What the UN ignores on Francesca Albanese
Even before she used her position as special rapporteur for the United Nations to blast Israel, Albanese championed the Palestinian cause.
By Giovanni Giacalone
JNS
Dec 11, 2024
During a press conference at Parliament Hill in the Canadian capital of Ottawa on Nov. 5, Francesca Albanese—the U.N. special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories—once again accused Israel of the usual. That means genocide in Gaza, apartheid, atrocities, tortures, occupation, mass arrests and even the execution of Palestinian children.
After citing the view of one of the founders of the Italian Communist Party—Antonio Gramsci—regarding the role of financial power in cultural hegemony, she accused the pro-Israel lobbies, quoted as being “very vocal, virulent and aggressive,” of pressuring governments to boycott her.
One of the journalists attending the press conference asked her for clarification. Did she really think that meetings and events were canceled because of pressure from pro-Israel groups?
Albanese replied that she could not tell what the causes behind the withdrawal of the invitations and meetings were and added, “I only know, I mean, I base myself on facts. It happened after pro-Israel groups and pro-Israel individuals started to accuse me of the usual, and I won’t repeat the accusations because they are extremely defamatory … .”
She then accused Israel of taking “the land of historical Palestine as it has been doing ever since, even before its existence.”
When asked by one of the reporters if she believed in the right of Israel to exist, Albanese dodged the question, saying: “Israel does exist, Israel is a recognized member of the U.N. Besides this, there is no such thing in international law as the right of a state to exist … It’s not up to us.”
Albanese provided a colorful example, saying that “Italy exists, but if tomorrow Italy and France merged and formed ‘Itafrance,’ fine.” She then brought the issue back to “the right of the Palestinians to exist.”
It is worth recalling that on Oct. 14, Albanese found herself at the center of a media storm after a series of aggressive anti-Israel posts published in the previous days on her social-media accounts, comparing Israel to Nazi Germany. It sparked immediate outrage from several Jewish organizations, including the World Jewish Congress, which called for her immediate dismissal from the United Nations.
Appointed in May 2022 as the special rapporteur, Albanese has used antisemitic stereotypes and legitimized support for terrorism in her criticism of Israel. In addition to regularly portraying Israelis as Nazis and reiterating that “Hamas has the right to resist,” since the terror group’s assault in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, she has systematically downplayed the atrocities committed by Palestinian terrorists by denying that the attack on Jews was a pogrom believing rather that it was a consequence of Israel’s aggressions.
Alleged problematic financial issues
Moving to the recent financial controversies, Article 3 of the Special Procedures Code of Conduct expressly forbids Albanese from accepting remuneration from any governmental or nongovernmental source for activities carried out in pursuit of the mandate. In June, UN Watch called for an investigation into Albanese for “illegally requesting payments for work performed in her official U.N. capacity” over alleged payments for speaking events and honorarium for a fake lecture; specifically, that she circumvented the prohibition by requesting that, in exchange for her lectures, payments by external groups be made to her research assistant.
The United Nations launched an investigation into allegations that Albanese illegally accepted funding from the Australian Friends of Palestine Association and other pro-Palestinian groups to fund an estimated $20,000 trip to Australia and New Zealand in November 2023, in which she lobbied a major pension fund to divest from Israel. Those groups initially stated that they “sponsored” and “supported” her trip, violating U.N. rules forbidding remuneration from nongovernmental sources.
Albanese denied that the Australian group sponsored her trip, claiming that it was funded by the United Nations. However, the complaint argues that the international body lacks any legal basis to fund trips by its experts beyond their area of investigation.
The U.N. Human Rights Office told JNS on July 12 that the global body paid for the trip. However, these trips did not appear in the mandated U.N. special procedures annual report because “it was not a designated ‘country visit’ per se.”
“Only official country visits aimed at assessing the human rights situation in that country itself, and that are followed by a country visit report to the Human Rights Council, are included in this list,” the U.N. Human Rights Office added.
Going beyond Albanese’s financial controversies, her extreme ideological positions are obvious.
After Albanese compared Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Adolf Hitler on social media, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, in July, called for her removal from the international body, writing on X, “There is no place for antisemitism from U.N.-affiliated officials tasked with promoting human rights. While the United States has never supported Francesca Albanese’s mandate, it is clear she is not fit for this or any position at the U.N.”
U.S. Permanent Representative to the U.N. Human Rights Council, Michèle Taylor, tweeted: “Special rapporteurs should be striving to improve human-rights challenges, not employing dehumanizing rhetoric.”
The French representative to the United Nations also called for Albanese’s immediate dismissal and demanded a thorough investigation into the influences to which she was potentially subjected, arguing that “by comparing the defensive operations of Israel—at war for its own survival after the pogroms of 7 October—to the expansion of the Third Reich and the Holocaust, she has crossed a new red line. Her violently anti-Israel and antisemitic statements, which have been spreading for years, seriously damage the credibility of our international organizations.”
The German representative, for his part, said that Albanese’s remarks were “a disgrace” and that it was “appalling” that the special rapporteur appeared to “justify the horrific terrorist attacks and ‘deny their antisemitic nature.’”
Albanese is the first special rapporteur to be condemned by Germany and France for anti-Semitism. She replied to the criticism by saying that “the U.S., Germany and France are clearly involved and supporting what Israel is doing.”
Albanese’s opinions of Israel predate her 2022 United Nations appointment, as she had previously said that Israel was “keeping captive millions of civilians,” organized a panel on “Israel apartheid,” campaigned for an arms embargo against Israel and argued that the “Jewish lobby” was in full control of the United States.
After Oct. 7, Albanese went so far as to deny that the Hamas massacre was antisemitic: “The worst anti-Semitic massacre of the century? No, Mr. President. The victims of 7/10 were killed not because of their Judaism, but in response to Israel’s oppression.”
These comments prompted the International Legal Forum, a body of more than 4,000 lawyers, to send a letter to the Secretary-General of the United Nations António Guterres in February, becoming the first to call for Albanese’s resignation.
Nevertheless, Albanese continued her antisemitic propaganda, voicing her support on X for a post published by human-rights official Craig Mokhiber in which Netanyahu was compared to Nazi leader Hitler, “That’s exactly what I think.”
In a speech to the National Press Club of Australia in November 2023, Albanese said Israel cannot claim the right of “self-defense” under international law because Gaza is a territory that it occupies. The statement caused an immediate reaction from the director of the Touro Institute of Human Rights and the Holocaust, Anne Bayefsky, who slammed Albanese’s comments, saying they go “hand-in-hand with all her other legally indefensible claims” regarding the conflict.
This past August, Albanese once again denied Israel’s right to self-defense, citing the West Bank’s “occupation” and “unlawful use of force” in one of her tweets. On another occasion, she admitted that her personal views on the Palestinian issue could compromise her objectivity.
Albanese also omitted the fact that her husband, Massimiliano Calì, worked as an economic advisor for the Palestinian Authority and authored a report entitled “The economic costs of Israeli occupation for the Palestinian occupied territories.”
Why didn’t the UNHRC properly scrutinize her background before hiring her?
Albanese’s anti-Israel propaganda in Italy
While maintaining her position as U.N. special rapporteur, Albanese was busy spreading anti-Israel propaganda on the Italian media.
On Sept. 11, Albanese appeared in a YouTube program with a well-known Italian pro-Palestinian supporter, Alessandro Di Battista. On his program, she once again accused Israel of “genocide” and of dropping the equivalent of “five nuclear bombs” in Gaza. She also claimed that the destruction caused by Israel in Gaza is greater than the destruction during World War II, citing Japan and Germany.
Di Battista stated that Israeli settlers are “fundamentalists who believe that only the creation of a great Israel can bring to the return of the Messiah” and defined them as “the new Ku Klux Klan … because they behave in the exact same way.” On this occasion, Albanese once again denied that Hamas slaughtered Israeli children and perpetrated mass rapes, stating that they were “fabricated.” This is just part of the 58-minute-long video where other concerning statements were made by the two.
Di Battista is a former Five-Star Movement politician who was exposed by the Italian press for being close to Mohammad Hannoun, a Genoa-based, Palestinian architect who was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department for being a member of Hamas and for collecting and sending funds to the Palestinian terrorist organization. According to the United States, Hannoun has solicited funding for Hamas with senior Hamas officials and sent at least $4 million to Hamas over a 10-year period. Di Battista also traveled with Hannoun to Lebanon, taking part in the architect’s “humanitarian” activity, and spent time in Iran in 2020.
Albanese has also been invited several times to the Italian TV show “Piazza Pulita” on the LA7 channel, where she called for “immediate sanctions against Israel” and accused Israel of not being a democracy because of the “mistreatment of minorities” and of ruling the West Bank through a “military dictatorship.”
She was interviewed in May 2023 by the Human Rights and Conflict Management of the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies in Pisa, Italy, for the Peacekeeping International Day, where she once again attacked the “Israeli military presence in the occupied territories aimed at protecting the colonial presence.”
In January 2024, Albanese’s husband used his Facebook account to publicly accuse the Italian Democratic Party of silencing a “sacrosanct debate on the extermination Israel is committing in Palestine, to continue protecting the egregious violations of international law of a criminal state.”
In March of this year, the special rapporteur stated that “the Italian government should sanction Israel,” and in May, she gave a long interview to the Italian Communist newspaper Il Manifesto, where she claimed that “Israel did not want to stop its Gaza operations and accept a truce because it was afraid to see what it had done there.” Among other things, she also accused Israel of immediately striking places of Palestinian identity: churches, mosques, cultural centers and universities, instead of military targets.
All this can be classified as the activity of a propagandist or a militant and very far from the necessary impartiality and moderation needed by a special rapporteur. Overall, the extensive work provided by UN Watch will further compromise Albanese’s position as rapporteur and the United Nations for having appointed her regardless of her views and propaganda activity.
It is also worth pointing out that Rep. Andre Carson (D-Ind.) had invited Albanese to Capitol Hill to brief congressional staff at the end of October but later canceled the event.
One cannot help but wonder how the situation got to this point with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) working as a front for Hamas in Gaza; U.N. head Guterres lamenting the elimination of Hamas terrorist and Nukhba commander Mohammad Abu Itiwi as a “UNRWA colleague”; the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon-Hezbollah scandal; and, last but not least, Albanese’s appointment as special rapporteur regardless of her pro-Palestinian propaganda and networking and activity. This is indeed the darkest time for the United Nations since its formation in the wake of World War II.
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