The poisonous face of UN Israel-hatred has finally got her comeuppance

Telegraph

13 hours ago

If you haven't heard of Francesca Albanese, here's a word of advice: stop reading this column, because you're in danger of finding out who she is.
Oh, for a world in which I'd never encountered the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, who in her three years in office has established herself as the sneering face of international Israelophobia!
Still, at least there's a silver lining: only those who are familiar with the Italian can savour the news that Marco Rubio has sanctioned her for 'illegitimate and shameful efforts to prompt International Criminal Court action against US and Israeli officials, companies, and executives'.
In a muscular post on X, the US Secretary of State added: 'Albanese's campaign of political and economic warfare against the United States and Israel will no longer be tolerated. We will always stand by our partners in their right to self-defence.'
Six months into Donald Trump's second term, it is easy to forget just how unconventional and wonderful his administration can be. Can you imagine any other president taking such an obvious, justified and long-overdue step as sanctioning a poisonous UN official who appears to hate Israel, America and the West?
Can you imagine Sir Keir Starmer doing so in the UK? He who recently imposed virtue-signalling sanctions upon two Israeli ministers who, for all their unpleasantness, pale in comparison to the hordes of evildoers across the region?
You cannot. Why? The answer to that question reveals the deep ideological rot that has long ravaged our centrist leaders, their legions of officials, and the entire culture of the Western elites. In short, it is the reason we're in this mess.
Rubio's sanctions could not have been imposed on a more deserving candidate. Born near Naples, Albanese came of age in the bubble of Leftist academia with a master's degree from that hotbed of radicalism, the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.
She has since developed a reputation for her prowess as an anti-Israel provocateur.
She regularly accuses the Jewish state of overseeing a regime of 'apartheid', for example, seemingly turning a blind eye to Israel's Arab politicians, Arab judges, Arab soldiers, Arab leaders of industry and Arab footballers on the national team. She has also compared Israeli actions with the Nazi Holocaust.
In 2014, she remarked that the United States had been 'subjugated by the Jewish lobby'. Amid a storm of outrage, she apologised, but it set the tone for much of her perspective since.
Which brings us to October 7. On that dark day, she posted that 'today's violence must be put in context' — Israel's naïve attempt to placate Hamas by allowing cash to flow into the Strip in the years beforehand was likely not what she had in mind — but she never extended the same dignity to Israel's military response, which she later wrongly and acontextually labelled a 'genocide'.
That was not her only eye-catching comment after the pogroms. Bizarrely, Albanese also argued that 'the victims of 7/10 were not killed because of their Judaism, but in response to Israel's oppression', making an argument in defence of Hamas that even Hamas itself does not make.
It all goes to show just how depraved the elites have become. In a sane universe, the UN would be an objective, reliable and virtuous organisation that tamed evil, stood up for democracy and promoted global harmony.
After decades of Soviet propaganda, self-indulgent centrist fundamentalism in the West and manipulation by our authoritarian enemies, however, the world we inhabit is far from sane. To wit: it is one in which the UN has become the foremost enabler of jihadism.
Trump may be something of a crude instrument, I suppose, but at least he (often) uses his power against the right targets. Albanese among them.