Council President Again Bemoans “Personal Attacks” on Rapporteur but Thanks Her After Screed Against “Pro-Genocide Voices”; B’nai B’rith Will Encourage U.S. to Consider Denying Entry Privileges

At the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) today, B’nai B’rith International has directly confronted Francesca Albanese, the body’s notorious “special rapporteur” on Palestinian rights, after her release of a new report targeting companies and even Jewish charities with unprecedented threats for engagement with Israel. In remarks at the council, B’nai B’rith said that Albanese, “more than any other” mandate-holder, had “serially violated” her obligations as a supposed expert advising the body. In response, the UNHRC’s president chided “personal attacks” against officials at the council—only to later thank Albanese after she excoriated “pro-genocide voices that continue to infiltrate this room.”

B’nai B’rith, which commends the United States for urging this week that the U.N. dismiss Albanese, will now encourage the U.S. and other responsible countries to strongly weigh denying entry to an extremist activist masquerading as a human rights specialist and defender.

Albanese’s newest report presented to the UNHRC, “From economy of occupation to economy of genocide,” goes beyond even her previous wild rhetoric both independently and in her official capacity as “special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967.” The council, in which Arab and other anti-Israel states wield an automatic majority, routinely scrutinizes and condemns Israel more than all other countries combined. Israel alone is the subject of a permanent agenda item at the UNHRC, and the council maintains a “special rapporteur” position focused only on championing Palestinian rights and goals.

In his remarks at the council, B’nai B’rith Director of U.N. and Intercommunal Affairs David Michaels called Albanese the world body’s mandate-holder who “more than any other, has serially violated her duty of universality, impartiality and non-selectivity. She already had a long record of Holocaust trivialization, delegitimizing Israel and its supporters, justifying terrorism and stigmatizing a definition of anti-Semitism adopted by [foremost] experts and dozens of member states.”

He added, “by defaming Israel as guilty of ‘genocide,’ she has done inexcusable harm to the human rights architecture and all actual victims of atrocity. Does the rapporteur know that the Palestinian population has grown by millions over the course of Israel’s history? When even distant [historic] events’ tolls remain unsettled, does she already trust Hamas claims and know how many current casualties are belligerents? Does she know Hamas tactics’ correlation to casualties, how those losses compare to other conflicts and how Israel’s efforts to mitigate harm compare to other combatants elsewhere? Has she shown any interest in the overtly genocidal aims of Iran, Hamas and other jihadists?”

In response, the Swiss president of the UNHRC—who also chided B’nai B’rith last month for critiquing the work of the council’s latest dedicated “commission of inquiry” on Israel—told session participants that “we must remain within acceptable limits to ensure that respectability in our discussion is guarded. So really, I ask you in particular to refrain from personal attacks against mandate holders.”

He offered, however, only thanks when Albanese, in subsequent comments, slammed “pro-genocide voices” in the chamber itself, saying “the apocalypse we are watching in Gaza reveals the unhinged inhumanity of this propaganda.” She also said, “This is not a conflict. This is not a war. It’s not an escalation of violence. It is intentional ethnic cleansing which is entailing genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity… I hear that the two-state solution is the only solution. No, before this the only solution is ensuring rights and freedoms for everyone between the river and the sea. Which means end of the genocide now, end of the occupation by September this year, and end of the apartheid.”

In her new report, Albanese urges a “full arms embargo on Israel,” International Criminal Court and government prosecution of corporate executives and entities of whose commercial dealings she disapproves, and banning “trade or investment relations with Israel’s economy of occupation and genocide.” She specifically targets—and has contacted directly to threaten—not only numerous major multinational and Israeli companies but Jewish philanthropic institutions including Israel Bonds, the Jewish National Fund and the online charity platform Israel Gives. She cites the Nuremberg trials of Nazi-allied industrialists as a basis for prosecuting individuals and businesses engaged with Israel, and her council remarks also invoked “reckonings that followed corporate complicity in apartheid South Africa and Nazi Germany.” She said the “situation in Palestine” demands “rupture, reckoning and a courage to dismantle what has enabled it.”

B’nai B’rith International President Robert Spitzer and CEO Daniel S. Mariaschin said, “Today’s performance in the Human Rights Council makes obvious how appropriate and necessary the U.S. call this week for Francesca Albanese’s dismissal from any official U.N. post was and is. Her bias and impunity are staggering.”

Moreover, they added, “At a time when open, violent anti-Semitism is surging not only abroad but also domestically in the United States—especially at schools and on college campuses, targeting American Jewish young people and anyone supportive of Israel’s rights—an inciter like Albanese does not deserve the privilege of entry to our countries, to spread falsehoods and hate. She is specifically harassing American and international businesses, and Jewish charities. It is fully appropriate for the U.S. and other governments to strongly weigh considering her ‘persona non grata,’ as they maintain the prerogative to exclude other proponents of inflammatory sentiment and objectives.”

Michaels’s full remarks may be viewed here.