Francesca Albanese, UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, attends a side event during the Human Rights Council at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, March 26, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Denis Balibouse

A senior United Nations official has defended Hamas as a legitimate “political force” in Gaza that has built schools and hospitals while ruling the Palestinian enclave for nearly two decades, arguing that people should not think of the internationally designated terrorist group as armed “cut-throats” or “fighters.”

Francesa Albanese, the UN’s controversial special rapporteur on the human rights situation in the Palestinian territories, made the shocking remarks at an event in Sicily on Aug. 8. UN Watch, a Geneva-based NGO that monitors the international body, on Friday shared footage of her comments, which then went viral.

“People continue to say, ‘But Hamas, Hamas, Hamas’… I don’t think people have any idea what Hamas is,” Albanese said. “Hamas is a political force that won the 2005 elections — whether we like it or not. Hamas built schools, public facilities, hospitals. It was simply the authority, the de facto authority.”

Albanese then argued that one should not think of militants when they think of Hamas but instead of civil society initiatives such as building schools.

“So, it is critical that you understand, that when you think of Hamas, you should not necessarily think of cut-throats, people armed to the teeth, or fighters,” she said. “It’s not like that.”

Francesca Albanese: “People continue to say ‘But Hamas, Hamas, Hamas’… I don’t think people have any idea what Hamas is. Hamas is a political force that won the 2005 elections—whether we like it or not. Hamas built schools, public facilities, hospitals. It was simply the… pic.twitter.com/F9sGqAJPY2

— UN Watch (@UNWatch) August 15, 2025

In response, Hillel Neuer, the executive director of UN Watch, posted on social media that he and his organization “call on all UN member states to condemn Albanese’s support for terrorism.”

Experts noted that Albanese seemed to ignore that Hamas violently eliminated its Palestinian opposition in a brief conflict in 2007, when the terrorist group took full control of Gaza after winning legislative elections the prior year.

“Hamas maintains its grip on Gaza because it has systematically eliminated all viable opposition,” noted Joe Truzman, a senior research analyst at the Washington, DC-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank. “Since staging its violent coup in 2007, it has murdered rivals, crushed dissent, and ruled the territory with impunity.”

Hamas has also adopted a widely recognized military strategy of embedding its terrorists within Gaza’s civilian population and commandeering civilian facilities like hospitals, schools, and mosques to run operations and direct attacks.

Albanese’s sympathetic commentary on Hamas is the latest chapter of her extensive history of using her role at the UN to denigrate Israel and seemingly rationalize Hamas’ attacks on the Jewish state.

The UN recently launched a probe into Albanese’s conduct over allegedly accepting a trip to Australia funded by pro-Hamas organizations.

Last year, Albanese issued public support for the pro-Hamas protests and encampments on US university campuses, saying that they gave her “hope.” Earlier that month, she accused Israel of destroying Gaza and committing genocide in the Hamas-ruled Palestinian enclave, from which the terrorist group launched the current war by invading the Jewish state on Oct. 7, 2023, massacring 1,200 people and kidnapping 251 hostages. At a public hearing at the European Parliament last April, the UN rapporteur devoted much of her time to accusing Israel — but not Hamas — of lying about its conduct in Gaza.

That hearing came about two weeks after Albanese released a report accusing Israel of carrying out “genocide” in Gaza, continuing a pattern of the UN official singling out the Jewish state for particularly harsh condemnation. Albanese’s report did not mention any details about Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel. Israeli officials lambasted her findings, arguing they were misleading and excused terrorism.

Albanese claimed last year that Israelis were “colonialists” who had “fake identities.” Previously, she defended Palestinians’ “right to resist” Israeli “occupation” at a time when over 1,100 rockets were fired by Gaza terrorists at Israel. In 2023, US lawmakers called for the firing of Albanese for what they described as her “outrageous” antisemitic statements, including a 2014 letter in which she claimed America was “subjugated by the Jewish lobby.”

Albanese’s anti-Israel comments have earned her the praise of Hamas officials in the past.

In response to French President Emmanuel Macron calling Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel the “largest antisemitic massacre of the 21st century,” Albanese said, “No, Mr. Macron. The victims of Oct. 7 were not killed because of their Judaism, but in response to Israel’s oppression.”

Video footage of the Oct. 7 onslaught showed Palestinian terrorists led by Hamas celebrating the fact that they were murdering Jews.

Nevertheless, Albanese has argued that Israel should make peace with Hamas, saying that it “needs to make peace with Hamas in order to not be threatened by Hamas.” In July 2024, she also called for Israel to be expelled from the UN.

When asked what people do not understand about Hamas, she added, “If someone violates your right to self-determination, you are entitled to embrace resistance.”

In April, the UN extended Albanese’s mandate to monitor and report on alleged “human rights violations” that Israel supposedly commits against Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.

The Trump administration has urged the UN to fire Albanese for what US officials have described as a pattern of inflammatory, legally questionable, and antisemitic conduct. Last month, the US imposed sanctions against Albanese, citing her lengthy record of singling out Israel for condemnation.

A view shows the building of Norway’s central bank (Norges Bank) in Oslo, Norway, June 23, 2022. Photo: REUTERS/Victoria Klesty

Norway‘s sovereign wealth fund, the world’s largest, will exclude another six Israeli companies with connections to the West Bank and Gaza from its portfolio following an ethics review, it said on Monday.

The $2 trillion wealth fund did not name the companies it had decided to exclude but said they would be made public, along with specific reasons, once the divestments were completed.

One possibility is they include Israel’s five largest banks, which have been under review by the fund‘s ethical watchdog.

Separately, the fund said it had also sold stakes in six other companies following a decision last week to only hold stakes in Israeli companies that are part of the fund‘s benchmark index.

As of Aug. 14, the fund had 19 billion crowns ($1.86 billion) invested in 38 companies listed in Israel, the fund‘s operator Norges Bank Investment Management said, a reduction of 23 companies since June 30.

“More companies could be excluded,” Norwegian Finance Minister Jens Stoltenberg told reporters.

ETHICS REVIEW

The fund launched an urgent review earlier this month after reports that it had built a stake in an Israeli jet engine group that provides services to Israel’s armed forces, including the maintenance of fighter jets.

The reports spurred a fresh debate about the fund‘s investments in Israel and the Palestinian territories ahead of elections on Sept. 8, with some parties calling for the fund to divest from all Israeli companies, a step the government has ruled out.

Norway‘s parliament in June rejected a proposal for the fund to divest from all companies with activities in the Palestinian territories.

“This debate helps sharpen our practices,” said Stoltenberg.

Critics say only a complete withdrawal from investing in Israeli companies would protect the fund against possible ethical breaches.

Stoltenberg said that, from now on, the ethics watchdog and NBIM would have more frequent and faster exchanges of information to more rapidly identify problematic companies.

Ethical exclusions from the fund are based on recommendations from the fund‘s watchdog, though NBIM can also divest from companies if it assesses that a company poses too much of a risk to the fund, whether the risk is ethical or not.

“With more exchanges of information between the Council on Ethics and Norges Bank, it is possible that there could be more divestments of that kind in future,” said Stoltenberg.

Last Monday, the fund announced it was terminating contracts with all three external asset managers who handled some of its Israeli investments.

($1 = 10.1890 Norwegian crowns)

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi meets with Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi in Tehran, Iran, Nov. 14, 2024. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS

Iran will continue talks with the UN nuclear watchdog and the two sides will probably have another round of negotiations in the coming days, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei told state media on Monday.

International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors have been unable to access Iran‘s nuclear sites since Israel and the US bombed them during a 12-day war in June, despite IAEA chief Rafael Grossi stating that inspections remain his top priority.

“We had talks [with the IAEA] last week. These talks will continue and there will be another round of talks between Iran and the agency probably in the coming days,” Baghaei said.

Tehran has accused the IAEA of effectively paving the way for the Israel-US attacks with a report on May 31 that led the IAEA‘s 35-nation Board of Governors to declare Iran in breach of its non-proliferation obligations.

The Islamic Republic has long denied Western suspicions of a covert effort to develop nuclear weapons capability, saying it remains committed to the Non-Proliferation Treaty that mandates peaceful uses of atomic energy for signatories.

“The level of our relations [with the IAEA] has changed after the events that took place, we do not deny that. However, our relations…remain direct,” Baghaei said during a televised weekly news conference.

Last month, Iran enacted a law passed by parliament suspending cooperation with the IAEA. The law stipulates that any future inspections of Iranian nuclear sites needs approval by Tehran’s Supreme National Security Council.