UN expert endorses tweet comparing Netanyahu to Hitler; US: She’s not fit to serve
Israel denounces Francesca Albanese as ‘beyond redemption’; special rapporteur for rights situation in the Palestinian territories has history of antisemitic comments
A United Nations rights expert has endorsed a social media post comparing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Adolf Hitler, drawing rebuke from Israel and the US.
On Thursday, Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the rights situation in the Palestinian territories, responded to a post on X that featured a picture of Hitler being celebrated by a crowd with Nazi salutes and cheers above a shot of Netanyahu being greeted by US congressmen this week.
“History is always watching,” Craig Mokhiber, a former UN human rights official who resigned late last October after accusing the world body of failing to prevent the “genocide” of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, wrote in the post.
“This is precisely what I was thinking today,” Albanese, an independent expert appointed by the UN Human Rights Council in 2022 but who does not speak on behalf of the UN, said in her response.
Albanese has faced harsh criticism from Israel in the past, including after she presented a report in March accusing the country of committing genocide in its war against Hamas in Gaza.
Israel rejected the report at the time as an “obscene inversion of reality.”
UN Special Rapporteur Albanese is beyond redemption. Once again she spreads vile hatred and abuses the memory of the Holocaust.
It is inconceivable that @FranceskAlbs is still allowed to use the @UN as a shield to spread antisemitism. #UNseatAlbanese pic.twitter.com/Gy4kHi3KNp
— Israel Foreign Ministry (@IsraelMFA) July 25, 2024
Israel slammed the UN rights expert, calling her “beyond redemption.”
“It is inconceivable that Albanese is still allowed to use the UN as a shield to spread antisemitism,” it said.
Israel’s mission to the UN in Geneva also chimed in.
“When a current UN ‘expert’ endorses Holocaust distortion spread by the former (UN rights office) director in New York… the system is rotten to its core,” it said.
“It’s high time to #UNseatAlbanese!”
Israel’s new ambassador in Geneva, Daniel Meron, used the same hashtag, decrying that “Francesca Albanese abuses her (UN) title to spread hatred and inflammatory rhetoric.”
Indeed, Francesca Albanese abuses her @UN_HRC title to spread hatred and inflammatory rhetoric.
The UN system should stop tolerating this and #UNseatAlbanese https://t.co/pNVqTdnf88
— Daniel Meron ???????????? (@AmbMeron) July 26, 2024
Washington also weighed in, with US ambassador to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva Michele Taylor writing on X that the comparison of Netanyahu to Hitler is “reprehensible and antisemitic.”
“There should be no place for such dehumanizing rhetoric. Special rapporteurs should be striving to improve human rights challenges, not inflame them,” she added.
Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the US ambassador to the UN, called Albanese’s comments antisemitic, adding she is “not fit for this or any position at the UN.”
There is no place for antisemitism from UN-affiliated officials tasked with promoting human rights. While the United States has never supported Francesca Albanese’s mandate, it is clear she is not fit for this or any position at the UN. https://t.co/d70cv54q57
— Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield (@USAmbUN) July 26, 2024
Albanese hit back at the criticism, insisting in a follow-up post on X that “the memory of the Holocaust remains intact and sacred thanks to people of conscience worldwide.”
The Memory of the #Holocaust remains intact and sacred thank to people of conscience worldwide.
Institutional rants and outburst of selective moral outrage will not stop the course of #Justice, which is finally in motion.#ICC #ICJ#NeverAgain#StopGenocideInGazaNow… https://t.co/irkKiKYUeV
— Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt (@FranceskAlbs) July 26, 2024
“Institutional rants and outbursts of selective moral outrage will not stop the course of justice, which is finally in motion,” she wrote.
Albanese has a history of making antisemitic comments and has made remarks appearing to justify Hamas’s October 7 massacre, which saw Palestinian terrorists kill some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnap 251.
The Times of Israel exposed Albanese’s history of antisemitic comments in an investigation in late 2022.
Albanese said during the 2014 conflict between Israel and Hamas that the “Jewish lobby” was in control of the United States. She has also sympathized with terror organizations, dismissed Israeli security concerns, compared Israelis to Nazis, accused the Jewish state of potential war crimes, said Israel controlled the BBC, and claimed that the Jewish state started wars out of greed.
Israel criticized Albanese after she and other UN-mandated rights experts said in November that Palestinians in war-battered Gaza were “at grave risk of genocide.” In a statement on October 14, she accused Israel of aiming to ethnically cleanse Gaza, while not mentioning the Hamas attack on Israel.
Albanese was banned from Israel in February after she denied that the October 7 atrocities were motivated by a hatred of Jews and claimed they were “in response to Israel’s oppression.”
