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Visiting UN official say she’s haunted by accounts of Hamas atrocities

Pramila Patten can’t sleep after hearing and seeing the terrorists’ massacres and sexual violence on October 7.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

After spending over a week hearing and seeing testimony of Hamas atrocities especially directed at women during its terrorists’ surprise invasion of Israel on October 7, a United Nations official said she now could not sleep at night, Ynet reported Monday.

Pramila Patten, special representative of the UN secretary-general on sexual violence in conflict, concluded her visit Monday, whose purpose was to “gather information on sexual violence, reportedly committed in the context of the attacks of Oct. 7 and its aftermath,” as a UN statement put it.

One of the first things she did was watch the 47-minute video compilation of the barbarities of the Hamas invaders made by the IDF shot by the terrorists themselves as well as CCTV footage at the murder sites.

“Only after I saw the video did I understand things that I didn’t understand before in terms of the magnitude of the disaster that happened,” she admitted, adding that she hadn’t slept since then.

Patten also visited the largest murder site, where more than 360 partygoers were murdered at a Nova dance rave, many of them having been brutally raped first. She toured Kibbutz Be’eri, one of the hardest-hit kibbutzim in the Gaza envelope, hearing the stories of a survivor of the slaughter and a first responder on the scene, and it shocked her.

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“The world outside cannot understand the magnitude of the event,” she said. “I myself also internalized the magnitude of the event just by being here myself.”

Besides asking for witnesses and victims to come forward, she and her team of ten medical and legal experts spoke to doctors who are treating Hamas’ victims both physically and psychologically, those providing government support, and other relevant professionals.

Much of Patten’s team is staying for at least another week to continue their evidence-collection for a report she is expected to release on sexual violence in many countries, including Israel, later this month.

The Mauritanian lawyer had gained instant infamy in Israel after being confronted at a UN event on January 20 about the international body’s long silence over Hamas terrorists’ widespread, brutal rapes of women during their attack.

Lawyer and actress Linor Abargil, a rape victim herself, had expressed her disappointment over Patten “not condemning all the abuse that happened to our women,” and asked why she wasn’t taking immediate action. Patten responded, “Maybe you should have all the facts.”

She did not relate to the points that her condemnation had come a full two months after the atrocities had been committed, and that the UN had not acted in any way against the terror organization.

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Perhaps to counteract the sense of betrayal that Israelis and their supporters around the world still feel over the world’s silence, Patten said in a meeting with President Isaac Herzog and his wife Michal last week, “I want to say that survivors and victims, we owe you all more than solidarity. We want to ensure that you have justice.”