Hamas government office rejects US accusation of involvement in Gaza aid site attack
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Telegraph
27 minutes ago
- Telegraph
US sanctions UN human rights official over Israel criticism
The United States has sanctioned the United Nations's special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories over her criticism of Israel. 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.
The Guardian
34 minutes ago
- The Guardian
US issues sanctions against UN official investigating abuses in Gaza
The Trump administration announced on Wednesday it was issuing sanctions against an independent official tasked with investigating human rights abuses in the Palestinian territories, the latest effort by the United States to punish critics of Israel's 21-month war in Gaza. The state department's decision to sanction Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur for the West Bank and Gaza, comes after a recent US pressure campaign to force the international body to remove her from her post failed. Albanese, a human rights lawyer, has been vocal about what she has described as the 'genocide' that Israel is waging against Palestinians in Gaza. Both Israel and the US, which provides military support, have strongly denied that accusation. In recent weeks, Albanese has issued a series of letters, urging other countries to pressure Israel, including through sanctions, to end its deadly bombardment of the Gaza Strip. The Italian national has also been a strong supporter of the international criminal court's indictment of Israeli officials, including the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, for war crimes. She most recently issued a report naming several US giants among companies aiding what she described as Israel's occupation and war on Gaza. 'Albanese's campaign of political and economic warfare against the United States and Israel will no longer be tolerated,' the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, posted on social media. 'We will always stand by our partners in their right to self-defense.' Albanese has been the target of criticism from pro-Israel officials and groups in the US and in the Middle East. Last week, the US mission to the UN issued a scathing statement, calling for her removal for 'a years-long pattern of virulent anti-Semitism and unrelenting anti-Israel bias'. The statement said that Albanese's allegations of Israel committing genocide or apartheid are 'false and offensive'. It is all a culmination of an extraordinary and sprawling campaign of nearly six months by the Trump administration to quell criticism of Israel's handling of the deadly war in Gaza, which is closing in on two years. Earlier this year, the Trump administration began arresting and deporting faculty and students of American universities who participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations and other political activities. The war between Israel and Hamas began on 7 October 2023, when Hamas-led militants stormed into Israel and killed nearly 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took 251 people captive. Israel's retaliatory campaign has killed more than 57,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza's health ministry, which says women and children make up most of the dead but does not specify how many were fighters or civilians. Nearly 21 months into the conflict that displaced the vast majority of Gaza's 2.3 million people, it is nearly impossible for the critically wounded to get the care they need, doctors and aid workers say. 'We must stop this genocide, whose short-term goal is completing the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, while also profiteering from the killing machine devised to perform it,' Albanese said in a recent post on X. 'No one is safe until everyone is safe.'
Telegraph
41 minutes ago
- Telegraph
The poisonous face of UN Israel-hatred has finally got her comeuppance
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.
