UN’s Palestinian human rights expert likened Israel’s actions to the Holocaust
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The UN’s independent expert for Palestinian human rights compared Israeli actions with the Holocaust, the Telegraph can reveal.
Francesca Albanese, a UN special rapporteur, used a discussion in 2021 to liken the “tragedy that befell the Jewish people with the Shoah” with the “crumbling of the connective tissue of a people” represented by the “Nakba”, the Arabic reference to Palestinian displacement from 1948.
Drawing comparisons between contemporary Israeli policy and the Nazis is an example of anti-Semitism, according to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance.
Ms Albanese, who was appointed last year, has also previously said that American opinion on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was “subjugated by the Jewish lobby”.
On Oct 7, the day of the Hamas attacks in Israel, she tweeted: “Today’s violence must be put in context.”
The Italian human rights lawyer is one of three senior UN officials now facing questions about their impartiality for public pronouncements since the attack.
Tlaleng Mofokeng, the UN’s special rapporteur on health, tweeted on Oct 7: “It’s beeeeeen a war. So!”
She subsequently retweeted a picture of Hamas terrorists surrounding a captured Israeli tank with the comment: “We South Africans turned to armed action against the apartheid regime for the same reasons as the Palestinians – there was no other option.”
Craig Mokhiber, the head of the New York Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), tweeted three days after the massacre referring to the “apartheid wall”.
Mr Mokhiber has also previously voiced support for the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement against Israel, as well as accusing the country of ethnic cleansing.
On Saturday campaigners called for the UN to show “moral leadership” and to “distinguish between right and wrong”.
Special rapporteurs are unpaid and appointed to three-year terms.
The UN’s Human Rights Council code of conduct for mandate holders states they should act with “integrity, meaning, in particular, though not exclusively, probity, impartiality, equity, honesty and good faith”.
In 2014, Ms Albanese posted an open letter to her Facebook page during the Israeli military operation in Gaza.
“America and Europe, one of them subjugated by the Jewish lobby, and the other by the sense of guilt about the Holocaust, remain on the sidelines and continue to condemn the oppressed – the Palestinians – who defend themselves with the only means they have (deranged missiles), instead of making Israel face its international law responsibilities,” she wrote.
She reportedly made another comment about Israel’s behind-the-scenes influence as part of a criticism of the BBC.
“The Israeli lobby is clearly inside your veins and system and you will be remembered to have been on the big brother’s side of this Orwellian nightmare caused once again by Israel’s greed,” she wrote.
Last year she appeared to distance herself from her 2014 comments, describing “some” of her words as “infelicitous, analytically inaccurate and unintendedly offensive”.
UN rapporteurs are in part investigative roles. As part of her application Ms Albanese stated that she did not “hold any views or opinions that could prejudice the manner” in which she investigates.
Meanwhile Dr Mofokeng, who in her UN capacity last week called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, has repeatedly likened Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians to “apartheid” in her native South Africa.
Last week she also tweeted: “The escalation & display of aggression in the occupied Palestinian territory represents a crushing moment on ongoing gross structural, systemic and sustained violence.”
UN Watch, an Geneva-based group that monitors bias, has also raised multiple examples of Gaza-based staff of the UN’s Relief and Works Agency appearing to welcome the Oct 7 attack.
Dina Rovner, from UN Watch, said: “On October 7th, Hamas perpetrated the worst massacre against Jews since the Holocaust. Hamas terrorists brutally slaughtered more than 1,400 Israelis, mostly civilians, injuring thousands, and taking some 200 hostages.
“We would expect the UN to show strong moral leadership by unequivocally condemning these heinous acts and affirming Israel’s right to self-defence.”
Ms Rovner added: “Although UN officials are supposed to be impartial, people like Palestine rapporteur Francesca Albanese, Israel Commission of Inquiry … and head of the UN human rights office in New York Craig Mokhiber insist on blaming Israel every time violence erupts with the Palestinians.”
The UN OHCHR has been approached for comment.
