Lawyer group calls for UN to fire ‘special rapporteur’ Francesca Albanese
Israel suffered a spate of deadly terror attacks at the end of last week: Two young Jewish sisters, and their mother, were shot on April 7, the second day of Passover, and an Italian tourist was hit by a car in Tel Aviv.
A press briefing by Francesca Albanese, U.N. special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, at the headquarters of the United Nations in New York City on Oct. 27, 2022. Credit: Lev Radin/Shutterstock
While many worldwide mourned in response, Francesca Albanese—herself Italian—took to Twitter to politicise the deadly events.
“The loss of life in the occupied Palestinian territory and Israel is devastating, especially at a time that should be of peace for all, Christians, Jews, Muslims,” Albanese, U.N. special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, tweeted on April 8.
She added that “Israel has a right to defend itself, but can’t claim it when it comes to the people it oppresses,” whose “lands it colonises.”
Albanese has a reputation for such comments. In January, a bipartisan group of nearly a dozen members of Congress called for her to be fired. The unrepentant U.N. official has compared Israelis to Nazis and said, during an event attended by senior members of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad—both terrorist groups according to the United States and the European Union—“You have a right to resist this occupation.”
On April 11, the International Legal Forum and Italian lawyer Barbara Pontecorvo sent a letter to António Guterres and Volker Türk—U.N. secretary-general and high commissioner for human rights, respectively—calling for Albanese to be fired.
“Furthermore, we called to abolish her entire mandate altogether and suggested the U.N. would be far better served by replacing it with a special rapporteur for combating antisemitism instead,” Arsen Ostrovsky, CEO of the International Legal Forum, told JNS.
Ostrovsky and Pontecorvo cited the U.N. code of conduct for special rapporteurs, which directs them to be guided by “impartiality and objectivity.” With Albanese, who displays “persistent, ongoing and blind bias and hostility,” there “is not even the pretext of these values,” the two wrote. “How much longer can the United Nations tolerate this?”
“António Guterres and the U.N. leadership repeatedly claim that combating all forms of racial hatred and intolerance are sacrosanct goals of the U.N., yet Jew-hatred at the Human Rights Council is the one type of hatred that continues unabated,” Ostrovsky told JNS.
“As long as the U.N. allows Albanese to continue in this role and her irredeemably one-sided mandate to continue, they are legitimising antisemitism and endorsing violence against Jews,” he added.
Albanese is evidently aware of the press coverage her remarks have received. She took to Twitter again to say that she is “disheartened” to see her words misrepresented and decontextualised.
She then used language that questions the elasticity of “impartiality and objectivity,” again referring to Israeli “military occupation” and “denying Palestinians their rights for 56 years,” in addition to Israeli actions serving to “stoke the flames of violence, perpetuating a cycle of needless suffering for both sides.”
JNS
Francesca Albanese should aplogise for her insensitive and abhorrent comments. The victims of the recent terrorist attacks had rights the most important one being the right to life. Israel has the right to defend itself and its citizens. Ms Albanese should now resign and go quietly. Her recent conduct rather than advancing the cause of Palestinians is instead crippling it by tactless comments which im plicitly condone terrorist outrages on innocent civilians.
One side tries to hurt and kill kids, intentionally. On purpose. By design. The other side does not. Shame on those that justify intentionally killing kids as an act of resistance. Fire her and cut all UN funding.