US sanctions UN human rights official over Israel criticism
Francesca Albanese is pushing for the International Criminal Court to take action against American and Israeli officials, companies and executives, Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, said in a statement on Wednesday.
Mr Rubio accused Albanese of bias and said her efforts to prompt the court to 'investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute' US and Israeli citizens have infringed on those countries' sovereignty.
'We will not tolerate these campaigns of political and economic warfare, which threaten our national interests and sovereignty,' Mr Rubio said.
A spokesman for Ms Albanese is yet to comment.
Ms Albanese, an Italian lawyer and academic, has called on states at the UN human rights council to impose an arms embargo and cut off trade and financial ties with Israel, alleging it is waging a 'genocidal campaign' in Gaza.
In a report published earlier this month she accused more than 60 companies, including major arms manufacturers and technology firms, of involvement in supporting Israeli settlements and military actions in Gaza.
Report calls to sever ties with Israel
The report called on companies to sever ties with Israel and for executives implicated in alleged violations of international law to face legal action.
Ms Albanese is one of dozens of independent human rights experts mandated by the United Nations to report on specific themes and crises.
The views expressed by special rapporteurs do not reflect those of the global body as a whole.
Since returning to office on Jan 20, Donald Trump has stopped US engagement with the UN Human Rights Council, extended a halt to funding for the Palestinian relief agency UNRWA and ordered a review of the UN cultural agency UNESCO.
The US president has also announced plans to quit the Paris climate deal and the World Health Organisation.
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BBC News
25 minutes ago
- BBC News
Gaza truce talks on verge of collapse, Palestinian officials say
Negotiations between Israel and Hamas in Qatar on a new Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal are on the brink of collapse, according to Palestinian officials familiar with the details of the senior official told the BBC that Israel had "bought time" during Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's visit to Washington this week and deliberately stalled the process by sending a delegation to Doha with no real authority to make decisions on key points of include the withdrawal of Israeli troops and humanitarian aid he left the US on Thursday, Netanyahu had maintained a positive tone, saying he hoped to complete an agreement "in a few days". He said the proposed deal would see Hamas release half of the 20 living hostages it is still holding and just over half of the 30 dead hostages during a truce lasting 60 days. Since last Sunday, Israeli and Hamas negotiators have attended eight rounds of indirect "proximity" talks in separate buildings in have been facilitated by Qatar's Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdul Rahman Al Thani and senior Egyptian intelligence officials, and attended by US envoy Brett mediators have relayed dozens of verbal and written messages between the Hamas and Israeli delegation, which has included military, security and political on Friday night, Palestinian officials familiar with the negotiations told the BBC they were on the verge of collapse, with the two sides deeply divided on several contentious said the most recent discussions had focused on two of those issues: the mechanism for delivering humanitarian aid in Gaza and the extent of the Israeli military has insisted that humanitarian assistance must enter Gaza and be distributed via United Nations agencies and international relief on the other hand, is pushing for aid distribution via the controversial Israeli- and US-backed mechanism run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).According to mediators involved in the process, there has been some limited progress on bridging the divide over this issue. However, no formal agreement has been second major sticking point is over the extent of the Israeli the fifth round of talks, Israeli negotiators reportedly handed mediators a written message stating that Israel would maintain a limited "buffer zone" inside Gaza that was between 1km and 1.5km (0.6-0.9 miles) according to a Palestinian official who attended at least two of the rounds of talks, viewed this proposal as a possible starting point for when Hamas requested and received a map outlining Israel's proposed withdrawal zones, the document contradicted the earlier message, showing far deeper military positions. The map was said to indicate buffer zones that were up to 3km deep in certain areas and confirmed a continued Israeli presence in vast swathes of covered all of the southern city of Rafah, 85% of the village of Khuzaa east of Khan Younis, substantial parts of the northern towns of Beit Lahia and Beit Hanoun, and eastern neighbourhoods of Gaza City, such as Tuffah, Shejaiya and officials saw the map as a bad-faith manoeuvre by Israel, further eroding trust between the officials accused the Israeli delegation of deliberately stalling to create a positive diplomatic backdrop for the Israeli prime minister's recent visit to Washington."They were never serious about these talks," one senior Palestinian negotiator told the BBC. "They used these rounds to buy time and project a false image of progress."The official also claimed that Israel was pursuing a long-term strategy of forced displacement under the guise of humanitarian alleged that Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz's plan to move Palestinians to a "humanitarian city" in Rafah was part of a broader effort to permanently relocate them."The goal of concentrating civilians near the Egyptian border is to pave the way for their expulsion either across the Rafah crossing into Egypt or out through the sea," the official Monday, Katz briefed Israeli reporters that he had instructed the military to prepare a plan for a new camp in Rafah that would initially house about 600,000 Palestinians - and eventually the whole 2.1 million to the plan, the Palestinians would be security screened by Israeli forces before being allowed in and not permitted to both domestically and internationally, have condemned the proposal, with human rights groups, academics and lawyers calling it a blueprint for a "concentration camp".With the talks at a critical juncture, the Palestinian side is calling on the US to intervene more forcefully and pressure Israel to make meaningful such intervention, mediators warn, the Doha negotiations could collapse is a scenario that would further complicate regional efforts to reach a durable ceasefire and avert a broader humanitarian catastrophe in in Doha say there is still a narrow window for compromise, but that the situation remains fragile."This process is hanging by a thread," one regional official said. "Unless something changes dramatically and quickly, we may be heading towards a breakdown."The Israeli military launched a campaign in Gaza in response to the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken least 57,823 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry.
The Independent
an hour ago
- The Independent
David Gergen, adviser to Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Clinton, dies at 83
Presidential adviser and political commentator David Gergen has died at the age of 83. Gergen served alongside four presidents: Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton. He then spent some time as a magazine editor before going from political insider to TV commentator. Gergen died at a retirement community in Lexington, Massachusetts, on Thursday from Lewy body dementia, his son Christopher said, according to The New York Times. Gergen wrote speeches, briefed reporters, and created communication strategies. He also helped set the agenda for the four presidents he served, with Clinton being the only Democrat among them. He began his political career in the Nixon White House and served as communications director on two occasions, first to Gerald Ford and then to Ronald Reagan. The adviser was given credit for easing the harsh rightwing rhetoric that Reagan's more hardline staffers wanted to use. Clinton brought him back into the White House after a number of political mistakes had set his administration on the wrong course. He lasted roughly a year in the Clinton administration, where some viewed him as an intruder and in a time when many Republicans saw him as a deserter. Following his departure from government, he was lauded by the presidents he had served, and he remained mostly unmarred by the issues that had befallen them. He told The Washington Post in 1981 that he had been slow to understand Nixon's guilt in the Watergate scandal. 'I was young, and I was too naïve. It hardened me up a lot.' Decades later, in a 2021 column for CNN, he wrote President Donald Trump was 'a bully — mean, nasty and disrespectful of anyone in his way.' Speaking to The Boston Globe in 2020, he said, 'Centrism doesn't mean splitting the difference.' 'It's about seeking solutions, and you bring people along. I'm happily in that role,' he added at the time. A tall man, 6-feet-5, Gergen became popular with many reporters at the White House, leaking information often enough to be dubbed 'the sieve,' The Times noted. But some journalists weren't so charmed. Mike Kelly, who died in 2003 during the Iraq War, was one of them. 'To be Gergenized is to be spun by the velveteen hum of this soothing man's soothing voice into a state of such vertigo that the sense of what is real disappears into a blur,' he wrote in The New York Times Magazine in 1993. Gergen told Kelly that he had often been 'selling for the sake of selling.' Spinning 'had nothing to do with ideas,' said Gergen. 'It had nothing to do with anything that was real,' he added. 'Eventually, it became selling the sizzle without the steak. There was nothing connected to it. It was all cellophane. It was all packaging.' Between his tours in the White House, Gergen dabbled in journalism, becoming the managing editor of Public Opinion magazine in 1978. The magazine was published by the conservative American Enterprise Institute. He also served as the editor and columnist at U.S. News & World Report in the mid-1980s. He frequently appeared on television and taught at Duke University and Harvard's Kennedy School. Born on May 9, 1942 in Durham, North Carolina, his father was the chair of the mathematics department at Duke. Graduating from Yale with a degree in American studies in 1963, Gergen was an intern in the office of North Carolina's Democratic Governor, Terry Sanford, for three summers. After earning a law degree from Harvard, he joined the Navy in 1967, serving as an officer on a ship in Japan. He married a Brit, Anne Wilson, whom he met on a blind date that same year.
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
We're becoming inured to Trump's outbursts – but when he goes quiet, we need to be worried
In the global attention economy, one titan looms over all others. Donald Trump can command the gaze of the world at a click of those famously short fingers. When he stages a spectacular made-for-TV moment – say, that Oval Office showdown with Volodymyr Zelenskyy – the entire planet sits up and takes notice. But that dominance has a curious side-effect. When Trump does something awful and eye-catching, nations tremble and markets move. But when he does something awful but unflashy, it scarcely registers. So long as there's no jaw-dropping video, no expletive-ridden soundbite, no gimmick or stunt, it can slip by as if it hadn't happened. Especially now that our senses are dulled through over-stimulation. These days it requires ever more shocking behaviour by the US president to prompt a reaction; we are becoming inured to him. Yet the danger he poses is as sharp as ever. Consider the events of just the last week or so, few of them stark enough to lead global news bulletins, yet each one another step towards the erosion of democracy in and by the world's most powerful country. On Wednesday, Trump threatened to impose 50% tariffs – yes, he's climbed back on that dead horse – on Brazil, if the judicial authorities there do not drop the prosecution of the country's Trump-like former president Jair Bolsonaro, charged with seeking to overturn his 2022 election defeat and leading a coup against the man who beat him, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. As concisely as he could manage, Lula explained, via social media, that Brazil is a sovereign country and that an independent judiciary cannot 'accept interference or instruction from anyone … No one is above the law.' This is becoming a habit of Trump's. He made the same move in defence of Benjamin Netanyahu last month, hinting that Israel could lose billions in US military aid if the prime minister continues to stand trial on corruption charges. In both cases, Trump was explicit in making the connection between the accused men and himself, decrying as a 'witch-hunt' the efforts to hold them to account. 'This is nothing more, or less, than an attack on a Political Opponent,' he posted, of Bolsonaro's legal woes. 'Something I know much about!' It's easy to make light of the transparent effort by Trump to forge an international trade union of populist would-be autocrats, but he's not solely moved by fraternal solidarity. He also wants to dismantle a norm that has long applied across the democratic world, which insists that even those at the top are subject to the law. That norm is an impediment to him, a check on his power. If he can discredit it, so that a new convention arises – one that agrees that leaders can act with impunity – that helps his animating project in the US: the amassing of ever more power to himself and the weakening or elimination of any rival source of authority that might act as a restraint. He is being quietly assisted in that goal by those US institutions that should regard themselves as co-equal branches of government – Congress and the supreme court – and whose constitutional duty is to stand up to an overmighty executive. Republicans in Congress have now approved a mega bill that they know will leave future generations of Americans drowning in debt and deprive millions of basic healthcare cover. Even so, they put aside their own judgment and bowed to the man who would be king. Less discussed was the bill's extraordinary expansion of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or Ice. Its budget has been increased by a reported 308%, with an extra $45bn to spend on detention and $29.9bn for 'enforcement and deportation'. It will soon have the capacity to detain nearly 120,000 people at any one time. And, remember, latest figures show that about half of all those detained by Ice have no criminal record at all. No wonder even conservative critics are sounding the alarm. The anti-Trump Republicans of the Bulwark warn that within months, the 'national brute squad' that is Ice will have twice as many agents as the FBI and its own vast prison system, emerging as 'the primary instrument of internal state power'. In this view, Trump has realised that corrupting the FBI is a tall order – though still worth trying – so he is supplanting it with a shadow force shaped in his own image. As the Bulwark puts it: 'The American police state is here.' Those most directly threatened might share clips of masked Ice agents snatching suspected migrants off the streets and manhandling them violently, just as reports circulate of appalling conditions in Ice premises, with people held in 'dungeon-like facilities', more than 100 crammed into a small room, denied showers or a chance to change clothes, and sometimes given only one meal a day and forced to sleep on concrete benches or the floor. But it is hardly a matter of national focus. Because it is not accompanied by a neon-lit Trump performance, it is happening just out of view. The same could be said of a series of recent decisions by the supreme court. They may lack the instant, blockbuster impact of past rulings, but they accelerate the same Trump trend away from democracy and towards autocracy. On Tuesday, the judges gave Trump the green light to fire federal workers en masse and to dismantle entire government agencies without the approval of Congress. Earlier, the supreme court had ruled that Trump was allowed to remove Democrats from the leadership of government bodies that are meant to be under politically balanced supervision. More usefully still for Trump, last month the judges limited the power of the lower courts to block the executive branch, thereby lending a helping hand to one of the president's most egregious executive orders: his ending of the principle that anyone born in the US is automatically a citizen of the US, a right so fundamental it is enshrined in the constitution. In ruling after ruling, the supreme court is removing restraints on Trump and handing him even more power. Small wonder that when one of the dissenting minority on the court, Ketanji Brown Jackson, was asked on Thursday what kept her up at night, she answered: 'The state of our democracy.' Meanwhile, Trump is succeeding in his goal of cowing the press, extracting serious cash from major news organisations in return for dropping (usually flimsy) lawsuits against them, a move that is having the desired, chilling effect. It all adds up to the steady erosion of US democracy and of democratic norms whose reach once extended far beyond US shores. Even if it is happening quietly, by Trump's standards, without the familiar sound and fury, it is still happening. The work of opposing it begins with noticing it. Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist
