{"id":311046,"date":"2026-01-05T12:00:53","date_gmt":"2026-01-05T12:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=311046"},"modified":"2025-12-31T14:50:16","modified_gmt":"2025-12-31T14:50:16","slug":"francesca-albanese-and-the-lonely-road-of-defiance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2026\/01\/francesca-albanese-and-the-lonely-road-of-defiance\/","title":{"rendered":"Francesca Albanese and the Lonely Road of Defiance"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Francesca Albanese – by Mr. Fish<\/p><\/div>\n

The U.N. special rapporteur is one of the most courageous crusaders against the genocide in Gaza. Because of this, she is blacklisted and treated as if she is a terrorist.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

30 Dec 2025\u00a0<\/em>–\u00a0It is a late November afternoon. I am driving to Genoa, Italy with Francesca Albanese, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967. We are traveling to join striking dockworkers. The dockworkers call for a moratorium on weapons bound for Israel and a halt to the Italian government\u2019s plans to increase military spending.<\/p>\n

We speed past the inky waters of Baie des Anges on our right and the razor-backed French Alps on our left. Ch\u00e2teaus and clusters of houses with red-tiled roofs, shrouded in the fading light, are perched on the rolling hillsides. Palm trees line the seafront road.<\/p>\n

Francesca \u2014 tall with flecks of gray in her hair and wearing large black-framed glasses and hoop earrings \u2014 is the b\u00eate noire of Israel and the United States. She was placed<\/a> on the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) list of the U.S. Treasury Department \u2014 normally used to sanction those accused of money laundering or being involved with terrorist organizations \u2014 six days after the release<\/a> of her report, \u201cFrom economy of occupation to economy of genocide.\u201d<\/p>\n

The OFAC list \u2014 weaponized by the Trump administration to persecute Francesca and in clear violation<\/a> of the diplomatic immunity granted<\/a> to U.N. officials \u2014 prohibits any financial institution from having someone on the list as a client. A bank that permits someone on the OFAC list to engage in financial transactions is banned from operating in dollars, faces multimillion-dollar fines and is blocked from international payment systems.<\/p>\n

In her report, Francesca lists<\/a> 48 corporations and institutions, including Palantir Technologies<\/a>, Lockheed Martin, Alphabet Inc., Amazon, International Business Machines Corporation (IBM), Caterpillar Inc., Microsoft Corporation and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), along with banks and financial firms such as BlackRock, insurers, real estate firms and charities, which in violation of international law, are making billions from the occupation and the genocide of Palestinians.<\/p>\n

The report, which includes a database of over 1,000 corporate entities that collaborate with Israel, demands these firms and institutions sever ties with Israel or be held accountable for complicity in war crimes. It describes \u201cIsrael\u2019s \u201cforever-occupation\u201d as \u201cthe ideal testing ground for arms manufacturers and big tech \u2014 providing boundless supply and demand, little oversight and zero accountability \u2014 while investors and private and public institutions profit freely.\u201d<\/p>\n

You can see my interview about the report with Francesca here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Francesca, whose previous reports including \u201cGaza Genocide: a collective crime<\/a>\u201d and \u201cGenocide as colonial erasure<\/a>\u201d along with her empassioned denunciations of Israel\u2019s mass slaughter in Gaza, have made her a lightning rod. She is excoriated every time she deviates from the approved script, including when pro-Palestine demonstrators stormed the headquarters of the Italian daily newspaper La Stampa <\/em>while we were in Italy.<\/p>\n

Francesca condemned<\/a> the incursion and property destruction \u2014 protesters scattered newspapers and spray-painted slogans on the walls such as \u201cFree Palestine\u201d and \u201cNewspapers complicit with Israel\u201d \u2014 but added that it should serve as a \u201cwarning to the press\u201d to do its job. That qualification expressed her frustration with the media\u2019s discrediting<\/a> of the reporting of Palestinian journalists \u2014 over 278 journalists and media workers have been killed<\/a> by Israel since Oct. 7 along with over 700 of their family members \u2014 and uncritical amplification of Israeli propaganda. But it was seized upon by her critics, including<\/a> Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, to lynch her.<\/p>\n

Secretary of State Marco Rubio imposed sanctions on Francesca in July.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe United States has repeatedly condemned and objected to the biased and malicious activities of Albanese that have long made her unfit for service as a Special Rapporteur,\u201d the State Department\u2019s press release read<\/a>. \u201cAlbanese has spewed unabashed antisemitism, expressed support for terrorism, and open contempt for the United States, Israel, and the West. That bias has been apparent across the span of her career, including recommending that the ICC, without a legitimate basis, issue arrest warrants targeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cShe has recently escalated this effort by writing threatening letters to dozens of entities worldwide, including major American companies across finance, technology, defense, energy, and hospitality, making extreme and unfounded accusations and recommending the ICC [International Criminal Court ] pursue investigations and prosecutions of these companies and their executives,\u201d it went on. \u201cWe will not tolerate these campaigns of political and economic warfare, which threaten our national interests and sovereignty.\u201d<\/p>\n

The sanctions followed those imposed in February<\/a> and June<\/a> on the court\u2019s prosecutor Karim Khan<\/a> along with two judges for issuing arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant.<\/p>\n

Francesca is barred from entering the U.S. even to appear at the United Nations in New York City, to present one of her two annual reports. The other is delivered at the United Nations Office at Geneva.<\/p>\n

Francesca\u2019s assets in the U.S. have been frozen, including her bank account and her U.S. apartment. The sanctions cut her off from the international banking system, including blocking her use of credit cards. Her private medical insurance refuses to reimburse her medical expenses. Hotel rooms booked under her name have been cancelled. She can only operate using cash or by borrowing a bank card.<\/p>\n

Institutions, including U.S. universities<\/a>, human rights groups, professors and NGOs, that once cooperated with Francesca, have severed ties, fearful of penalties established for any U.S. citizen who collaborates with her. She and her family receive frequent death threats. Israel and the U.S. have mounted a campaign to get her removed from her U.N post.<\/p>\n

Francesa is proof that when you stand steadfastly with the oppressed, you will be treated like the oppressed.<\/p>\n

She is unsure if her book, \u201cWhen the World Sleeps: Stories, Words, and Wounds of Palestine<\/a>,\u201d which has been translated into English and is expected to be released in April next year, will be distributed in the U.S.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m a sanctioned person,\u201d she says ruefully.<\/p>\n

But she is not cowed. Her next salvo will be a report that documents the torture of Palestinians in Israeli prisons. While torture, she says, was \u201cnot widespread,\u201d before Oct. 7, it has now become ubiquitous<\/a>. She is collecting testimonies of those released from Israeli detention.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt reminds me of the stories and testimonies I read from Argentina\u2019s dictatorship,\u201d Francesca tells me. \u201cIt\u2019s that bad. It\u2019s systemic torture against the same people. The same people are taken, raped and brought back, taken, raped and brought back.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWomen?\u201d I ask.<\/p>\n

\u201cBoth,\u201d she answers.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo have women tell you they have been raped, multiple times. They\u2019ve been asked to masturbate soldiers. This is incredible,\u201d Francesca says. \u201cFor a woman to say that. Imagine what they have endured? There are people who have lost their words. They cannot talk. They cannot speak after what they\u2019ve endured.\u201d<\/p>\n

Establishment media organizations, she says, not only dutifully parrot back Israeli lies, but routinely block reporting that reflects negatively on Israel.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn April, I reported the first cases of sexual harassment and rape that had taken place in January and February 2024,\u201d she says. \u201cPeople didn\u2019t want to listen. The New York Times interviewed me for two hours. Two hours. They didn\u2019t write a line about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Financial Times had \u2014 because of the relevance of the topic \u2014 an embargo\u2019d version of \u2018From economy of occupation to economy of genocide,\u2019\u201d she says. \u201cThey didn\u2019t publish it. They didn\u2019t even publish a review, an article, days after the press conference. But they did publish a critique of my report. I had a meeting with them. I said, \u2018This is really depressing. Who are you? Are you paid for the work you do? Who are you loyal to, your readers?\u2019 I pushed them. They said, \u2018Well, we didn\u2019t find that it was up to our standards.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

This, I tell her, is how the New York Times would spike stories by reporters that editors deem too incendiary.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey discredit your sources regardless of what your sources are,\u201d I tell her. \u201cThat becomes the vehicle by which they don\u2019t publish. This isn\u2019t a good faith discussion. They\u2019re not giving a fair analysis of what your sources are. They are categorically dismissing them. They\u2019re not telling you the truth, which is, \u2018We don\u2019t want to deal with Israel and the Israel lobby.\u2019 That\u2019s the truth. They don\u2019t say that. It is always, \u2018It\u2019s not up to our standards.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no free media, no free press in Italy anymore,\u201d Francesca laments. \u201cThere is, but it\u2019s fringe or on the margins. It is an exception. The main newspapers are held by groups connected to big powers, financial and economic powers. The government controls \u2014 directly or indirectly \u2014 much of Italian TV.\u201d<\/p>\n

The drift towards fascism in Europe and the United States, Francesca says, is intimately tied to the genocide, as is the emerging resistance.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a brewing anger and dissatisfaction with political leadership in Europe,\u201d she says. \u201cThere is also a fear that lingers in many countries because of the rise of the right. We\u2019ve been there. There are people who have living memories of fascism in Europe. The scars of Nazi-fascism are still there, even the trauma. People cannot process what has happened and why it\u2019s happened. Palestine has shocked people. Italians in particular. Maybe because we are who we are in the sense that we cannot be silenced that easily, we cannot be scared as has happened to the Germans and the French. I was shocked in France. The fear and repression is incredible. It is not as bad as Germany, but it\u2019s much worse than it was two years ago. The minister of education in France cancelled an academic conference on Palestine at the Coll\u00e8ge de France \u2014 the highest institution in France. The minister of education! And he bragged about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Francesca says our only hope now is civil disobedience, embodied in actions such as strikes that disrupt commerce and government or the attempts by the flotillas<\/a> to reach Gaza.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe flotillas created this sense of \u2018Oh, something can be done,\u2019\u201d she says. \u201cWe are not powerless. We can make a difference even in shaking the ground, rocking the boat. Then the workers have come in. The students have already been mobilized. There has been a sense through the various protests that we can still change things. People have started to connect the dots.\u201d<\/p>\n

Francesca presented her 24-page report \u201cGaza Genocide: a collective crime<\/a>\u201d to the U.N. General Assembly in October, a report that had to be delivered remotely<\/a> from the Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation in Cape Town, South Africa, because of the sanctions.<\/p>\n

Danny Danon, the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, following her presentation, said, \u201cMs. Albanese, you are a witch and this report is another page in your spellbook.\u201d He accused her of trying to \u201ccurse Israel with lies and hatred.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery page of this report is an empty spell, every accusation, a charm that does not work, because you are a failed witch,\u201d Danon continued.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt triggered a moment of enlightenment.\u201d Francesca says of the insults. \u201cI connected it to the injustice that women have suffered through the centuries.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat is happening to the Palestinians and to those who are speaking out for the Palestinians, is the 2025 equivalent of burning witches in the public square,\u201d she goes on. \u201cIt was done to scientists and theologians who didn\u2019t align with the Catholic Church. It was done to women who held the power of herbs. It was done to religious minorities, to indigenous people, like the S\u00e1mi people.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPalestine,\u201d Francesca says, \u201chas opened a portal to history, to where we come from and to what we risk if we don\u2019t pull the brakes.\u201d<\/p>\n

______________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize\u2013winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years for\u00a0<\/em>The New York Times,\u00a0where he served as the Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief. He previously worked overseas for\u00a0<\/em>The Dallas Morning News,\u00a0The Christian Science Monitor, and<\/em> NPR. He used to be the host of the Emmy Award-nominated <\/em>RT America show\u00a0<\/em>On Contact.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Go to Original – chrishedges.substack.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

30 Dec 2025\u00a0–\u00a0The U.N. special rapporteur is one of the most courageous crusaders against the genocide in Gaza. Because of this, she is blacklisted and treated as if she is a terrorist.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":311047,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82],"tags":[3143,2642,417,3395,2159,880,3220,2073,124,70],"class_list":["post-311046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-united-nations","tag-anti-hegemony","tag-anti-imperialism","tag-bullying","tag-francesca-albanese","tag-rogue-states","tag-state-terrorism","tag-un-agency-for-palestinian-refugees-unrwa","tag-unhchr","tag-united-nations","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311046","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=311046"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311046\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":311052,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311046\/revisions\/311052"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/311047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}