U.N. Rapporteur Francesca Albanese press conference at the UN

United Nations, NY (Oct 30,2024) — U.N. special rapporteur Francesca Albanese appeared to make light of her history of antisemitic commentary during a press conference at the international body’s headquarters today.

U.N. special rapporteur Francesca Albanese appeared to make light of her history of antisemitic commentary during a press conference at the international body’s headquarters today.

Mike Waggenheim, a reporter from the Israeli outlet JNS asked Albanese about her recent trip to Washington, D.C., and he remarked that she had been scheduled to give a briefing to members of Congress but that that had been canceled. He quipped: “Don’t know if the Jewish lobby was behind it or not.”

Albanese responded: “Oh, you said Jewish lobby. Watch out, because it’s very antisemitic, apparently,” she said. “I didn’t use it you did.”

She was referring to the controversy over a 2014 social-media post in which she wrote that America is “subjugated by the Jewish lobby.” She has since said that she regrets using the term, telling students at Brown University this year that it was “so obvious” that she was actually referring to “pro-Israel groups” that “interfere” in American politics.

Washington and other foreign capitals have condemned her for those remarks and for denying the antisemitic nature of Hamas’s October 7 terrorist attacks.

“As UN Special Rapporteur Albanese visits New York, I want to reiterate the U.S. belief she is unfit for her role. The United Nations should not tolerate antisemitism from a UN-affiliated official hired to promote human rights,” Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., wrote on X yesterday.

Albanese said she was not surprised to receive criticism from the U.S. “They do that so brutally, because they feel called out because it’s not that the United States is not simply an observer — the United States is being an enabler in what Israel has been doing,” she told reporters today.

She also said today that “Palestinians have the right to resist under international law.”

The human-rights watchdog U.N. Watch, which brought Albanese’s Jewish-lobby comments to light, had pressed the State Department to deny her a visa. But the department opted to issue it nonetheless, citing a treaty obligation to admit foreigners for U.N. engagements.

She spoke this week at several colleges, including Georgetown University and Princeton University. Her speech at Princeton on Tuesday was part of the “dean’s leadership series” of the School of Public and International Affairs. She will also speak at Barnard College and John Jay College.

Albanese’s presser was just one component of a marathon Israel-bashing session today in New York.

She and the members of a U.N. commission of inquiry that focuses on Israel this morning addressed a meeting of the U.N. General Assembly committee that focuses on human rights and unveiled new reports that they had written. Each of those figures was appointed by the Geneva-based U.N. Human Rights Council, via a process that is distinct from hiring decisions handled by the international organization’s secretariat. U.N. special rapporteurs do not receive a salary from the organization.

One of the commissioners said it is wrong to view the October 7 attack without the context of what she called Israel’s “occupation.”

“My answer this morning to member states here is, yes, history didn’t start on the seventh of October, and that we have recorded again and again the huge violations that have occurred historically and its occupation,” Navi Pillay, the head of the U.N. commission of inquiry into Israel, told reporters. Pillay also criticized the conduct of “Palestinian armed groups,” though her comment about history seemed to provide justification for the Hamas massacre.

Another commissioner on the panel, Chris Sidoti, immediately appended Pillay’s answer with a caveat.

“It is impossible to understand the seventh of October without understanding the occupation and what that has meant. That doesn’t justify what happened,” he added. It’s not clear if Pillay also intended to draw a similar distinction, as she did not say that herself.

The commission’s third member, Miloon Kothari, was not present at the press briefing. Kothari apologized in 2022 for asserting that social-media companies are controlled by the “Jewish lobby.”

Pillay’s remarks echoed U.N. secretary general Antonio Guterres’s comment last October that the Hamas attack “did not happen in a vacuum remarks that provoked fierce Israeli criticism. Guterres’s relationship with Israel never improved. Jerusalem banned him from setting foot in the country earlier this month. Albanese, Pillay, Kothari, and Sidoti have also been banned from entering Israel.

Albanese said: “The secretary general has been vilified and even declared persona non grata welcome to the club.”