{"id":313337,"date":"2026-02-23T12:01:19","date_gmt":"2026-02-23T12:01:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=313337"},"modified":"2026-02-21T17:52:04","modified_gmt":"2026-02-21T17:52:04","slug":"the-increasing-attacks-on-francesca-albanese-presage-a-new-dark-age","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2026\/02\/the-increasing-attacks-on-francesca-albanese-presage-a-new-dark-age\/","title":{"rendered":"The Increasing Attacks on Francesca Albanese Presage a New Dark Age"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"The Increasing Attacks on Francesca Albanese Presage a New Dark  Age\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/godS-0hPQdU?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><em>16 Feb 2026\u00a0<\/em>&#8211;\u00a0The vicious and sustained campaign mounted against Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967, by Israel and the U.S. now includes the German, Italian, French, Austrian and Czech foreign ministers demanding her resignation. This campaign is part of an effort by industrial nations to at once sustain the genocide in Gaza \u2014 nearly 600 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the sham ceasefire took effect \u2014 and silence all those who demand the international community abide by the rule of law.<\/p>\n<p>The latest assault on Francesca, part of a concerted effort to discredit international bodies such as the U.N., is based on a deliberately truncated video of a talk Francesca gave in Doha on February 7 that distorts and misconstrues her words. But truth, of course, is irrelevant. The goal is to silence her and all who stand up for Palestinian rights.<\/p>\n<p>Francesca was placed by the Trump administration on the Office of Foreign Assets Control 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 of her report, \u201cFrom economy of occupation to economy of genocide,\u201d which documented the global corporations that make billions of dollars from the genocide in Gaza and occupation of Palestinians.<\/p>\n<p>The Office of Foreign Assets Control list \u2014 weaponized by the Trump administration to persecute Francesca and in violation of the diplomatic immunity granted to U.N. officials \u2014 bans her from entering the U.S. It prohibits any financial institution from having her as a client. A bank that engages in financial transactions with Francesca is banned from operating in dollars, faces multimillion-dollar fines and is blocked from international payment systems. This has cut her off from global banking, leaving her unable to use credit cards or book a hotel in her name. Her assets in the U.S. are frozen. It has seen her medical insurance refuse to reimburse her for medical expenses. It has resulted in institutions, including U.S. universities, human rights groups and NGOs that once collaborated with her severing ties, fearing onerous U.S. penalties. The sanctions followed those imposed in February and June of last year on The International Criminal Court\u2019s prosecutor Karim Khan along with two judges for issuing arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.<\/p>\n<p>By making Francesca, who receives frequent death threats, the lightening rod, these governments seek to deflect attention from the ongoing slaughter and humanitarian disaster in Gaza. They seek to mask Israel\u2019s system of apartheid and unlawful occupation of historic Palestine. They seek to hide, most of all, their complicity with their continuing weapons shipments that fuel Israel\u2019s genocide.<\/p>\n<p>The pace of the genocide has slowed, but it has not stopped. Israel has seized 60 percent of Gaza and blocks most humanitarian aid, including fuel, food and medicine. At the same time, Israel is accelerating its seizure of the occupied West Bank, where more than 1,100 Palestinians have been killed and tens of thousands have been displaced from their homes since October 2023.<\/p>\n<p>The campaign against Francesca presages a terrifying world where Western industrial nations exploit and prey upon the weak, where the law is whatever powerful nations say it is, where those who dare to speak the truth and stand up for the rule of law are relentlessly persecuted, where genocide is another tool in the arsenal to crush the aspirations and rights of the vulnerable. This is a fight we must win. If we lose, if we let voices like Francesca\u2019s be silenced, we will usher in an age of blood and terror.<\/p>\n<p>______________________________________________<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/chris-hedges.png\" ><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-235173\" src=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/chris-hedges.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"100\" height=\"100\" \/><\/a> <em>Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize\u2013winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years for\u00a0<\/em>The New York Times<em>,\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, <em>and<\/em> NPR<em>. He used to be the host of the Emmy Award-nominated <\/em>RT America<em> show\u00a0<\/em>On Contact<em>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/chrishedges.substack.com\/p\/the-increasing-attacks-on-francesca?utm_source=post-email-title&amp;publication_id=778851&amp;post_id=188160563&amp;utm_campaign=email-post-title&amp;isFreemail=true&amp;r=b6biw&amp;triedRedirect=true&amp;utm_medium=email\" >Go to Original &#8211; chrishedges.substack.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><strong><em>JOIN THE BDS-BOYCOTT, DIVESTMENT, SANCTIONS CAMPAIGN TO PROTEST THE ISRAELI BARBARIC GENOCIDE OF PALESTINIANS IN GAZA.<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><strong><em>DON&#8217;T BUY PRODUCTS WHOSE BARCODE STARTS WITH <\/em><\/strong><strong><em>729, WHICH INDICATES THAT THEY ARE PRODUCED IN ISRAEL. DO YOUR PART! MAKE A DIFFERENCE!<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><strong><em>7 2 9: BOYCOTT FOR HUMAN JUSTICE!<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>16 Feb 2026\u00a0&#8211;\u00a0The vicious and sustained campaign mounted against Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian Territory, by Israel and the U.S. now includes the German, Italian, French, Austrian and Czech foreign ministers demanding her resignation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":303520,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82],"tags":[3772,2525,405,1407,1675,3395,87,865,739,2010,427,880,124,70,1025],"class_list":["post-313337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-united-nations","tag-anti-colonialism","tag-austria","tag-colonization","tag-czech-republic","tag-france","tag-francesca-albanese","tag-gaza","tag-genocide","tag-germany","tag-italy","tag-palestine","tag-state-terrorism","tag-united-nations","tag-usa","tag-west-bank"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313337","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=313337"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313337\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":313338,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313337\/revisions\/313338"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/303520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=313337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=313337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=313337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}