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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.”

“When we are strengthening and reinforcing each other, there’s nothing we can’t accomplish and overcome,” Rabbi Mendy Dubrowski, an emissary in Tampa, Fla., told JNS.
“Mr. Eisenkot has received the clear and unequivocal support of a majority of members of Knesset on the most central question: Who has the better chance of forming the next government?” said Israeli President Isaac Herzog.
“If you don’t like our small business owners, wait till you meet our lawyers,” said Mark Goldfeder of the National Jewish Advocacy Center.
“I’ve been on the phone with a lot of unhappy Jewish people from across the country this morning,” B’nai B’rith International CEO Evan Bernstein told JNS. “I think people are scared. They’re nervous.”