Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Palestinian rights, condemned the United States on Thursday for imposing sanctions against her over her criticism of Washington’s policy in the Gaza war.
Speaking to AFP from South Africa, Albanese accused the US of employing “mafia-style techniques” to smear her reputation and silence her advocacy.
“I cannot go to the US,” Albanese said, explaining that the sanctions have frozen her assets and affected her entire family. “I have a US daughter, my husband works for a US-based organisation, and the entire family is paying because of it.”
Albanese was scheduled to deliver the annual Nelson Mandela Lecture on October 25 and present her latest report to the UN from South Africa, after being barred from traveling to New York.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the sanctions in July, calling Albanese’s remarks “biased and malicious.” Albanese responded that the measures were “an affront, not just against me, against the United Nations.”
She likened the tactics to those used by criminal organizations in her native Italy: “dirtying someone with mud... to dissuade him or her from keeping on engaging on justice issues.”
Albanese emphasized that her work is not personal. “It’s about defending people who are being genocided right now, and I truly hope that the message will keep on being heard.”
Her report, titled “Gaza Genocide: a collective crime”, accuses Israel of committing genocide in Gaza and denounces what she calls “a system of global complicity.” She calls on states to “immediately suspend and review all military, diplomatic and economic relations with Israel.”
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”, but her anti-Israel bias has continued to be exposed since.
Her criticism of Israel has grown since Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack in Israel. The attack, in which Hamas terrorists killed over 1,200 people and took 250 hostages, was described by Albanese as an act that must be viewed in “context” and as a response to Israeli “aggression.”
She has also in recent months accused Israel of genocide, likened the Government of Israel to the “Third Reich,” and compared Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Adolf Hitler.