Albanese report slammed as ‘gross perversion of history,’ ‘weaponizing Holocaust comparisons’
Francesca Albanese, the U.N. special rapporteur for Palestinian rights, presented a new report to the United Nations General Assembly which purports to provide “clearly identifiable” proof that Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians.
Francesca Albanese
Titled “Genocide as colonial erasure,” the report focuses on “genocidal intent, contextualizing the situation within a decades-long process of territorial expansion and ethnic cleansing aimed at liquidating the Palestinian presence” in Gaza, eastern Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria.
“The situation is worsening by the day,” Albanese said at a Thursday press conference. “The pace and intensity of the Israeli violence and destruction has spread to the rest of the occupied territory, leaving no Palestinian safe under Israel’s unfettered control.”
“For over a year, I have pleaded to all concerned parties as well as states, particularly those with influence, to take concrete action to stop the destruction of the Palestinian people, to ensure the prompt and unconditional release of all hostages, both Israelis and Palestinians, and to ensure international law is respected,” she added.
The violence that “Israel has unleashed against the Palestinians post-Oct. 7 is not happening in a vacuum,” per the report, “but is part of a long-term intentional, systematic, state-organized forced displacement and replacement of the Palestinians.” (U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres was criticized for saying in late October 2023 that the Hamas attack “did not happen in a vacuum.”)
In the report, Albanese called for Israeli officials, military leaders and soldiers to be prosecuted. The report states that since Oct. 7, 2023, Israel has acted not in self-defense but with an aim to expand its territory.
“The events of Oct. 7 provided the impetus to advance towards the goal of a ‘greater Israel,’” Albanese wrote. (That term generally refers to Israel, Judea, Samaria and Gaza.) She added during a private event on her U.S. speaking tour this week that Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack “triggered the opportunity for Israel to complete and channel the project of colonial erasure.”
Multiple U.S. ambassadors and the French and German governments have accused Albanese of Jew-hatred, including for comparing Israel to Nazi Germany and stating that Hamas wasn’t motivated by antisemitism when it attacked Israel on Oct. 7.
“The latest report by Francesca Albanese is a gross perversion of history, weaponizing Holocaust comparisons to demonize Israel while ignoring the terror of Hamas. This inflammatory rhetoric must be confronted,” the World Jewish Congress stated on Wednesday. “United Nations, it’s time to stop platforming antisemitism.”
The group “demands that the United Nations holds Francesca Albanese accountable and stops permitting its platforms to be hijacked by individuals who exploit them to spread hate and undermine the U.N.’s mission of promoting peace and human rights,” the World Jewish Congress added.
‘Genocidal intent’
What Albanese refers to as Israel’s stated goals, “accepted by some states, remain ‘to eradicate Hamas’ and ‘bring the hostages home,’” per the report, which states that eliminating the terror group and rescuing the captives are, in their own right, genocidal.
“Neither of these goals, or motives, preclude a finding of genocidal intent as the only reasonable inference to be drawn,” she wrote. “Instead, both motives, together and disjunctively, substantiate the genocidal intent.”
The report also accuses the Jewish state of having “delayed” polio vaccinations” for Gazan children and “attacked vaccination areas and a United Nations vaccination convoy,” after a rare polio case emerged in July.
The footnote attached to “Israel delayed vaccinations” in Albanese’s report links to a United Nations article and one in CNN, which cite Israeli collaboration on vaccinations.
Albanese’s argument that the Jewish state is guilty of genocide relies on judicial opinions not adopted into law, cites her own published statements as evidence and interprets Israel’s efforts to rescue hostages in Gaza as genocidal intent.
“The role of the Israeli media in inciting this genocide, by helping to foster an unchecked genocidal climate, ought to be examined judicially—as has occurred in other contexts,” she wrote, citing examples from the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.
In that case, two executives, an announcer and a correspondent for the RTLM radio station, which was tied to the Hutu-led government, that last for a year, were convicted of genocide-related crimes. Albanese didn’t cite specific Israeli outlets that she says fomented genocide.
“Compounding decades of dehumanization of the Palestinians, the media have platformed proponents of genocide and debates legitimating their brutalization, and have withheld the facts from the Israeli public,” she wrote in the report. “State actions have exacerbated the situation, including heavy military censorship, the killing of 111 Palestinian journalists, denial of entry to foreign journalists to Gaza and the forced
closure of Al Jazeera’s offices in Israel and the West Bank.”
Much of Israeli media is not viewed generally as friendly toward the Israeli government or the army. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has often clashed with Israeli media, including outlets that are publicly-funded and associated with the Israeli military.
Albanese “has a long and deep record of antisemitism and anti-Israel bias,” the Anti-Defamation League stated. “She is far from an impartial expert. In fact, she exhibits behaviors that violate the U.N. code of conduct almost on a daily basis.”
“Francesca Albanese’s newest ‘report’ completes her record of recycling accusations. According to her hate-filled paradigm, the State of Israel has no historic reason to exist, no right to defend its population and both the attack of Oct. 7 and the rescue of hostages are merely used by Israel as an excuse,” stated the Israeli mission to the United Nations in Geneva. “This distorted reality is a smokescreen to hide her hatred for Israel.”
Albanese “is nothing but a political activist who abuses an already discriminatory U.N. mandate. She is regularly spewing antisemitism, shielding and encouraging terrorism and distorting the law,” the Israeli mission added. “As a U.N. mandate holder, she has breached every possible rule of the U.N. code of conduct. She must immediately be held accountable for her continuous abuses.”
