The fact that the UNSR on the occupied Palestinian territories remains in her position is a victory against a mountain of pro-Israel organizations.
Perhaps the most attacked official at the United Nations, Francesca Albanese has become one of the staunchest defenders of human rights inside occupied Palestine. Despite the countless accusations leveled at her, entry bans to a number of countries, and even death threats, she has prevailed with a mandate to continue her position at the UN.
First receiving her appointment to the position of Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories in May 2022, the Italian scholar and international lawyer, Francesca Albanese, was under the threat of potentially being pushed out of her role.
Following news reports that a United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) session would determine whether the well-known Special Rapporteur would keep her role, another smear campaign emerged.
The UNHRC has officially reaffirmed that Albanese will remain in her role until 2028, dispelling a number of rumors about a potential ouster. While baseless claims of “antisemitism”, “support for Hamas” and “terrorism”, have long been leveled at the UN Special Rapporteur (UNSR), pro-Israel lobby groups have certainly intensified their campaigns recently.
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While the United States’ Mission to the UN recently attempted to apply pressure that would see Albanese sacked, claiming that she had espoused “virulent antisemitism, which demonizes Israel and supports Hamas,” the US Trump administration withdrew from the UNHRC due in large part to its criticisms of Israel.
This fact undermines the position of the US government, which is staunchly pro-Israel and anti-Palestinian. Donald Trump himself even uses the word Palestinian as a slur against his political opponents.
Albanese has been criticized since taking up her post at the UN in 2022, which even prompted some 65 Jewish scholars that defended her in signing a statement which read:
“It is evident that the campaign against (Albanese) is not about combating today’s antisemitism. It is essentially about efforts to silence her and to undermine her mandate as a senior UN official reporting about Israel’s violations of human rights and international law.”
Following October 7, 2023, upon the initiation of the war on Gaza, the accusations against Albanese reached unprecedented heights.
She refused to tone down her rhetoric in opposition to war crimes and was one of the first UN officials to push back against Western governments who sought to claim that history started on October 7.
The UNSR oven received a travel ban from France after she stated that claims about the Hamas attack being motivated by “anti-Semitism” were incorrect.
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From the very beginning of the conflict, she sounded the alarm about Israel’s plans to ethnically cleanse Gaza and was labeled a “Hamas supporter”, “antisemite” and “biased”. While the Israeli government and its defenders claimed that such a policy didn’t exist, alleging that such allegations were “antisemitic”, Israel now openly seeks ethnic cleansing.
Albanese also published a UN report called “Anatomy of a Genocide” in March of 2024, which received a huge amount of backlash.
Pro-Israel groups have been relentless in their attacks on the UNSR. UN Watch, a pro-Israel website that goes after prominent figures who criticse Tel Aviv’s policies, even released a 60-page report that claimed the Special Rapporteur promotes Hamas propaganda, advancing “anti-Semitism and Jihadi terrorism”.
The litany of attacks on her character has ranged from calling her an “antisemite”, “terrorist sympathiser” and even a “Holocaust denier”, all without evidence. She has also received personal attacks and unsubstantiated claims about her funding.
A tactic that was used to delegitimize Albanese in July of 2024 was that she had received funding from a range of pro-Palestinian activist groups in Australia. The UN Watch website claimed that these groups in Australia were “pro-Hamas”, an allegation that also had no proof.
However, the Israeli and segments of the Western corporate media ran with the story that the UNSR was being accused of receiving funds from a “pro-Hamas group”. These claims went nowhere due to a lack of evidence, while the UN official has publicly said that all of her work is unpaid.
On October 1, Francesca Albanese released another report for the United Nations called “Genocide as colonial erasure”. Continuing her quest towards forwarding the cause of Palestinian human rights, Albanese frequently travels, participates in conferences and interviews, providing essential information about the ongoing atrocities in Gaza.
In March, an extremist Zionist group called “Betar”, which openly praised and threatened tactics described by former CIA Director, Leon Panetta, as “terrorism”, even threatened to hand a pager to Albanese.
This threat is based on the explosive pager attacks that were carried out indiscriminately across Lebanon by Israel, which killed and maimed civilians, as well as members of Hezbollah.
The fact that the UNSR on the occupied Palestinian territories remains in her position is a victory against a mountain of pro-Israel organizations and Western government officials who are funded by pro-Israel Lobby groups. It also stands as a testament to the fact that the claims made against Albanese are without merit.
(The Palestine Chronicle)
– Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, writer, and documentary filmmaker. He focuses on the Middle East, specializing in Palestine. He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle.
