Albanese’s history of antisemitic rhetoric stretches back to 2014, when she posted on Facebook that America is ‘subjugated by the Jewish lobby.’
U.N. special rapporteur Francesca Albanese compared Benjamin Netanyahu to Adolf Hitler in a social-media post yesterday.
On Wednesday afternoon, Craig Mokhiber, a former U.N. human-rights official, posted an image to X that juxtaposed a picture of Hitler walking through a crowd with a photograph of the Israeli prime minister walking through the U.S. Senate chamber yesterday, where he addressed a joint session of Congress.
Albanese replied to that post: “This is precisely what I was thinking today.”
That comment is consistent with the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism, which includes: “comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.”
Albanese, an Italian academic, is the U.N.’s special rapporteur for the “Occupied Palestinian Territories,” a part-time post that neither comes with a paycheck nor formally represents the organization’s positions.
In its 2023 report on the special-rapporteur system, the U.N.’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights disclosed that several universities provided Albanese’s office in-kind support, mostly by making research assistants available to her team. Among the universities that supported her work that year were Columbia University, Harvard University, the Irish Human Rights Research Center at the University of Galway, and the University of Windsor, Ontario.
Other support reportedly came from the U.N.’s Human Rights Office, which admitted to funding a trip that Albanese took last year to Australia for meetings with pro-Palestinian politicians, the Jewish News Syndicate reported.
In the aftermath of October 7, Albanese has used her post to push thinly sourced allegations of sexual abuse against the Israel Defense Forces while casting doubt on the extensive documentation of Hamas’s use of rape during the terrorist attack.
The U.N. human-rights rapporteur’s Hitler comparison yesterday renewed long-standing concerns about her use of antisemitic rhetoric.
“This isn’t the first time Albanese has engaged in antisemitism by trivializing the Holocaust,” the Anti-Defamation League wrote in a post to X. “Every day, she makes it clear she is unfit to serve as a UN Special Rapporteur — a position that requires impartiality.”
Israel’s foreign ministry responded to Albanese’s post, saying that she is “beyond redemption.” It added: “Once again she spreads vile hatred and abuses the memory of the Holocaust.”
Albanese’s history of using antisemitic rhetoric stretches back to 2014, when she made a post to Facebook saying that America is “subjugated by the Jewish lobby.”
In February, she criticized French president Emanuel Macron’s characterization of the October 7 attacks as the “largest antisemitic massacre of our century.” That led to condemnations by the governments of the U.S., Germany, and France, with Washington’s envoy in Geneva calling her comment antisemitic.