UN investigator Francesca Albanese, known for her anti-Israel rhetoric, is facing sharp criticism after publicly deriding the grieving mother of a young woman killed during the October 7, 2023, Hamas massacre, JNS reported.
The backlash followed comments from the mother expressing that she was overwhelmed by a palpable sense of animosity while present at a Berlin function that celebrated the UN official.
The victim, Carolin Bohl - a 22-year-old German national who worked as a fashion student and model - was slain by Hamas terrorists during the assault on Kibbutz Nir Oz in southern Israel.
Speaking with the German publication Die Welt, the victim's mother, Sonja Bohl-Dencker, reflected on her experience attending a March film screening in Berlin where Albanese was the featured attendee.
“I have never been in a room where I felt so much hatred," Bohl-Dencker said. “Everywhere keffiyehs, terrible slogans and sheer hatred against everything connected with Israel."
Reacting online to a social media publication that detailed Bohl-Dencker's emotional recollection, Albanese responded directly with a brief remark, “Change medication."
Her retort quickly drew intense public focus due to a parallel legal battle involving her own family. In a lawsuit launched by Albanese and her relatives aimed at lifting financial restrictions leveled against her by Washington, the legal filing explicitly notes that both Albanese and her spouse required medical prescriptions for health ailments sparked by the stress of the US sanctions. The court documents specify that the U.N. official required treatment for gastric ulcers, while her partner experienced sleeplessness and severe anxiety.
Albanese has repeatedly come under fire over her anti-Israel bias. In one of the more recent instances of this bias, she was 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 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 the October 7, 2023 massacre, which Albanese described as an act that must be viewed in “context" and as a response to Israeli “aggression."
In late March, Albanese claimed that the world has given Israel "a license to torture Palestinians", alleging that "torture has effectively become state policy" in Israel.