Serbia sharply condemned UN special rapporteur Francesca Albanese, after she criticized the country’s defense cooperation with Israel, JNS reported Thursday.
The dispute follows Albanese's visit to Belgrade, during which she accused Serbia of collaborating "without shame" with Israel and claimed Serbian weapons were being used in Gaza.
Serbia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs described Albanese's comments as "unbalanced and activist" and called them an "unacceptable interference in internal affairs." The ministry further emphasized that such assessments were inappropriate for her mandate.
Albanese has repeatedly come under fire over her anti-Israel bias. She was recently condemned by several European Union foreign ministers for comments made at an Al Jazeera conference, in which Albanese had said: “The fact that instead of stopping Israel, most of the world has armed, given Israel political excuses, political sheltering, economic and financial support ... We who do not control large amounts of financial capitals, algorithms and weapons, we now see that we as a humanity have a common enemy."
Albanese later claimed in an interview with France24 that she "never, ever, ever said ‘Israel is the common enemy of humanity,'" calling the accusations "completely false accusations."
Albanese’s history of anti-Israel statements and actions is well-documented and dates back to social media posts uncovered in 2022, 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.
Albanese was sanctioned by the US last year in response to her criticism of Israel’s policies during the war with Hamas in Gaza.