8, 2023, a day after Hamas’s attacks on southern Israel, Israeli legal scholar and women's rights advocate Ruth Halperin-Kaddari called in a favor from her longtime friend and former colleague, United Nations Special Representative Pramila Patten. Halperin-Kaddari, who in 2018 was ranked as one of the world's hundred most influential people in gender equality policy, conveyed her conviction that Hamas had orchestrated mass, systematic sexual assaults the previous day, urging that Israel needed UN recognition of these allegations.
Patten, as the special representative on sexual violence in conflict and under-secretary-general of the United Nations, was not empowered with a mandate to launch investigations or produce findings. Yet Halperin-Kaddari believed Patten was uniquely well positioned to lend the UN’s imprimatur to Israel’s allegations. “I called her and said, ‘Pramila, we need you here, what do I need to do?’” Halperin-Kaddari would later recount on a podcast.
Patten responded with caution, asking “Do you know if it really happened?” Though not previously reported, this exchange—which Halperin-Kaddari has referenced multiple times in interviews—ultimately led to Patten’s visit in late January 2024. The trip was a controversial one: While Patten and her UN team were hosted and chaperoned by Halperin-Kaddari, they lacked any formal investigatory mandate, and the decision to conduct such an unprecedented mission was met with fierce dissent inside her own office.
Patten ultimately published a report that was wielded by Israeli officials as evidence to bolster allegations of systemic sexual violence. Yet a close reading of the text showed it contained far more nuanced language that seemed to undermine those officials’ claims. The report’s central finding—that there were “reasonable grounds to believe that conflict-related sexual violence occurred during the 7 October attacks”—fell short of confirming that systemic sexual violence had in fact occurred. Yet media coverage, particularly articles featuring Halperin-Kaddari’s commentary, often presented Patten’s report as definitive proof that backed up Israel’s incendiary claims.
Spoiler: Israeli prosecutor confirms no rape allegations from October 7 attacks