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US Envoy to UN Criticizes Albanese, Who Compared Netanyahu and Hitler, in Sharpest Language Yet
UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine Francesca Albanese, October 27, 2022 (Photo: Screenshot)
JNS.org – Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur for Palestinian rights, is “not fit for this or any other position at the UN,” Washington’s envoy to the global body said on Friday, after Albanese compared Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Adolf Hitler.
On Wednesday, Albanese responded to a post on social media by an anti-Israel, former UN human rights administrator, Craig Mokhiber, who wrote that “history is always watching” alongside photos of crowds celebrating the Nazi leader and Israeli prime minister. The latter came during Netanyahu’s speech to Congress on Wednesday.
“This is precisely what I was thinking today,” wrote Albanese, a UN “independent expert” appointed by the Human Rights Council. She has repeatedly accused Israel of genocide, including well before the current Israel-Hamas war.
On Friday, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the US ambassador to the United Nations, stopped short of calling for Albanese’s termination, but wrote that “there is no place for antisemitism from UN-affiliated officials tasked with promoting human rights.”
“While the United States has never supported Francesca Albanese’s mandate, it is clear she is not fit for this or any position at the UN,” Thomas-Greenfield wrote.
Biden administration officials have been critical of Albanese in the past, but Thomas-Greenfield’s language was the sharpest yet.
Michèle Taylor, US ambassador to the UN Human Rights Council, wrote that Albanese’s “comparison of Benjamin Netanyahu to Adolf Hitler is reprehensible and antisemitic. There should be no place for such dehumanizing rhetoric. Special rapporteurs should be striving to improve human rights challenges, not inflame them.”
The Israeli Foreign Ministry reacted furiously to Albanese’s posting, stating that Albanese “is beyond redemption. Once again she spreads vile hatred and abuses the memory of the Holocaust.”
“It is inconceivable that Francesca Albanese is still allowed to use the UN as a shield to spread antisemitism,” it added.
“When a current UN ‘expert’ endorses Holocaust distortion spread by the former director of UN human rights in New York,” wrote the Israeli mission to the global body in Geneva, Switzerland. “No doubt possible, the system is rotten to its core. It’s high time to UNseat Albanese.”
Daniel Meron, the newly-installed Israeli ambassador to the body in Geneva, added that Albanese “abuses her UN Human Rights Council title to spread hatred and inflammatory rhetoric. The UN system should stop tolerating this and unseat Albanese.”
“The German government strongly rejects Ms. Albanese’s recent comment likening the Israeli prime minister to Hitler,” wrote Steffen Seibert, the German ambassador to Israel. “Such a comparison coming from a representative of the United Nations is unacceptable.”
Albanese has a lengthy history of antisemitic statements and has backed Hamas’s terror activities, calling Israel’s right to defend itself “non-existent.”
She is under an internal UN investigation for a lobbying and fundraising tour of Australia and New Zealand, which several pro-Hamas lobbying groups said they sponsored or helped to organize.
The investigation is currently being handled by Albanese’s own colleagues within a UN Special Procedures committee. That committee had released a statement in May absolving Albanese of wrongdoing and casting bad faith aspersions on her accusers.
After months of pressure from JNS, the UN Human Rights Office said early this month that it paid for the estimated $22,000 trip, rather than the pro-Hamas lobbying groups, though it has yet to provide any documentation to substantiate that claim.
Asked earlier this month whether US Secretary of State Antony Blinken supported a motion by UN Watch, a nonprofit, to terminate Albanese’s position, a department spokesman told JNS that “we opposed the mandate of this special rapporteur, which we believe is not productive.”
“When it comes to the individual who holds that position, we can’t help but note a history of incendiary comments online and in her public statements,” the Foggy Bottom spokesman added.
The office of UN Secretary-General António Guterres has consistently declined to comment on Albanese’s statements and actions, with his spokespeople saying that Guterres didn’t appoint Albanese and has no authority over her.
Albanese serves in a voluntary role under the auspices of the Human Rights Council, and Guterres’s office claims that due to her being among the “independent experts” in that mechanism, she is free to speak as she wants without repercussion or criticism from the secretary-general.
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UN Security Council Meets on Iran as Russia, China Push for a Ceasefire
Members of the Security Council cast a vote during a United Nations Security Council meeting on the 3rd anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine at UN headquarters in New York, US, Feb. 24, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/David Dee Delgado
The U.N. Security Council met on Sunday to discuss US strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites as Russia, China and Pakistan proposed the 15-member body adopt a resolution calling for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire in the Middle East.
It was not immediately clear when it could be put to a vote. The three countries circulated the draft text, said diplomats, and asked members to share their comments by Monday evening. A resolution needs at least nine votes in favor and no vetoes by the United States, France, Britain, Russia or China to pass.
The US is likely to oppose the draft resolution, seen by Reuters, which also condemns attacks on Iran’s nuclear sites and facilities. The text does not name the United States or Israel.
“The bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities by the United States marks a perilous turn in a region that is already reeling,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the Security Council on Sunday. “We now risk descending into a rathole of retaliation after retaliation.”
“We must act – immediately and decisively – to halt the fighting and return to serious, sustained negotiations on the Iran nuclear program,” Guterres said.
The world awaited Iran’s response on Sunday after President Donald Trump said the US had “obliterated” Tehran’s key nuclear sites, joining Israel in the biggest Western military action against the Islamic Republic since its 1979 revolution.
U.N. nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi told the Security Council that while craters were visible at Iran’s enrichment site buried into a mountain at Fordow, “no one – including the IAEA – is in a position to assess the underground damage.”
Grossi said entrances to tunnels used for the storage of enriched material appear to have been hit at Iran’s sprawling Isfahan nuclear complex, while the fuel enrichment plant at Natanz has been struck again.
“Iran has informed the IAEA there has been no increase in off-site radiation levels at all three sites,” said Grossi, who heads the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Iran requested the U.N. Security Council meeting, calling on the 15-member body “to address this blatant and unlawful act of aggression, to condemn it in the strongest possible terms.”
Israel‘s U.N. Ambassador Danny Danon said in a statement on Sunday that the U.S. and Israel “do not deserve any condemnation, but rather an expression of appreciation and gratitude for making the world a safer place.”
Danon told reporters before the council meeting that it was still early when it came to assessing the impact of the U.S. strikes. When asked if Israel was pursuing regime change in Iran, Danon said: “That’s for the Iranian people to decide, not for us.”
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Israel Rejects Critical EU Report Ahead of Ministers’ Meeting
FILE PHOTO: Smoke rises from Gaza after an explosion, as seen from the Israeli side of the border, June 11, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen/File Photo
Israel has rejected a European Union report saying it may be breaching human rights obligations in Gaza and the West Bank as a “moral and methodological failure,” according to a document seen by Reuters on Sunday.
The note, sent to EU officials ahead of a foreign ministers’ meeting on Monday, said the report by the bloc’s diplomatic service failed to consider Israel’s challenges and was based on inaccurate information.
“The Foreign Ministry of the State of Israel rejects the document … and finds it to be a complete moral and methodological failure,” the note said, adding that it should be dismissed entirely.
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Pope Leo Urges International Diplomacy to Prevent ‘Irreparable Abyss’
FILE PHOTO: Pope Leo XIV holds a Jubilee audience on the occasion of the Jubilee of Sport, at St. Peter’s Basilica, at the Vatican June 14, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Yara Nardi/File Photo
Pope Leo on Sunday said the international community must strive to avoid war that risks opening an “irreparable abyss,” and that diplomacy should take the place of conflict.
US forces struck Iran’s three main nuclear sites overnight, joining an Israeli assault in a major new escalation of conflict in the Middle East as Tehran vowed to defend itself.
“Every member of the international community has a moral responsibility: to stop the tragedy of war before it becomes an irreparable abyss,” Pope Leo said during his weekly prayer with pilgrims.
“No armed victory can compensate for the pain of mothers, the fear of children, the stolen future. Let diplomacy silence the weapons, let nations chart their future with peace efforts, not with violence and bloody conflicts,” he added.
“In this dramatic scenario, which includes Israel and Palestine, the daily suffering of the population, especially in Gaza and other territories, risks being forgotten, where the need for adequate humanitarian support is becoming increasingly urgent,” Pope Leo said.
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