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Israeli envoy calls UN adviser a ‘witch’

“You have tried to curse Israel with lies and hatred, but your poison has failed,” Danny Danon told Francesca Albanese.

Francesca Albanese
Francesca Albanese, the U.N. special rapporteur for Palestinian rights, briefs reporters at the U.N. Headquarters, in New York City. Credit: Loey Felipe/U.N. Photo.

Danny Danon, the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, directed some of the harshest language he has used to date against Francesca Albanese, a United Nations special rapporteur, or independent adviser, with a long history of anti-Israel remarks.

“You have tried to curse Israel with lies and hatred, but your poison has failed,” he told Albanese, as a U.N. committee discussed a report she penned that Danon said “vilified Israel and blamed countries that support it.”

“You are a witch, and this report is another page in your spell book,” he said. “You wrap your bias in the language of law, hoping it will hide what it really is: Hamas propaganda.”

The Berkeley project “has a record of promoting anti-Israel and antisemitic agendas,” Oleg Ivanov, of StandWithUs, told JNS. “We are deeply concerned that the same thing will happen in this training.”
The announcement comes as Israeli banks are expected to end correspondent banking services to Palestinian counterparts.
The Federation told JNS exclusively that it is ending its engagement with a consultant who headed one of its communications projects after JNS reported that he advised attendees at a Federations conference to avoid using the word “Zionism.”
Alyza Lewin, president of U.S. affairs at the Combat Antisemitism Movement, stated that El-Sayed’s victory “should raise alarm bells for Jewish Americans across the country and everyone who believes in civil rights for all.”