The Savaging of Francesca Albanese, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967

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“This year over the last twelve months I reluctantly became the chronicler of a genocide”  UN Special Rapporteur, Francisca Albanese., Washington DC. October 29, 2024

“20,000 missing children in Gaza — some maimed beyond recognition. On top of the 17,000 killed in 12 months. We call it genocide because it is genocide.” UN Special Rapporteur, Francesca Albanese

As former (essentially purged) University of Denver Dr. Nader Hashemi noted to his introduction to the remarks of Francesca Albanese, noted,

In an age where events related to the question of Palestine are cancelled or shut down it’s great to know that we have this community (Busboys and Poets) space here in Washington DC and where events such as this can’t be shut down.

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In what has become a typically scurrilous pretext, the Biden Administration cancelled an appearance of Francesca Albanese at a  Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, at a briefing called by Andre Carson (D-Indiana). The meeting was cancelled at the last moment as a result of “pressure” “from higher ups in the Biden Administration after an article appeared in a publication called the Jewish Insider, accusing Albanese as  “anti-Semitic … and “unfit for her position.”.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which has been increasingly transformed from an anti-Semitic to an anti-Zionist watchdog joined in the anti-Albanese fray, accusing the UN Special Rapporteur of “a long record of spreading antisemitism.” The ADL and the like  pressured  Georgetown University and Barnard College to cancel Albanese appearances. Despite the pressures, Francesca’s Georgetown proceed and was a standing room only, very successful event. The event itself was not disrupted but “the forces of evil” but plastered posters around campus calling her a Jew-hater and *some* Jewish students claimed they didn’t feel safe/secure on campus anymore. As Jewish Insider reported, an email sent by Carson’s office to Democratic staff said the event would be postponed, without further elaboration. At the same time Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA)  similarly canceled a Nakba Day event held by Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) in 2023, but Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) hosted it in his Senate committee hearing room. Albanese was able to speak at Princeton recently, at the UN and a few other places, including at the University of Toronto in early November. For her Toronto gig, Bernard Henry-Levy (the fake French intellectual) said he would fly into Toronto to confront her. This was on twitter.

A source of Zionist angst targeting Albanese is an October 1 groundbreaking and detailed report about Israel’s ongoing genocide in Palestine. It should be required reading material for one and all. It was her findings in this report that Albanese was scheduled to discuss at the cancelled meeting in the House of Representatives. In this report  Albanese, examines the unfolding horrors in the occupied Palestinian territory which the Zionists and their backers in Washington are trying to deny. While the wholesale destruction of Gaza continues unabated, other parts of the land have not been spared. The violence that Israel has unleashed against the Palestinians post-7 October is not happening in a vacuum, but is part of a long-term intentional, systematic, State-organized forced displacement and replacement of the Palestinians. This trajectory risks causing irreparable prejudice to the very existence of the Palestinian people in Palestine.

As Albanese commented to a Washington DC audience at “Busboys and Poets” how the normalization of the brutalization of the Jewish people by the Nazis during World War runs parallel to the normalization of the brutalization of the Palestinian people by Washington’s regional proxy, Israel. In this comparison, Albanese noted:

He knew (Rapahel Lempkin, the originator of the term “genocide“) that the Jewish people (in Europe) had been the victims of a genocide…but he also knew that it was nothing new because millions of people had been victims of genocide in Latin America, in Africa, in Southeast Asia at the hands of settler colonial powers. … how did we get to the concentration camps (in WW2) because we had normalized the brutalization of the Jewish people. We had the right to kick them out of their families, the medical profession, the legal professions. It was normal. They were (considered) sub humans, right? So this is why it was considered “normal” to put them in concentration camps, a dehumanization that led to concentration camps and Rabbi Lemkin understood it.

The Palestinians have been portrayed (in Zionist thinking) as Nazis; the Palestinians have been blamed for the Holocaust. … one thing that the Palestinians are not responsible for is the Holocaust.

It is not Albanese who is bigoted but her accusers. The Zionist campaign against Albanese intensified in March, 2024 when Albanese issued a report asserting that “there are  “reasonable grounds” to believe that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. Albanese’s report coincided with the International Court of Justice finding a few months later. It reaffirmed the illegality of Israel’s long-standing occupation, settlement expansion and annexation efforts in Palestine. It went on to suggest that Israel’s actions should be investigated for genocidal actions. The two reports, reflecting near world-wide abhorrence at the U.S.-Israeli genocide being conducted in Gaza against the Palestinian people intensified the already existing wave of Zionist defensiveness which continues to this day.

Criticizing the Albanese cancellation before Congress, Code Pink spokesperson, Medea Benjamin noted in a tweet on “X” (Twitter)

“UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese was set to brief Congress today on her latest findings from Gaza. But in a last-minute twist, pressure from “higher-ups” led to the cancellation. The halls of Congress should echo with voices of truth and accountability, not fear and censorship. Israel’s actions in Gaza deserve scrutiny under international law, and it’s unacceptable that those exposing these realities are silenced. Our gratitude goes out to the Congressional staffers who were ready to hear from the UN Special Rapporteur about Gaza.

Concerning the Congressional cancellation of Albanese’s appearance, Medea Benjamin continues:

As you all know there is a lot of fear in these halls and a lot of censorship and this is unfortunately one more example … suddenly yesterday there was an article that came out in the Jewish Insider that started talking about the accusation of the Biden Administration that the Special Rapporteur is anti-Semitic. Now this is crazy. Anybody who faults Israel for the slaughter it is committing is accused of being anti-Semitic. But they are not anti-Semitic and Francesca Albanese is not anti-Semitic. But because of that article, the representative here (in Congress) that was hosting the event got scared. He said he was getting calls from higher ups which assume is higher ups in the Democratic Party that pressured him to cancel this briefing. We (Code Pink) think this is a horrific decision.

In many ways, the savaging of Francesca Albanese follows a repressive pattern that Zionist institutions here in the USA (ADL, AIPAC, etc) have been perfecting for decades. It includes establishing a legal framework for the monitoring of all criticism of Israel, knowingly conflating Zionism with Judaism,  attempts to purge people in the media, academia, in the country’s main political institutions of people critical of Israeli oppression of the Palestinian (and other Arab) people, who accuse Israel of war crimes and genocide, ardently denying that Israel is nothing more than a U.S. regional proxy, denying the toxicity of Israel’s regional role. Israel’s more ardent supporters have been doing this for decades, only now all the pressures have intensified and a legal framework to support their racist policies is being put in place.

Lutta continua.