US lawmakers demand antisemitic UN rapporteur be removed

Francesca Albanese has exclusively bashed Israel and justified Hamas crimes in her term as watchdog for the “Occupied Palestinian Territories.”

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

The US House Foreign Affairs Committee demanded Monday that the UN’s special rapporteur for the “Occupied Palestinian Territories” not be reappointed due to her blatantly anti-Israel and antisemitic views.

Committee Chairman Brian Mast (R-FL) sent a letter to UN Human Rights Council President Jürg Lauber noting that Francesca Albanese had repeatedly failed to uphold the UNHRC code of conduct that demands impartiality, making inflammatory statements about Israel both before and after Hamas sparked the Gaza war by massacring 1,200 people and taking 251 hostage in its brutal October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.

The committee “strongly objects” to handing Albanese a new three-year term, he wrote, because she has “consistently aligned herself with Hamas terrorists, accused Israel of genocide, likened the Government of Israel to the ‘Third Reich,’ and compared Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Adolf Hitler.” The former Italian lawyer also justified the Hamas attack by saying that it came in response to Israeli “aggression” and “oppression.”

In addition, Albanese “unapologetically uses her position as a UN Special Rapporteur to purvey and attempt to legitimize antisemitic tropes [and]… has erroneously accused the United States Congress and our Executive of being bought and paid for by the Israel lobby,” Mast wrote.

He reminded Lauber that well before the war, the US as well as several other Western governments had already unsuccessfully demanded Albanese’s removal due to her blatant antisemitism.

She certainly should not continue in her position, the Florida Republican wrote, given that “her behavior is not only reprehensible, but most unbecoming of a UN Special Rapporteur.”

Mast and his co-signers accused the UNHRC of “allow[ing] antisemitism and anti-Americanism to thrive within, with a seeming unwillingness to hold the most egregious violators of human rights to account,” thereby confirming that President Donald Trump was correct in withdrawing the US from the UNHRC within the first month of his presidency.

“By rejecting the renewal of Ms. Albanese’s term, the council would bring much-needed credibility, integrity, and accountability back to the institution – attributes of which it has been severely lacking in recent years,” Mast concluded in the lawmakers’ missive.

In a separate letter on Monday to the UN, both the House and Senate Foreign Affairs Committees noted that the Human Rights Council had scheduled a vote during its upcoming meeting to establish an international investigative mechanism (IIM) focused solely on Israel.

Chairmen Mast and his Senate counterpart, Jim Risch (R-ID) warned UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres against the “bare-faced attempt to prop up other anti-Israel action at the International Criminal Court (ICC) and International Court of Justice,” where cases have been brought against the Jewish state and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for supposed “acts of genocide” during the ongoing war in Gaza.

They threatened “the same consequences as the ICC faced for its blatant overreach and disregard for sovereign prerogatives” if the IIM is established “in any form.”

Due to the ICC engaging in “illegitimate and baseless actions targeting America and our close ally Israel,” Trump issued an executive order in February barring ICC staff members and their families from entering the US and blocking access to their American properties and assets.