Francesca Albanese Must Go

Is the United Nations Rapporteur for the Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese the victim of a smear campaign? If she was, the press would have lied. The French minister of foreign affairs would have distorted the facts. European governments would have exaggerated. Meanwhile, extreme left politician Jean-Luc Mélenchon rushes to her defense at Creil, France, in a fiery and sleazy speech. His party, France Unbowed, issues a statement praising the “courage” of Ms. Albanese.Socialists and Green party members express concern about France’s alignment with the “discrediting campaign” of which she is allegedly the target. A hundred artists “for Palestine”, with Nobel Prize winner Annie Ernaux and actors Mark Ruffalo and Javier Bardem at the forefront, send a letter of “full support” to the AFP.Very well. Now, let’s speak of facts. First, the disputed statement. Its “context” — a word Ms. Albanese is fond of — was made on February 7, 2026, at an Al Jazeera forum at Doha.In that “context,” a panel devoted to “the Palestinian cause,” featuring, before or after Ms. Albanese, Khaled Meshaal, one of the last surviving leaders of Hamas, and Abbas Araghchi, minister of an Iranian regime that has just murdered 30,000 of its own citizens.Ms. Albanese has also said: “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.” One can play with words.But when, throughout the rest of the speech, the only subject is Israel, the meaning is transparent, and everyone understands who this “common enemy of humanity” is meant to be.All the more so because this is not Ms. Albanese’s first offense. Have we forgotten her tweet of October 7, 2023, in the middle of the pogrom, in which she urged that this act of “violence” be placed in its “context”?Ms. Albanese’s reply on social media, on February 10, 2024, to President Macron, who had spoken of an unprecedented “antisemitic massacre” in this century: “No, @EmmanuelMacron, the victims of October 7 were not killed because of their Judaism, but in response to Israel’s oppression”?Ms. Albanese’s denial—documented by UN Watch and the Anti-Defamation League—of the rapes of women in the kibbutzim and later in Gaza, which she presented as “fabrications”? Her tweet of May 30, 2025, relaying an article accusing “Zionists” of “staging” antisemitic attacks in the United States and concluding: “Pathetic. How far can an ideology go?”Or that embarrassing scene, filmed on September 28, 2025, in Italy: the mayor of Reggio Emilia is about to present her with an award; he has the misfortune to mention the fate of the Israeli hostages — Ms. Albanese rolls her eyes, grimaces, and when it is her turn to speak, says that she forgives him — but on the condition that he promises he won’t say it again…Today, I myself discover a text by journalist Chris Hedges reproaching the “Israel lobby” for having “bought and paid for Congress and the two ruling parties,” and for “influence of the war industry buttressed by hundreds of millions of dollars spent on political campaigns by the Zionists” — a text that Ms. Albanese, on October 17, 2024, described as “a must-read for the ages.”I discover a grotesque article from the obscure New York–based site Mondoweiss claiming that the fires at Los Angeles and the fires in Gaza are “symptoms of the same disease” — which Ms. Albanese shared on January 12, 2025, with a comment worthy of the crudest conspiracy thinking: “On our small planet, all injustices are connected.”I discover a monstrous tweet in which, on May 11, 2025, Ms. Albanese accuses the Israeli army of abducting Palestinians and having them raped by dogs. And then another, in July 2024, in which she writes that it is “time to #UNseatIsrael from the UN.”All of this, this time indeed, constitutes a real “context.” There is a coherence here, a vehemence, a relentlessness that makes this United Nations official a rabid antisemite, completely out of control. The world, after so many years, is apparently beginning to understand. As early as 2024, former special envoy for combating antisemitism under President Biden, Deborah Lipstadt, described Ms. Albanese’s remarks as “openly antisemitic.”Today it is France, Germany, Italy, Austria, the Czech Republic, and the United Kingdom that are grasping the magnitude of the scandal and calling for her dismissal. The Secretary-General of the United Nations, António Guterres, who has just, on February 13, distanced himself from her.It is now time to act.This activist must go.Francesca Albanese as a “United Nations Special Rapporteur” is like Pakistan, Cuba, or Russia sitting, not so long ago, on the UN Human Rights Council. It is like Iran parading today at the Commission on the Status of Women. It is an affront to international law, to the rights of victims, to basic decency.It must stop.

Francesca Albanese Must Go

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