It’s been 20 years since the U.N.’s Alliance of Civilizations identified the conflict between the Palestinians and Israel as a “major factor in the widening rift between Muslim and Western societies.”
That conflict wasn’t, the Alliance stressed, the only one fueling this clash of cultures and belief systems; Afghanistan and Iraq, which in 2006 were the locations of two major U.S. interventions in the wake of the 9/11 atrocities, were also significant contributors to the divide. However, it continued, “the Israeli-Palestinian issue has taken on a symbolic value that colors cross-cultural and political relations among adherents of all three major monotheistic faiths well beyond its limited geographic scope.”
There you have it: “Palestine” as a symbol like no other of the world’s cleavages and fissures, which will only deepen as long as the conflict lasts. Using this claim as a foundation, the United Nations and its agencies have assiduously cultivated the myth that relations between Western and Islamic nations hinge on a resolution of this one conflict.
At every annual U.N. General Assembly, we have heard speeches reinforcing this notion, invariably focusing on Israel’s supposed responsibility to evacuate territories it conquered during a defensive war and never regarding the Palestinians as anything other than passive victims.
This year was no different.
The usual suspects—among them Turkey, Jordan, Iran and Qatar—all rounded upon Israel. So did the representatives of some Western democracies, one of whom, French President Emmanuel Macron, ludicrously claimed that, in contrast to Gaza, Hamas has virtually no presence in Judea and Samaria. For his part, outgoing U.N. leader António Guterres melodramatically told the gathering that the war in Gaza was “unlike anything I have seen in all my years as Secretary General,” inadvertently confirming that, as far as he’s concerned, other devastating wars in places like Sudan, Myanmar and Ethiopia aren’t nearly as important.
The supreme irony here is that these grand visions of a peace that shrinks Israel territorially in exchange for vague promises of recognition are the reason why the U.N.’s interventions on this conflict are distrusted in Washington and regarded with contempt in Jerusalem. As long as it functions as a forum for the demonization of Israel—and as long as its experts and committees and agencies and international leaders continue issuing reports depicting Israel as the very model of a rogue state—that will remain the case.
Firing Albanese won’t wipe the slate clean when it comes to the secretary-general’s disproportionate focus on Israel. But it will add some welcome balance.
Critically, the world body’s approach bolsters the efforts of pro-Hamas activists—those who wish to see the State of Israel eliminated—both inside and outside the world body. And no organization or individual better encapsulates this woeful state of affairs than Francesca Albanese, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the “occupied Palestinian territories.”
The dismal record of Albanese, who has been sanctioned by the United States, is by now widely known. She shills for terrorist groups, believes that Zionism is racism (in keeping with the now discarded 1975 U.N. General Assembly Resolution endorsing the same libel), and has eagerly cultivated the Western solidarity movement whose sole contribution has been to dramatically escalate the levels of antisemitism faced by Jews in the Diaspora.
None of that has convinced Guterres to fire her, even though he acknowledged in a recent interview that some of the special rapporteurs are “out of control”—he was thinking primarily of Albanese—and has let it be known that he “despises” her.
The reason she is still in her role supposedly stems from a reluctance on the part of Guterres to clash with the U.N.’s system of special rapporteurs for fear of compromising their independence.
But now, he really does have a reason to boot her.
The special rapporteurs are required to stay within their mandates, but spitting on Israel is no longer enough for Albanese. During a speech last week in her native Italy, she turned to Ukraine. After hedging on the question of responsibility for the conflict, admitting that Russia did, in fact, invade Ukraine but insisting that there were “a number of reasons” that led to the war, she then urged an arms embargo against Kyiv in order, she said, to advance the diplomatic process.
Absent was the kind of condemnation that she lashes upon the Israelis—nothing on the abduction by the Russians of thousands of Ukrainian children, or their lethal drone and missile attacks against Ukrainian population centers, or even the fact that Russian army recruits typically lose their lives within 30 minutes of arriving on the front line.
Such words will be music to the ears of Vladimir Putin’s regime, especially as she unfavorably contrasted the treatment of Russia with that of Israel.
Then, in a separate interview with none other than the Russian state broadcaster RT, she set her sites on the U.S. embargo on Cuba. Denouncing the “ideological” underpinning of U.S. policy towards the island’s brutal Communist regime, she described the embargo as “a revealing sign of a system that uses force and strangles entire populations to achieve political objectives.” She also sycophantically thanked “Cuban medical staff” for lavishing their scarce resources on her friend Alessandro di Batista, a former parliamentarian for Italy’s antisemitic, populist Five Star Movement who fell ill in Havana while on a solidarity visit.
Speaking to the Saudi outlet Al Majalla, Albanese described Israeli actions in Gaza as “a model that reveals how power is exercised across the world. Palestine is a laboratory—a prototype of repression and oppression.” She may believe that this analysis legitimizes her comments on other situations, but the United Nations and Guterres should not see it that way.
Albanese’s remarks on Ukraine and Cuba were by any yardstick a serious violation of her U.N. mandate. Before he leaves office at the end of December, Guterres has the opportunity to counter the widespread impression that he’s a pushover by taking her to task.
Firing Albanese won’t wipe the slate clean when it comes to the secretary-general’s grossly disproportionate focus on Israel’s alleged offenses. But it will add some welcome balance.
After all, in a 2024 speech, Guterres noted that antisemitism “was not born with the Nazis and did not die with the Nazis.” He is correct—and figures like Albanese are its standard bearers nearly a century later. If he wants those words to be more than a sop to wounded Jewish feelings, he should act by ejecting Albanese from the halls of the United Nations.
