UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, who has become notorious for her anti-Israel rhetoric, told British journalist Piers Morgan in an interview that the nature of Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza following the group’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel was illegal.
Albanese acknowledged in the interview 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 added, “Israel didn’t have the right to wage a war against the Palestinians in Gaza.”
When Morgan pointed out to Albanese that Israel “absolutely” had the right to go after the 3,000 terrorists who carried out the October 7 attack 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, who claimed that “waging a war” was “not proportionate.”
On the International Criminal Court (ICC) decision to issue arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, Albanese claimed the ICC case was too narrow, and should address Israel’s entire offensive beyond its borders.
Albanese called the ICC warrants “necessary” and “long due” and said they were “very meaningful.”
Albanese’s anti-Israel bias was first exposed in 2022, in the form of antisemitic posts she made on social media, in which she claimed that the “Jewish lobby” controls the US.
At the time, Albanese rejected arguments that the comments about the “Jewish lobby” were antisemitic and claimed they were “mischaracterized”.
Since the Hamas massacre on October 7, she has condemned Israel for defending itself and gone as far as to claim that Israel has no right to defend itself.
Later, Albanese denied that the Hamas massacre in southern Israel on October 7 was antisemitic.
This past July, she endorsed a social media post comparing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. Israel’s Foreign Ministry fired back, slamming her on X as being “beyond redemption.”
In August, the UN rapporteur accused Israel of “genocide” after the IDF struck a Hamas command center which was embedded inside a mosque in the Al-Taba’een school compound.