UN official denies 'Jewish lobby' comments were antisemitic

A United Nations official appointed to report on the occupied Palestinian territories has denied that it was antisemitic for her to say America is “subjugated by the Jewish lobby”.

Francesca Albanese, an Italian lawyer, published an open letter to her Facebook page in 2014 that condemned America and Europe for their behaviour during Operation Protective Edge, the Times of Israel reported.

She wrote: “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.”

The US mission to the UN in Geneva, Israeli officials and leading US Jewish groups condemned the comments after her comments were revealed.

Biden administration antisemitism envoy Deborah Lipstadt said Ms Albanese’s remark “severely undermines the credibility of the UN Human Rights Special Rapporteur to deal with the issue of human rights in the context of Israel and the Palestinian territories.”

In a letter to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, Rabbi Abraham Cooper and Rabbi Eric J. Greenberg of the Simon Wiesenthal Center demanded that Ms Albanese be fired.

"Albanese must be removed, and the Human Rights Council’s biased witch hunt against Israel must be dismantled if the UN hopes to retain credibility," they said.

Thank you to those who have expressed their solidarity after yet another politically-motivated attack against my mandate. The aim is to obscure the oppressive reality I am mandated to report on. I will not let anyone define who I am and what I stand for. pic.twitter.com/8QVgiBXD46

— Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt (@FranceskAlbs) December 15, 2022

In her first public statement since the furore broke, Ms Albanese hit back against her critics and denied that her comments were racist.

“Thank you to those who have expressed their solidarity after yet another politically-motivated attack against my mandate,” she posted on Twitter. 

“The aim is to obscure the oppressive reality I am mandated to report on. I will not let anyone define who I am and what I stand for.

“One request to Ambassadors at the UN and other officials: before rushing towards condemning me based on a decontextualized and disingenuous extrapolation of what I said 10 years ago (wrongly mischaracterized as antisemitic), please wait for further clarifications, which will follow.”

Those who are “appalled” by her comments should consider the Palestinians killed in the occupied territories this year, she added. 

"This is the oppressive reality that the politically-motivated attacks against my mandate are trying to obscure."

Ms Albanese was appointed earlier this year to serve as the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories.

She was not employed by the UN at the time of her 2014 comments, but had previously worked for the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, according to her LinkedIn profile.