Rapporteurs without principles: Francesca Albanese

When Holocaust denier Gilad Atzmon wrote a book about the evils of Jewishness, it was well–received by the white supremacist community. For the book’s main promotional blurb, though, the author turned to a more credentialed, and less expected, source.

From the front of the book’s dust jacket, the United Nations “Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967” announces that Atzmon’s antisemitic screed is a must-read. The rapporteur, Richard Falk, also praises Atzmon’s “unflinching integrity” — just as Atzmon has lauded Holocaust denier David Irving’s integrity, or how David Irving in turn has gushed over the “great man” Adolf Hitler.

To describe Falk as being three degrees of separation from Hitler fandom is to understate the links — this a chain of endorsement, not of acquaintance. But let’s forget Irving and Hitler and remain focused on the first-degree problem: The UN Special Rapporteur enthusiastically endorsed a well-known, flagrant antisemite. He did so while hawking a book that, among countless other swipes at the Jews, goes out of its way to sympathize with the view that “Hitler was right after all.”

Falk’s endorsement appeared in 2011, the same year he published a cartoon of a bloodthirsty dog wearing a kippah (Jewish head covering), and the same year he promoted 9/11 conspiracy theories. His UN mandate has since expired. But the same process that put one extremist in the role elevated another in his place. Francesca Albanese is the new Richard Falk.

Although Special Rapporteur Albanese may not have endorsed Gilad Atzmon’s book, she certainly doesn’t find such endorsements problematic. For example, she hosted, praised, and promoted an event at which Falk, Atzmon’s eager advocate, was a speaker. Worse, it was an event that purported to teach what is, and what is not, antisemitic. Worse yet, Falk was there as an expert, not an exhibit.

And if one might forgive Albanese for boosting other Holocaust deniers on Twitter, her own words about Jews and their nefarious power can’t be brushed aside. Her slur that the U.S. is “subjugated by the Jewish lobby,” for example, would fit seamlessly in Atzmon’s book.

Such a worldview is concerning on its own. For someone whose mandate is to pass judgment on the world’s one Jewish-majority country, it should be disqualifying.

But Albanese will keep passing her judgments with the United Nations’ imprimatur. After all, contrary to the idyllic views of the organization that still, somehow, persist, this is the U.N. in which Richard Falk was able to serve out his full term. It is the U.N. whose Human Rights Council — the body that appoints rapporteurs — currently includes Cuba, China, Qatar, Sudan, Eritrea, Burundi, Algeria, Somalia, Vietnam, and other such paragons of human rights.

So we can expect more of the same. And what is the same? Albanese often reaches for the bluntest tools in the chest — her endless charges of “apartheid” and “genocide.” To punctuate the latter, she also dabbles in Holocaust inversion — the casting of Jews as the new Nazis, a slur understood to minimize the crimes of the latter while spitting in the face of the former.

In July, for example, Albanese endorsed a social media post that compared Israel’s prime minister to Adolf Hitler. Not long before that, while promoting a video by an activist who argues that Hamas’s Oct. 7 slaughter is cause to “celebrate,” she again used the Holocaust as a prop to compare and analogize the Jewish state with the murderers of Jews.

But in a world where young people are increasingly clueless about what the Holocaust was, it may be more useful to look at Albanese’s more precise affronts, especially (but not limited to) her comments related to the massacre of October 7.

Equivocating About What Happened on Oct 7

Albanese fanned the flames of conspiracism during an interview in which she was asked about the Hamas attacks. After flatly saying Hamas targeted civilians in the attack, the UN rapporteur immediately checked herself, gesturing defensively while backtracking:

The problem is that they targeted civilians. They– uh– as n– I mean, as far as what we hear in the media is true, because this is the thing, I mean, this is– it’s very difficult to also understand, to have clarity, on what has happened. But let’s assume that what they say in the media is true.

Her flirtation with denialism wasn’t on the morning of the attacks, when some uncertainty might have been forgivable. It was in December. There was no doubt at the time about “what happened.”

Unequivocal in Spreading Ahli Hospital Misinformation

By contrast, long after it was understood that a misfired Palestinian rocket likely caused the Oct. 17 blast in the parking lot of Gaza’s al-Ahli Hospital, Albanese pushed the claim that Israel was responsible.

The day after the incident, and after Joe Biden, independent analysts, and Israeli officials had already pointed the finger at a Palestinian rocket (see, for example, early assessments here, here, here, here, here, here, and here), Albanese described the incident as an “atrocity crime” and retweeted the false claim that it was an “Israeli airstrike.” She and other rapporteurs continued to misrepresent the incident on Oct. 19.

Subsequent reports by the United States, United Kingdom, France, Italy, the Associated Press, CNN, the Wall Street Journal, other news organizations, and even anti-Israel NGOs corroborated the early reports of Palestinian responsibility.

Double Standards to Defend Hamas Rapists

Shortly after the Oct. 7 massacre, Albanese and a fellow rapporteur insisted that accounts of Palestinian rape against Israelis should not be spread, protesting that “unverified” information would only “escalate tensions.”

Apparently this criteria uniquely applies to sexual violence against Israelis, because a few months later — on the very day a Palestinian claim of rape was disproven and withdrawn — the rapporteurs did the very thing they had decried, and spread unverified claims about the rape of Palestinians. (And, as noted above, the rapporteurs felt free to escalate tensions by rushing to peddle false claims about the al-Ahli hospital.)

Misinformation to Defend Oct 7th Attackers

According to Albanese, Israel lied when charging that some UN employees participated in the Oct. 7 attack. These are “fallacious allegations,” she said.

But it was she who trafficked in misinformation. The UN Office of Internal Oversight Services eventually investigated, reviewed Israel’s evidence, and conceded that nine UNRWA employees may have indeed been involved in the attacks.

Denying Hamas’s Antisemitism, Deflecting from its Responsibility

Albanese has argued that the Oct. 7 slaughter by Hamas, a transparently antisemitic organization, wasn’t related to antisemitism, but rather was Israel’s fault.

After French president Emmanuel Macron presided over a ceremony in memory of French-Israelis murdered during the Hamas massacre, the rapporteur reacted with outrage.

“The ‘worst anti-Semitic massacre of our century’?” she asked, quoting the French president’s characterization of the Hamas attack. “No, Mr. Emmanuel Macron. The victims of 7/10 were not killed because of their Judaism, but in response to Israel’s oppression.”

This is a two-part exoneration. She first acquits Hamas of antisemitism, and then more fully unburdens them of responsibility.

It should go without saying that blame for the murder, rape, and kidnapping of civilians rests squarely with the murderers who carefully planned their attack. But what about the question of antisemitism?

The group Albanese exculpates is the same group that, in its 1988 founding covenant, declares that their “struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious.” The document later reiterates: “Israel, Judaism and Jews challenge Islam and the Muslem people.” For the next three decades, Hamas unabashedly reemphasized this core philosophy.

And though the group has more recently gone through the motions of rebranding itself, its leaders have made clear that they remain motivated by Jew-hatred. In 2019, for example, Hamas Parliamentarian Marwan Abu Ras, using the same logic as Albanese, insisted Hitler’s hatred of Jews should be viewed as a response to Jewish “deeds and crimes.”  (Ras at least didn’t blame Hitler’s genocide on Jews, but only because in his view the Holocaust was “lie.”)

In 2018, senior Hamas official Mahmoud Zahar charged the Jews with corrupting and betraying the societies in which they lived throughout history. That same year, Hamas’s Al-Aqsa TV broadcast the charge that the Jews are “human garbage” who are behind every world conspiracy. (See these and many more examples translated by MEMRI here.)

Hamas’s antisemitic worldview naturally extends to the boots on the ground on Oct. 7. Just ask the man who murdered ten Jews, then elatedly called home to brag about it: “Look how many I killed with my own hands!” he told his father. “Your son killed Jews!”

Or ask Bedouin Muslim Farhan al-Qadi, a rescued hostage who shared his attackers demanded he “Take us in your car to wherever we can find Jews.” (He heroically refused, and was abused for it, al-Qadi explained.)

Misrepresenting Casualty Claims

Albanese claims that The Lancet counted 186,000 direct and indirect deaths in the Gaza war. It did not.

First, the figure was not peer-reviewed research. It appeared in the magazine’s correspondence section. (That this section isn’t peer reviewed is one of the kinder things that could be said about it.)

Second, the letter itself makes clear that the figure comes from a primitive and rather arbitrary formula — the writers simply multiplied Hamas’s casualty figure by four — and that it hardly represents a finding of fact. It is “not implausible” for one to “estimate” that “up to” 186,000 or more deaths “could be” attributable to the conflict, the authors say. No wonder one of the authors later reemphasized that the figure is “purely illustrative.”

We need not get into the many additional serious problems with the letter. With or without them, Albanese, who ridiculously treats the figure as fact, spreads misinformation.

Misinformation on Hostage Rescue

After Israel found and extracted four of the many hostages held by Hamas, the UN rapporteur bizarrely referred to the hostages as having been “released” rather than rescued; relayed discredited allegations that “foreign soldiers” took part in the fighting during the hostage rescue; and endorsed questionable claims that the soldiers were hidden in an “aid truck.”

Most absurdly, she insisted that the military operation, which had an obvious and narrow military goal — to rescue hostages —somehow proves “genocidal intent,” or in other words was aimed at no less than destroying the Palestinian people.

Casting Murdered Israeli Civilians as Soldiers

Albanese’s disinformation extends beyond the October 7 attack. She recently erased the crimes of Nasser Abu Hamid, a senior terrorist convicted in the murder of six Israeli civilians and a police officer, by falsely describing him as having been sentenced for “alleged involvement in attacks against Israeli forces.” Civilians, of course, are not Israeli “forces,” nor are convictions “allegations.”

Erasing and Fabricating a Ceasefire Violation 

After the terrorist group Islamic Jihad fired barrages of rockets on Israeli towns on May 2, 2023, and Israel a week later struck the group’s leaders, Albanese took to Twitter to defend the terrorists, bizarrely insisting it was Israel that “violated” a year-old ceasefire. (While calling Israel’s response a possible war crime, Albanese responded to the indiscriminate Islamic Jihad rockets, which are unequivocal war crimes, with social-media silence.)

Inflating Palestinian Casualties, Erasing Israeli casualties

One day after reporters uncovered Albanese’s antisemitic charge that Jews “subjugate” America, and her suggestion that Palestinian rocket attacks on civilians — again, unequivocal war crimes — are legitimate acts of defense, the rapporteur went into deflection mode.

People should instead be appalled by the “215 Palestinians … who were killed in the occupied Palestinian territory this year,” she insisted in a Dec 15, 2022 statement, adding that “six Israeli soldiers and settlers were also killed.”

Putting aside that large numbers (according to Israel a majority) of the Palestinian casualties that year casualties were attackers, killed during gun battles, or terror leaders, the UN rapporteur seems intent on downplaying the number of Israelis killed while inflating Palestinian casualty figures.

While Albanese referred to six “soldiers and settlers” killed, 31 people in Israel and the West Bank were killed in terror attacks that year, according to numbers from the Israeli Security Agency cited by the Times of Israel just before Albanese’s statement. (Even if the rapporteur were to plead that her mandate is the West Bank and not Israel, nineteen of those fatalities were killed by attackers from the West Bank, according to UN figures cited by the Washington Post. Nine of the dead were killed inside the West Bank. Also contrary to her claim, not all of the victims killed inside the West Bank were soldiers or from settlements.)

No Self-Defense to Hamas Massacres

Although Albanese had previously characterized indiscriminate and illegal Palestinian rocket attacks as self-defense — in her words, acts of Palestinians “who defend themselves with the only means they have” — she insists that Israel has no right to self-defense following Hamas’s Oct. 7 slaughter.

Doctoring Quotes

In June 2023, Albanese circulated a doctored quote while boosting an extremist propaganda network.

The Quds News Network misquoted a radical Israeli politician as calling for the killing of “Palestinians,” and Albanese cited the quote as an example of genocidal rhetoric. But the actual quote referred specifically to the killing of “terrorists,” not “Palestinians.”

This article originally appeared here and is reposted with permission.