The UN’s top advisor on Palestine has seemingly suggested that the wildfires in Los Angeles and the ongoing Gaza War could be “connected”.
Controversial lawyer Francesca Alabense, amplified an X post which dubbed the fires and the conflict “symptoms of the same disease”.
Mondoweiss, a progressive, anti-Zionist news site based in New York, tweeted on Saturday: “The fires burning in Palestine and Los Angeles today are symptoms of the same disease: a system that values conquest over conservation, profit over people, and expansion over existence.”
The post linked to an article on the website by Ahmad Ibsais, a Palestinian-American student and vocal BDS supporter, which argued that the two crises are “connected catastrophes”.
It went on: “Each bomb that falls on Gaza sends ripples through our collective future, its impact felt in rising seas, warming temperatures and yes, in the fires that now threaten California’s hills.”
Albanese re-tweeted the article accompanied with her own caption, saying: “On our small planet, all injustices are connected.”
On our small planet, all injustices are connected. https://t.co/EhIYiX5WUI
— Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt (@FranceskAlbs) January 12, 2025
Wildfires are not uncommon in California and have occurred long before the current round of military operations in Gaza began.
“Hatred doesn’t require a cause, only a chance to manifest,” wrote Waleed Gadban, a political counselor at Israel’s UN mission in Geneva. “That’s the whole objective of her existence, Francesca Albanese.”
“In the modern incarnation of the Der Stürmer slogan ‘The Jews are our misfortune,’ the U.N.’s Francesca Albanese is actually blaming Israel for the Los Angeles fires. All symptoms of ‘the same disease,’” wrote Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch. “We call on the US, France, Germany and Britain to take action to expel this antisemite.”
“This is an actual UN employee. Her obsession with the world’s only Jewish state has actually led her to connect it to the Los Angeles fires,” stated Campaign Against Antisemitism. “ Once again, we call for Ms Albanese’s dismissal.”
It comes after the Board of Deputies called for Ms Albanese’s resignation after she expressed support for the disgraced academic David Miller.
Miller was sacked by the University of Bristol following allegations of antisemitism and the two sides are locked in a lengthy appeals process.
Taking to her own X account, Albanese wrote: “We, the generation who grew up with a sense of deceit, guilt and responsibility for the ignorant and coward ancestors of ours who made the Holocaust happen, WE have a role to play TODAY. In every corner.
“I stand with Justice, against racism, against Apartheid, and WITH Professor Miller.”