UN envoy Albanese says Israel had no right to wage a war in Gaza after Oct. 7

Reluctantly acknowledging that Hamas’s October 7, 2023, massacre of 1,200 in southern Israel and hostage-taking of 251 to Gaza “could qualify” as terrorism, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese nonetheless told British television personality Piers Morgan that the nature of Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza following the terrorist group’s rampage was illegal.

Interviewed on Tuesday by Morgan for his Uncensored YouTube program, Albanese said that, on “the day Israel was attacked, it had all the rights to defend itself, to protect its citizens in its territory and therefore to repel the attack with all necessary and proportional measures — which means using force, including lethal force, arresting, detaining all persons involved and found on its territory — which happened on the 7th, 8th and 9th of October.”

However, she went on, “Israel didn’t have the right to wage a war against the Palestinians in Gaza.”

When it was put to her by Morgan that “absolutely” Israel had the right to go after the 3,000 terrorists who had poured over its border and massacred its people, and had taken the hostages to Gaza, and that “it doesn’t stop at the border,” she replied that Morgan should be “very careful because… this ‘eye for an eye’ logic would justify what had happened on October 7.”

“The fact that we call it terrorism doesn’t justify what Israel has done since,” said Albanese, arguing that “waging a war” was “not proportionate.”

Albanese told Morgan that she believed the International Criminal Court’s case against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant was too narrow, and should address Israel’s entire offensive beyond its borders.

Albanese has a history of antisemitic, anti-Israel and pro-Hamas statements.

On October 11, 2023, four days after the attack, Albanese said she doubted reports of rape and sexual violence. Rather, she said the US and Israel were spreading these claims to escalate tensions.

In February, Israel’s foreign and interior ministries announced that Albanese is not allowed into Israel following a tweet to French President Emanuel Macron in which she stated, “The victims of 7/10 were not killed because of their Judaism, but in response to Israel’s oppression.”

She recently told a Harvard University gathering that when Hamas refers to killing Jews (“Yahudi”), it does not actually mean Jews.

In the Tuesday interview, addressing the recently issued arrest warrants by the ICC, she called on Israeli authorities to hand over Netanyahu and Gallant.

“If they had nothing to fear they would stand justice. They would just defend themselves in front of the International Criminal Court. What do they have to fear if they did nothing wrong?” she said in the interview, which was followed by a panel of four Jewish personalities who discussed the issues she touched on.

After Hamas’s shock October 7 attack, which was accompanied by brutal assaults including sexual violence, Israel began carrying out airstrikes on the terrorist organization and launched a ground invasion later the same month with the objectives of dismantling the terror group, which rules Gaza, and retrieving the hostages.

Arguing for Israel in a subsequent panel debate hosted by Morgan were American lawyer Alan Dershowitz, and former IDF spokesperson Jonathan Conricus.

On the anti-Israel side were British journalist and author Matt Kennard and Katie Halper, host of the podcast A Jew For Ceasefire Now.

Albanese called the ICC warrants “necessary” and “long due” and said they were “very meaningful.”

“The evidence is overwhelming that starvation has been used as a tool of war and it cannot be justified by any possible circumstance,” Albanese told Morgan.

Dershowitz said the arrest warrants, while they would stop Netanyahu from traveling to other countries to “make the case for Israel,” were detrimental to the ICC as well because they improperly issued. The court’s top prosecutor, Karim Khan, he said, “was supposed to go to Israel to look at both sides of the issue but after he was accused of sexual harassment, he canceled that trip because he wanted to issue the arrest warrants very quickly.”

Conricus echoed the sentiment, calling Khan “suspicious and controversial” and saying the process had been “totally flawed.”

“All the information has been based on false or incomplete information. I think there is proof verified by non-Israeli sources that contradicts all the allegations,” he said, although he did not name any specific sources.

Morgan argued that the IDF’s refusal to allow foreign journalists into Gaza to report on what was happening in the Strip prevented such evidence from coming to light and raised suspicion against Israel.

While all four panelists agreed that foreign journalists should be allowed into Gaza, Kennard — who called Israel a “rogue terrorist regime” but refused to apply the epithet to Hamas or label its October 7 attack as terrorism — accused Israel of deliberately targeting Palestinian media officials to stop them from reporting on its alleged crimes against humanity, a claim that Israel categorically denies.

Meanwhile, Conricus said the real obstacle to reliable reporting from within Gaza was Hamas, which he accused of controlling Palestinian media in the enclave.

“I’ve seen it happen in real-time. Instead of doing their job of reporting on Hamas’s war crimes, it’s been documented but not reported because Hamas won’t let them and it’s been stifling them,” he said.

Last month, Israel published documents that it said provided evidence that journalists killed by the IDF were active members of Hamas or the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, an allegation it has made repeatedly over the last 13 months of the war.

Many of the specific journalists named were employees of Qatar-based Al-Jazeera, which Israel’s government took off the air and blocked in April.

In June, a court found a direct and causal connection between individuals who have carried out terror attacks inside Israel and the consumption of Al Jazeera content. It also determined that there was a “close connection” between Al Jazeera and Hamas, that some Al Jazeera reporters in Gaza had turned themselves into “assistants and partners” with Hamas, and that some of them had even carried out terror attacks.

Meanwhile, addressing comments she made last month urging the UN to consider suspending Israel as a member state, Albanese accused Israel of violating international law and insulting UN officials and organizations more than any other country in the world.

Among Israel’s alleged crimes was killing 240 UN staff members and firing at UN peacekeepers in Lebanon, Albanese said.

Israel has alleged that more than 10 percent of the staff of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, in Gaza have ties to terrorist factions and that educational facilities under the organization’s auspices consistently incite hatred of Israel and glorify terror.

In February, the IDF revealed the existence of a subterranean Hamas data center directly beneath UNRWA’s Gaza Strip headquarters. The IDF has also repeatedly targeted Hamas command centers and gunmen hiding out in UNRWA schools.

Israel has been accused of genocide numerous times, most notably in an ongoing case brought by South Africa at the International Court of Justice. The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 42,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it has killed some 18,000 combatants in battle and another 1,000 terrorists inside Israel on October 7.

Israel has said it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities and stresses that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas including homes, hospitals, schools, and mosques.

During the interview, Albanese said that Israeli settlements in the West Bank, which she called colonies, were also war crimes, declaring that “Israel needs to withdraw the occupation because it has given the chance for violence to fester.”

She also criticized outgoing US President Joe Biden’s administration, saying the US had supplied Israel with more military, economic, financial, and political aid in the last 14 months than it ever has.

“I understand, as a European, why Jewish people have such a deep connection to Israel, but what I do question is third state responsibility. How member states act vis-a-vis a state this is committing genocide which it has been committing for 50 years and unlawful occupation and unlawful apartheid,” she said.

Albanese concluded that she hoped incoming US president Trump would “step away from this precipice and do the right thing.”

Dershowitz was bullish on Trump’s reelection, saying he would be “tough on Iran” — the backer of terror groups including Hamas and Lebanon’s Hezbollah — which would likely lead to peace.

“If Iran is disarmed we will see real peace in the region,” he said.

Kennard, however, called Trump a “disaster for the Palestinian cause” because he “has Israel’s interests at heart.”