If at first you don’t succeed in promoting an anti-Israel film, try again.
Francesca Albanese, special rapporteur for the Palestinians at the United Nations who has a long history of attacking the Jewish state, wrote at 5:20 p.m. Eastern time on Monday that the film “Israelism” is a “must-watch.”
In the since-deleted post, Albanese wrote that “it shows” that “many Jewish people worldwide, unconditionally in love with Israel, live a lie” and “premised upon the invisibilization/erasure of the Palestinians, Isreel’s [sic] lie today is leading to a genocide.”
“What a disgraceful epilogue,” she added.
The anti-Israel film that she recommended purports to detail the experiences of Simone Zimmerman, the founder of IfNotNow, an organization that opposes Israel’s existence and which stated after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attacks that “we cannot and will not say today’s actions by Palestinian militants are unprovoked.”
The film also follows an Israeli soldier, who criticizes Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.
IfNotNow has been a sponsor of the antisemitic protests by Hamas supporters which have disrupted Columbia University’s campus since last fall.
But instead of linking to the film, as Albanese did in a subsequent post, she shared a dance performance by the anti-communist China group Shen Yun, which is tied to the Falun Gong movement. (The group’s social media handle has four pro-Israel posts, all in 2018, when it performed in Tel Aviv.)
The new post spells “Israel” correctly and adds a reference to the Jewish state’s “founding ideology” being a lie.
As a special rapporteur, Albanese has an independent mandate and doesn’t report to anyone in the U.N. system.
Multiple U.S. ambassadors and the French and German governments have accused Albanese of Jew-hatred, including for comparing Israel to Nazi Germany and stating that Hamas wasn’t motivated by antisemitism when it attacked Israel on Oct. 7.
Although Albanese deleted her Monday post on social media, she has not deleted a Nov. 17, 2024 post, in which she claimed that Sky News reported that a Gazan doctor was likely raped to death in an Israeli prison.
Despite being made aware that the claim is false and is not to be found in the Sky News report, Albanese has left the post up.
