Belgian Jews this week protested the announcement by three universities that they would give an honorary doctorate to Francesca Albanese, an Italian anti-Israel U.N. official who has been accused of antisemitic hate speech.
Both the French-speaking Coordinating Committee of Jewish Organizations in Belgium (CCJOB) and the Flemish-speaking Forum of Jewish Organizations (FJO) condemned the decision by the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) to honor Albanese at a ceremony in April. VUB, which is a top-ranked Belgian institution, announced the move along with the University of Antwerp and Ghent University.
To many of her critics, Albanese represents the nexus of antisemitism and Israel hatred, which has made European universities hotbeds of Jew-hatred, especially after the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre.
The honorary doctorate recognizes the “exceptional commitment to the protection of human rights and the strengthening of international law” by Albanese, who was appointed in 2022 as U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, the three universities wrote in a statement.
FJO wrote on Monday, “Her repeated comparisons of Israel to the Nazis are perceived as Holocaust trivialization and antisemitic under the IHRA definition, and the U.S. government also labels it as such. This sends the wrong message to students and is in no way an example of academic integrity or ethics.”
CCJOB announced on Tuesday that it was joining FJO’s call on the university to revoke the honor.
Albanese has long faced allegations of antisemitism, which she has denied.
In February 2024, she wrote on X to French President Emmanuel Macron that the victims of the Oct. 7 onslaught were “not killed because of their Jewishness, but as a reaction to Israel’s oppression.”
In 2014, she stated, “America and Europe, one of them subjugated by the Jewish lobby, and the other by the sense of guilt about the Holocaust.” Albanese has since said that she regrets this remark.
Since becoming the U.N. special rapporteur, Albanese has largely refrained from making public observations about Jews and has focused on trying to create false equivalences between Nazi Germany and Israel, and between the Holocaust and Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.
In August 2024, Albanese likened Israel’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip to the Holocaust, calling it a “concentration camp of the 21st century.”
In July of that year, Albanese trivialized the Nazi genocide of 6 million Jews, reposting an image comparing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Adolf Hitler, with the comment: “This is precisely what I was thinking today.”
The American government, under U.S. President Donald Trump, sanctioned Albanese in early July after she sent letters to American entities accusing them of complicity in alleged Israeli crimes and recommending that the International Criminal Court in The Hague investigate them.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said last July that “Albanese has spewed unabashed antisemitism, expressed support for terrorism and open contempt for the United States, Israel and the West.”
The Belgian universities that intend to honor Albanese did not immediately reply to a request by JNS for comment.
