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.