Uncategorized
US officials blast UN rapporteur on Palestinian rights over past ‘Jewish lobby’ and other comments
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Top U.S. and Israeli diplomats sharply criticized the top United Nations official monitoring Palestinian rights for past comments on Israel, including one involving the “Jewish lobby” and “guilt about the Holocaust.”
Michèle Taylor, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Human Rights Council, pointed to a comment Francesca Albanese made in 2014, saying Wednesday on Twitter that the Biden administration was “appalled” at the comments. Albanese, an Italian human rights lawyer who has long focused on defending Palestinians, is the U.N. special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories, reporting to the U.N. Human Rights Council.
“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,” Albanese wrote during the 2014 Israel-Hamas war in a letter to her bishop that she posted on her personal Facebook page, and which was revealed by The Times of Israel on Wednesday.
Taylor wrote: “References to the ‘Jewish Lobby’ are an age-old trope; this is outrageous, inappropriate, corrosive, and degrades the value of the U.N.”
Deborah Lipstadt, the State Department envoy to monitor antisemitism, said Albanese’s 2014 remarks were part of an “established pattern” of antisemitism, alluding to a slew of past and recent controversies that have attended Albanese’s appointment to the job earlier this year. Albanese has also compared the Nakba, the dispersion of Palestinians following Israel’s independence, to the Holocaust and shared a Facebook post that compared Gaza to the Warsaw Ghetto.
“It severely undermines the credibility of the U.N. Human Rights Special Rapporteur to deal with the issue of human rights in the context of Israel and the Palestinian territories,” Lipstadt tweeted,
The Israeli mission to Geneva, where the U.N. Human Rights Council is situated, called the revelation “yet another stain on the credibility of this body and yet another example of the impunity that exists today regarding antisemitism and antisemitic comments made by U.N. officials.”
Albanese has clashed repeatedly with Israel and its defenders since assuming the role. Like some of her predecessors, including Richard Falk, Israel sees her as having biases that impair her credibility for the role and that sometimes cross over into into antisemitism.
Albanese and her defenders have cast the accusations as distortions aimed at undercutting her exposes of Israeli wrongdoing in Palestinian territory. She adopted that tone in reaction to the criticism of the 2014 statement.
In a statement posted on Twitter on Friday she said the statement was “a decontextualized and disingenuous extrapolation of what I said 10 [sic] years ago wrongly mischaracterized as antisemitic” and asked people to await further clarifications.
It was unclear what those would be, but she told the Times of Israel that her past words should not “distract” from her reporting on Israel’s alleged abuses.
“Some of the words I used, during Israel’s offensive on the Gaza Strip in 2014, were infelicitous, analytically inaccurate and unintendedly offensive. People make mistakes. I distance myself from these words, which I would not use today, nor have used as a UN Special Rapporteur,” she said.
—
The post US officials blast UN rapporteur on Palestinian rights over past ‘Jewish lobby’ and other comments appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
Rights Groups Condemn Re-Arrest of Nobel Laureate Mohammadi in Iran
Taghi Ramahi, husband of Narges Mohammadi, a jailed Iranian women’s rights advocate, who won the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize, poses with an undated photo of himself and his wife, during an interview at his home in Paris, France, October 6, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Christian Hartmann
International human rights groups have condemned the re-arrest of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi in Iran, with the Nobel committee calling on Iranian authorities to immediately clarify her whereabouts.
Mohammadi’s French lawyer, Chirine Ardakani, said on X that the human rights activist was arrested on Friday after denouncing the suspicious death of lawyer Khosrow Alikordi at his memorial ceremony in the northeastern city of Mashhad.
Mashhad prosecutor Hasan Hematifar told reporters on Saturday that Mohammadi was among 39 people arrested after the ceremony.
Hematifar said she and Alikordi’s brother had made provocative remarks at the event and encouraged those present “to chant ‘norm‑breaking’ slogans” and disturb the peace, the semi-official Tasnim news agency reported.
The prosecutor said Mashhad’s chief of police and another officer received knife wounds when trying to manage the scene.
CALLS FOR RELEASE
The Norwegian Nobel Committee called on Iranian authorities “to immediately clarify Mohammadi’s whereabouts, ensure her safety and integrity, and to release her without conditions.”
The European Union also called for Mohammadi’s release. “The EU urges Iranian authorities to release Ms Mohammadi, taking also into account her fragile health condition, as well as all those unjustly arrested in the exercise of their freedom of expression,” an EU spokesperson said on Saturday.
A video purportedly showing Mohammadi, 53, without the mandatory veil, standing on a car with a microphone and chanting “Long Live Iran” in front of a crowd, has gone viral on social media.
Ardakani said Mohammadi was beaten before her arrest.
Reporters Without Borders said four journalists and other participants were also arrested at the memorial for human rights lawyer Alikordi, who was found dead in his office on December 5.
Authorities gave the cause of his death as a heart attack, but rights groups have called for an investigation into his death.
The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency said the crowd also chanted “death to the dictator,” a reference to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as well as: “We fight, we die, we accept no humiliation.”
Mohammadi, who received the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize, has spent more than 10 years of her life in prison, most recently from November 2021 when she was charged with “propaganda against the state,” “acting against national security,” and membership of “illegal organizations.”
This year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner, the Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, said on Saturday that the opposition’s campaign in Venezuela was akin to that taking place in Iran.
“In Oslo this week, the world honored the power of conscience. I said to the ‘citizens of the world’ that our struggle is a long march toward freedom. That march is not Venezuelan alone. It is Iranian, it is universal,” she said on X on Saturday.
Uncategorized
Pete Hegseth Pledges Retribution After Islamist Gunmen in Syria Kills 2 US Soldiers and Civilian, Injuring 3
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth attends a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on US President Donald Trump’s budget request for the Department of Defense, on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, US, June 11, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz
i24 News – Two US Army soldiers and a civilian interpreter were killed in an Islamic State attack on Saturday in Palmyra, Syria, where they were supporting counterterrorism operations, the Pentagon said.
Three others were wounded, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the attacker was killed by partner forces.
The Syrian Interior Ministry said that shooter in the deadly attack in Palmyra was a “member of the Syrian security forces who was influence by extremist ideology.”
President Donald Trump posted that “We mourn the loss of three Great American Patriots in Syria, two soldiers, and one Civilian Interpreter. Likewise, we pray for the three injured soldiers who, it has just been confirmed, are doing well.”
“This was an ISIS attack against the US, and Syria, in a very dangerous part of Syria, that is not fully controlled by them. The President of Syria, Ahmed al-Sharaa, is extremely angry and disturbed by this attack. There will be very serious retaliation. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”
Uncategorized
Israel Says It Kills Senior Hamas Commander Raed Saed in Gaza
Palestinians inspect the site of an Israeli strike on a car in Gaza City, December 13, 2025.REUTERS/Dawoud Abu Alkas
The Israeli military said it killed senior Hamas commander Raed Saed, one of the architects of the October 7, 2023 attacks on Israel, in a strike on a car in Gaza City on Saturday.
It was the highest-profile assassination of a senior Hamas figure since a Gaza ceasefire deal came into effect in October.
In a joint statement, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz said Saed was targeted in response to an attack by Hamas in which an explosive device injured two soldiers earlier on Saturday.
The attack on the car in Gaza City killed five people and wounded at least 25 others, according to Gaza health authorities. There was no immediate confirmation from Hamas or medics that Saed was among the dead.
HAMAS SAYS ATTACK VIOLATES CEASEFIRE AGREEMENT
An Israeli military official described Saed as a high-ranked Hamas member who helped establish and advance the group’s weapons production network.
“In recent months, he operated to reestablish Hamas’ capabilities and weapons manufacturing, a blatant violation of the ceasefire,” the official said.
Hamas sources have also described him as the second-in-command of the group’s armed wing, after Izz eldeen Al-Hadad.
Saed used to head Hamas’ Gaza City battalion, one of the group’s largest and best-equipped, those sources said.
Hamas, in a statement, condemned the attack as a violation of the ceasefire agreement but did not say whether Saed was hurt and stopped short of threatening retaliation.
The October 10 ceasefire has enabled hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to return to Gaza City’s ruins. Israel has pulled troops back from city positions, and aid flows have increased.