'Believe Israeli women; Pramila Patten did'

Earlier this week, The Jerusalem Post spoke to the Foreign Ministry’s director of human rights and international organizations, Michal Philosoph, about the crucial role she played in securing the visit to Israel by Pramila Patten, the United Nations special representative on sexual violence in conflict, and her team.

The visit, which took place from January 29 to February 14, resulted in a report, the first of its kind written by a UN body, which confirms that “sexual violence, including genital mutilation, sexualized torture, or cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment” was perpetrated by Hamas terrorists during their heinous attack.

As one of the main driving forces behind the UN envoy’s visit and her ensuing report, Philosoph gave the Post an insight into how – after months of silence from UN Women and other groups – the visit came about and why she was so keen to make it happen.

“I identified a need to bring someone honest and professional to report about it. Not somebody who is Israeli,” but someone from a “recognized international organization,” she explained.

Consequently, Philosoph enlisted the help of prominent Israeli jurist, Prof. Ruth Halperin-Kaddari, who served for 12 years on the UN Committee on Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women and works very closely with Patten.

Through Halperin-Kaddari and Permanent Representative of Israel to the UN Gilad Erdan, Philosoph and her team contacted Patten’s office, which confirmed that she “was willing to come here and to see what happened.”

Before arrangements could be made, however, the not insignificant matter of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem had to be overcome. Established in May 2021 by the Human Rights Council, according to a UN resolution, the commission of inquiry is the only UN body that is entitled to “investigate all underlying root causes of recurrent tensions, instability, and protraction of conflict” in the region.

However, as Philosoph explained, due to the “unprofessional, and very biased” anti-Israel stance of this UN body and its chairwoman, Navi Pillay, Israel has consistently refused to work with it.

To illustrate her point, just days after the October 7 attack, the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs reported as follows: “The product of a UN ‘Commission of Inquiry,’ created by the UN Human Rights Council and headed by Navi Pillay, comes only days after the worst atrocity against the Jewish people since the Holocaust. The message from Pillay’s pogrom directly to Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist organizations: we have your back.”

Consequently, arrangements were made for Patten to bring her own team, which included forensic scientists, interviewers with specialist knowledge on how to interview survivors, experts in video technology who can detect whether a video is real or “fake AI,” and lawyers.

They came to get a “full picture about what happened here [on October 7],” Philosoph stated. “The visit was very intense with a lot of meetings,” she added, before confirming that Patten also “saw the 43-minute Hamas movie and, of course, she was horrified.”

Philosoph also arranged for Patten to meet with officials from the Foreign Ministry, Welfare Ministry, and Health Ministry: “We prepared each one of these meetings, as we wanted each one to be focused on sexual violence.”

"We really tried to bring her all the material we had"

Naturally, Patten and her team met survivors from the attack, some from Kibbutz Be’eri, others from the Supernova music festival, as well as hero of the hour Rami Davidian, the farmer who saved hundreds of lives by driving back and forth, bringing people from the festival to safety.

Officials from Lahav 433 – The National Crime Unit, as well as the army and other organizations, were also interviewed by Patten and her team to give them a deeper understanding of the situation here.

“We really tried to bring her all the material that we had,” Philosoph said, confirming that Patten worked from 6 a.m. until midnight while she was in Israel. “We wanted her to feel free to check everything that she wants.”

At her behest, Patten also met some of the displaced families and released hostages, including Amit Soussana, who recently “provided extensive details of sexual and other violence she suffered during [her] 55-day ordeal” at the hands of the Hamas terrorists to The New York Times.

Although Soussana is “the first former hostage to publicly say she was sexually abused in captivity,” the Times confirmed that she had already provided her harrowing account to Patten’s team, although they were “unable to review her testimony.” Due to privacy constraints, Philosoph was unable to comment further on this particular matter when the Post asked her about it.

It was important to Patten to meet, during her time in Israel, as many people as possible who were directly affected by the Hamas massacre. To that end, unrestricted access was afforded to her and her team, to enable them to carry out all of the required checks to verify their findings, thus giving validity to the report.

After Patten left Israel, her team stayed on for another week to continue its painstaking work. With fake news and anti-Israel sentiment on the rise since October 7, having all of Patten’s findings verified by the UN team was extremely important, as this gave credence to her report. As Philosoph stressed: “It’s important to have a document confirming what happened here.”

In her report, Patten confirms that the team bore witness to a “pattern” that “may be indicative of some forms of sexual violence, including genital mutilation, sexualized torture, or cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment,” in which “victims, mostly women, [were] found fully or partially naked, bound, and shot across multiple locations.”

The report also confirms that there was “clear and convincing information that sexual violence, including rape, sexualized torture, cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment, has been committed against hostages,” and that the remaining female hostages were being subjected to ongoing “sexualized torture.”

“The report was very clear about what happened here,” Philosoph stated, adding, “For us, it was very important to have a document with the UN logo confirming what happened here.” This is particularly significant, as it gives the lie to Hamas’s repeated denials that its members sexually abused people in captivity or during the October 7 attack.

At the end of the visit, Patten went over and above the call of duty by writing her own report detailing her team’s findings, rather than allowing them simply to be incorporated into the secretary-general’s report on conflict-related sexual violence, which is presented to the Security Council each year.

She also confirmed in a press conference that four prisoners whom she met in Ramallah while she was here, said that, contrary to the rumors, they had no knowledge of fellow prisoners being raped by IDF soldiers. Nevertheless, the anti-Israel lobby is still spreading these lies, making Philosoph’s job to get the truth out there even more crucial now than ever before.

Organizing the UN envoy’s visit was, Philosoph said, “one of the toughest tasks that I had in my career as a diplomat, but I didn’t hesitate for a second, because I really felt that the voice of those women was not heard.”

As our meeting came to a close, she lamented, “I wanted to do a little bit of justice for the women – but there’s a long way to go.”

Although there is huge pressure from outside bodies to minimize Patten’s report, Philosoph still firmly believes that it was worth all the hard work. What it says to the doubters and the deniers is this: “Believe Israeli women; Pramilla Patten did.”