As the third anniversary of the Hamas-led massacres in Israel approaches, the time to reflect has arrived. The hostages who survived Hamas’s torture in Gaza are finally home, but trauma remains a reality in a country full of scars.
While a whole nation suffered daily from the loss of their loved ones and the despair of waiting for the hostages to come home, one question remained: where was the United Nations during this time?
The UN’s early response
Israelis woke on the morning of Simchat Torah to the sound of sirens calling everyone to run to shelters for protection, while rocket fire filled the sky. At the same time, in the South, Hamas terrorists invaded the Supernova music festival, near kibbutz Re’im. That was only the beginning of a brutal slaughter that would kill approximately 1,200 people, including civilians and security forces.
On that day, Stéphane Dujarric, spokesperson for UN Secretary-General António Guterres, published an official statement saying that the secretary-general vehemently condemned the Hamas attacks, and called for the respect and protection of civilians in accordance with international humanitarian law.
He stressed that “violence cannot provide a solution to the conflict, and that only through negotiation leading to a two-state solution can peace be achieved.”
Even in a time of tragedy, the only paragraph the UN shared spent two lines on a political statement. What did that mean? Time would make it clear.
Days later, on October 11, Guterres declared: “I call for the immediate release of all Israeli hostages held in Gaza,” simultaneously calling for civilian protection and respect for international humanitarian law.
On October 15, he addressed Hamas directly, saying, “To Hamas, the hostages must be immediately released without conditions,” and addressed Israel separately regarding humanitarian access to Gaza. It might have felt like the beginning of a real attempt at action, but it was only the ashes of hope. The following days revealed a sequence of failed attempts to address the situation.
By October 25, the Security Council had failed to approve several resolution drafts regarding the matter, whether for lack of a majority or because states exercised their veto power.
By this point, the inability of the Security Council to act was not simply a question of whether the UN “wanted” to act. It was a political deadlock among the permanent members and other states.
On the same day, UN Women addressed the UN Security Council. The branch’s executive director, Sima Bahous, condemned the October 7 attacks, as well as the reports of sexual violence that had emerged, but nothing concrete was done.
In addition, when reading her speech, one thing stands out: she spent more than half of her space discussing the situation in Gaza, not the fact that multiple Israeli women had suffered, and were still suffering, sexual violence at the hands of Hamas.
On October 27, the General Assembly controversy was established. It adopted a resolution calling for a humanitarian truce and, importantly, calling for the immediate and unconditional release of “civilians” being illegally held captive. The aspect to be highlighted here is simple: the General Assembly did demand the release of civilians held captive, but it failed to adopt the more explicit amendment condemning Hamas and hostage-taking.
No full investigation
On November 15, more than a month after Hamas’s atrocities in Israel, the UN Security Council adopted its first official resolution regarding the matter, Resolution 2712.
It was the first formal decision from the body, approved with 12 votes in favor, zero against, and three abstentions, demanding urgent and extended humanitarian pauses, the protection of civilians, and the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages held by Hamas and other groups, “especially children.”
In order to analyze Resolution 2712’s content, it is imperative to remember that October 7’s victims were the people from the Israeli side of the map. But the first official document addressing the tragedy was largely focused on the situation of the civilians in Gaza, due to the Israeli response against Hamas’s deeds.
December 8, 2023, was one of the most relevant days of the war’s timeline. On this day, two months after the massacres, the UN Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict, Pramila Patten, publicly addressed sexual violence against the hostages in Gaza, stating that she was “gravely concerned” about emerging reports of sexual violence against both women and men while held in Hamas captivity.
In her statement, she called for independent investigations into the allegations, and welcomed an invitation from Israel to conduct an official visit. But would it mean an actual UN intervention? Unfortunately, no.
From January 29 to February 14, 2024, Patten and a technical team visited Israel and the West Bank. The mission’s schedule included 34 confidential interviews with survivors, witnesses, and released hostages. The group visited four attack sites and the morgue, reviewed more than 5,000 photographs and approximately 50 hours of video, and met with the families of hostages still in captivity. But what could have been the beginning of an extensive investigation resulted in nothing.
The UN didn’t enter Gaza. Patten explained that, because of ongoing hostilities, she did not request to visit the Strip. In March of that year, she published the mission’s findings, concluding that there was “clear and convincing information” that some hostages taken to Gaza had been subjected to sexual violence.
The mission also found reasonable grounds to believe that sexual violence may still have been occurring against hostages remaining in captivity. But her report said that the situation’s total extent could not be established, concluding that the scope of sexual violence against the hostages would require a “fully-fledged investigation.” That investigation never happened.
Testimony without accountability
The year 2025 brought another wave of disappointment. According to the UN secretary-general’s 2026 report, six hostages released from Gaza made public allegations of sexual violence in 2025, among them, three women and three men released at different times. But even after listening to testimony from the freed hostages, the UN explicitly declared that it couldn’t independently verify these allegations.
Three years on, the pattern is impossible to miss. The evidence was never what was lacking. The audio, the videos, the photographs, the testimonies of survivors were all there.
What was lacking was action. Again and again, the Security Council demanded compliance, yet it never imposed a dedicated sanctions regime and never authorized an enforcement operation to compel Hamas to release the hostages.
Statements were issued, concern was voiced, a mission was sent, and still the question this reckoning began with has no better answer than it did at 06:30 on that first morning: Where was the UN? A nation is left to carry its scars, and
the accountability it was owed never came.■
Lara Sukster Mosheyof is a journalist and studio manager at The Jerusalem Post. She holds a master’s degree from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in law, with a specialization in human rights, transitional justice, and international law.