‘Standard delusional inversion,’ experts say of responses from UN’s Francesca Albanese to JNS

MIKE WAGENHEIM

---

“She has a perverted morality, whereby she thinks that killing Israelis is always justified,” said Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch.

.
Francesca Albanese, U.N. special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, speaks at a U.N. Human Rights Council press conference in July 2023. Source: YouTube/UN Human Rights Council.

Critics of the United Nations special rapporteur for the Palestinians—and there are many—say that Francesca Albanese’s historically chronic fault-finding of Israel and repeated comments and actions deemed antisemitic make her unfit for the job.

An Italian lawyer, Albanese serves as what many supporters of Israel say is a microcosm of the United Nations’s hyperfocus on demonizing Israel at every turn, grounded in a disdain for the Jewish state and for Jews in general.

Albanese sat down for an extended interview with JNS recently, and several of her comments and positions struck a chord with those who watch the United Nations and its treatment of Israel closely.

Asked whether Hamas was justified in crossing the Israel-Gaza delineated border and killing Israeli soldiers on Oct. 7, Albanese told JNS: “Killing soldiers is not an international crime. I mean, why is this so unbelievable? You seem to be puzzled by this. What is the right to resist for the Palestinians? No one wants to live under oppression.”

David Litman, a senior analyst at the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, a watchdog, told JNS that Hamas did not aim to kill soldiers.

“Its purpose was to brutally murder and kidnap every Jew it could get its hands on. The soldiers were just in the way,” he said. “That’s not ‘resistance.’ That’s an act of genocide.”

Albanese has “a history of whitewashing the murder of Israeli civilians,” according to Litman, who said that the U.N. official goes so far as to “pretend Israeli civilians killed by Palestinian terrorists were just soldiers.” Litman added that Albanese has advocated for the convicted murderer Nasser Abu Hamid, who she claimed was sentenced for “alleged involvement” in “attacks” against “Israeli forces.”

Abu Hamid, who was convicted for murdering six civilians, died in Israeli custody in late 2022.

‘Perverted morality’

Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch and a frequent critic of Albanese, was also taken aback by what Albanese told JNS in the extended interview.

Francesca Albanese, U.N. special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, speaks at a U.N. press conference in October 2023. Source: YouTube/United Nations.

A report released last month by the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education identified at least 100 Hamas terrorists who are graduates of UNRWA’s education system.

“In numerous cases, UNRWA has acknowledged that these teachers have done these things and claims that these are a few bad apples, But we see the opposite is true,” Neuer said. 

“Whenever a teacher posts Facebook posts inciting all of their peers, you see on social media that they don’t criticize the perpetrator,” he said. “They celebrate them. They praise them.”

With friends like these…

Albanese was defiant in the interview with JNS about charges that she hates Jews.

“I will always speak in defense of any Jews, including those who feel very strongly about the State of Israel,” she claimed. “It’s their right. I don’t judge.”

“I totally understand what it means for a Jewish person to see the State of Israel as the state of the Jewish people. I don’t judge it. I don’t question it,” she added. “It’s their obligation to make sure that Israel, as a partner of the international community, behaves according to international law. That’s it.”

Albanese is an antisemite “masquerading” as a human rights activist, Litman told JNS.

The U.N. official’s “invention and weaponization of imaginary standards in pursuit of her goal of destroying the Jewish state only serves to debase the very concept of human rights and to embolden terrorists and dictators,” he said.

“If Jews have to choose between preserving our right to self-defense, which Albanese would deny to us, and relying on someone who once claimed the ‘Jewish lobby’ has ‘subjugated’ the United States to speak in our defense, I’ll choose the former,” Litman added.

---

---