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USG Sanctioning Francesca Albanese: Marco Rubio Tramples on Law, Justice, and Truth

27 Jul

[Prefatory Note: The text below was published in The Nation on July 15, 2025, appears here unmodified. The delay due to a weak Internet here in Turkey. There has been much critical reaction to this US Government defamatory statement justifying the imposition of sanctions on this exceptional independent expert appointed by the UN to an unpaid position, and left to hang in the wind by the politically motivated show of indifference by the UN Secretariat.]

Sanctioning Francesca Albanese: Marco Rubio Tramples on Law, Justice, and Truth

Richard Falk

Justifying US Sanctions

US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, in a dazzling Orwellian display inverted reality by slapped sanctions on Francesca Albanese, the much-embattled UN Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories of East Jerusalem, West Bank, and Gaza. If the sanctions are implemented against this extraordinary citizen of Italy, in the face of strong UN objections, Albanese will be barred from entering the US, presumably even to discharge her annual UN duty to present a report to the Third Committee of the General Assembly. Additionally, as a vindictive feature of the sanctions, whatever American financial assets she happens to possess, including real state, will be frozen. It is relevant to take notice of the that not only is Francesca Albanese, the first UN unpaid officeholder to be sanctioned, but she happens to be the first woman to be named UN Special Rapporteur of Occupied Palestine.

Relying on an earlier Trump Executive Order 14203 (“Imposing Sanctions on the International Criminal Court”), which is a stretch when it comes to the SR role played by Albanese, Rubio resorts to this lawfare ploy to connect her with an analogous sanctions imposed in February on five members of the ICC for their involvement in the issuance of arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli former Minister Defense, Yoav Gallant. The only link between the ICC and Albanese derived from her most recent SR report that explores the connections between the profits earned by some 60 named corporations in the US and European defense sectors and her carefully documented allegations of Israel’s criminal responsibility for genocide in Gaza. The recommendation in her report to the UN of investigation and indictment by the ICC provides the basic for accusing Albanese of waging ‘economic warfare’ against the US and Israel. As might be expected, big tech and arms dealers exerted their own pressures for the US to strike back, and strike it did.

Anyone familiar with the vicious Israeli campaign against Albanese since her appointment in 2022, fully seconded by the US, will jump to the plausible conclusion that these objecting countries were waiting for just such a setting to take punitive action against this fearless scholar and passionate advocate of human rights for the Palestinian people. Rubio acknowledges as much when he departs from the technical rationale for sanctions, giving voice to the deep roots of US hostility to Albanese. Rubio’s words read as if scripted by the most militant of AIPAC or UN Watch loyalists: “The United States has repeatedly condemned and objected to biased and malicious activities of Albanese that have long made her unfit for service as a Special Rapporteur.” His statement goes on falsely contending that “Albanese has spewed antisemitism, expressed support for terrorism, and open contempt for the United States, Israel, and the West.” Hardly a word of this defaming allegation is true beyond the partial exception of the ‘open contempt’ phrase. What seems relevant is that the sanctions were imposed days after the release of Albanese’s report that focused on corporate complicity with Israel’s criminality in Gaza, naming a series of prominent corporations that profited from supplying weapons and other military equipment facilitating the genocide. Rubio’s formal statement signaled the context by unusually referring to ‘economic’ as well as ‘political’ interests.

Background of Attacks on Albanese

The last three Special Rapporteurs on Palestine, of which I was one, were each subjected to harsh pushbacks in the form of character assassinations, death threats, and smears. These were similar to what Albanese experienced prior to the July 9 sanctions. We were much less visible and influential than Albanese, in part due to her public prominence, documented confirmation of inflammatory genocide accusations. As her fearless and persuasive critical assessments of Israel’s criminality began gaining growing credibility at odds with the mainstream news cycle upholding the legitimacy of Israel’s response to October 7 she became a prime target of government and societal diehard supporters of Israel. So when her last report named leading defense industry companies, and recommended ICC investigations and prosecutions it was apparently the last straw for US foreign policy establishment.

I will not claim any credentials, but my predecessor, John Dugard, and my successor, Michael Lynk, were world class jurists, whose views on international law issues were widely solicited and impressively influential long before they became UN SRs and have continued after their SR terms expired. This Israeli tactic of attacking the credibility of the messenger instead of addressing the message seemed to commence in the 2005-2010 period. Although not acknowledged by either Israel or its European and North American supporters this tactic appeared perversely responsive to the overwhelming evidence of highly visible Israeli violations of international humanitarian law in their administrative occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Israel’s core duty as embedded in the Geneva Convention on Belligerent Occupation was daily being flagrantly violated. It specified the obligations of an Occupying State to uphold the safety, security, needs, and interests of an occupied people. Among the most serious violations was the encouragement of Jewish settlements throughout the West Bank a fundamental breach of international humanitarian law that doomed peacemaking ventures, especially the viability of any durable two-state solution that is not a Bantustan buyoff. It also gave rise to the strong suspicion, later confirmed, that the Zionist Project coveted not only East Jerusalem, which was the unlawfully incorporated into Israel after the 1967 War, and proclaimed Israel’s eternal capital, but the West Bank as part of ‘the promised land’ in Jewish traditions.

To deflect attention from its lawless behavior, Israel chose to go after Special Rapporteurs and prominent critics by recourse to launching personal attacks rather than by addressing substantive criticisms by relying on counter-arguments. The centerpiece of this strategy came to be identified as ‘the weaponization of antisemitism,’ reinforced by manipulating the influential polemical IHRA definition of antisemitism. Criticisms of Israel’s behavior, including of its practices of ethnic cleansing and Knesset enactment of a Basic Law in 2018 of Jewish supremist ideology. Critical reactions by UNSRs and others were repudiated by Israel, derided as the purveyors of hatred toward Jews, and with US support mounting an intensifying campaign to eliminate the SR Mandate for Occupied Palestine. In this pushback against Israel’s critics, accusations were invariably directed at individuals who had strong reputations as strengthening human rights and had no animosity whatsoever to Jews as persons or as a people. These smearing tactics were intended to harm professional reputations and to be emotionally hurtful. The broader goals of these campaigns were to create toxic intimidating consequences for anyone who dared cross these ill-conceived red lines. These discrediting attacks have proved alarmingly effective over the years in diverting attention from Israeli wrongdoing, sowing doubts either cynically or by a naive citizenry and a self-censoring media that responds as folk wisdom instructs, ‘where there is smoke there must be fire.’

No one has endured more unwarranted hate and deserved admiration along these unscrupulous lines than Francesca Albanese. She has heroically persevered in an entirely objective expose of Israel’s prolonged, transparent, and cruel genocidal assault against the civilian population of Gaza

Exposing the Genocidal Narrative of Alleged Retaliation

It is against this background, knowingly or pragmatically indulged by Western governments and influential corporatized media platforms, that brought Albanese under fierce attack from the moment she was appointed SR by the UN. After October 7, 2025 when the Israeli response in Gaza assumed from its outset a genocidal quality, Albanese rose to the challenge of the UN mandate by naming the massive high tech violence against Gaza as ‘genocide’ when the mainstream mobilized to keep the debate about whether Israel was winning in gaining its public goal of exterminating Hamas. Albanese showed that this outcome was politically enabled by the prior dehumanization of the Palestinians. Her periodic reports to the UN brilliantly analyzed genocide as embedded in the Zionist Project of ‘settler colonialism,’ the essence of which consisted of persecuting Palestinians as strangers in their own homeland. She was energetic and effective in disseminating these provocative findings and allegations, building a global reputation unlike any previous Special Rapporteur across the spectrum of 58 mandates established over the years by the UN Human Rights Council. However fierce, intimidating, and unfair these attacks, Albanese courageously did not bend to the pressures mounted against her, which seemed to further frustrate and incense her vengeful adversaries in Israel and the United States. They could not quiet her voice or divert her message, no matter the fury of the insults or threats, including from pro-Zionist groups spread around the Global West. It is unlikely that the imposition of US sanctions, however punitive, will overcome these past strenuous efforts to silence Albanese’s eloquent global voice of conscience fortified by deep knowledge of what she speaks.

The Larger Stakes

More than Albanese’s reputation and ability to carry out the duties of Special Rapporteur is at stake in this struggle. National sanctions imposed by the host country of the UN violates two important international treaties designed to balance state sovereignty against UN effectiveness and independence. [International Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the UN; Host Country Agreement]. The US has repeatedly refused to be bound by international law and morality when these normative imperatives clash with strategic interest in shielding allies from criticism and censure. It also slams the door on the integrity of unpaid civil servants who enjoy a reputation for exceptional performance as is the case with Albanese. All members of the UN are of course fully entitled to express disagreement with the views and recommendations of an SR, hopefully in a responsible manner. It is quite another to join a campaign of slander without the slightest effort to engage the well documented arguments of an experienced and highly respected human rights defender and international law scholar of Albanese’s stature. Worse yet, the US Government is joining Israel in reinforcing slanderous attacks by punitive action that intentionally interferes with the performance of an elected and appointed UN official selected by the Human Rights Council after an elaborate vetting process that included the recommendation of a committee of UN diplomats who evaluate a large pool of applicants, shortlisting for review by the President of the HRC who passes on his recommendations to the Assembly of UN member who must endorse the SR nominee by a consensus vote (interpreted as registering no negative votes) among members states of the HRC. To impose sanctions on such a UN appointee due to disagreements with her assessment of a controversial situation is to weaken the influence of a UN institution and  discourage qualified persons from subjecting themselves to unseemly reprisals for performative integrity. It is also a terrible precedent, overriding the objective reportage of the most severe violations of international law by recourse to strongarmed geopolitics.

Albanese’s central allegations of genocide and disruptive Israeli interference with the international delivery of humanitarian aid for the desperately deprived civilian population of Gaza were in harmony with the near unanimous interim measures ruled upon in 2024 by the ICJ, and defied by Israel. The ICJ judgment although provisional was widely admired across the world as an exercise of judicial independence, exhibiting the professionalism of its judges. This included the American judge, Sarah Cleveland, who sided with the South African request for interim relief from the devastation being wrought by the relentless military assault as did the judges from Israel-supporting Germany and Australia. Because of the drawn-out procedures of the ICJ, including delays in the proceedings granted to Israel, it may be several years before this judicial body renders a final judgment on these central questions, and even then, in a manner confined by conservative judicial practice than are SR reports.

In this sense, the establishment of the position of Special Rapporteur was a brilliant innovation in UN procedures, enabling responsive reporting by 44 SRs on a variety of international themes ranging from the rights of free expression to abusive treatment of women, as well as 14 country SRs deemed deserving of attention. The SR on Israeli violation of human rights in Palestinian Territories occupied after 1967 was established in 1993, and has been subject to Israeli and US objections ever since its inception. Despite such opposition this UN position has steadily gained influence, prestige, and media respect. Its prominence reached a peak during the first three-year term of Albanese’s tenure, now extended as is in keeping with usual practice for a second and final second three years. Her reports were invaluable sources of trustworthy and well-researched assessments of an international controversy that increasingly pitted the West against the rest. Thirty years ago, Samuel Huntington predicted a turbulent sequel to the end of the Cold War in the form of ‘a clash of civilizations,’ and only a few would doubt that it has come to pass.

Albanese surmounted this contentious political atmosphere with reason, knowledge, and a lifelong dedication to international law and human rights under the most difficult of circumstances. Instead of being sanctioned and maligned by the US Government, Francesca Albanese is now honored by heading the line of nominees waiting to receive the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize. If Americans were living in a democratic and peace minded country our President would insist on the resignation of Marco Rubio for his shameful act of overreach. It would be a dramatic show of national support for internationalism even when it goes against US foreign policy. This currently inconceivable double outcome of honor for Albanese and infamy for Rubio could have strengthened the UN and recognized civil society contributions by engaged citizens the world over who are devoted to justice and peace, and above all, in relation to the weak and vulnerable currently epitomized by the plight of the Palestinian people.

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FRANCESCA ALBANESE’S ILLUMINATING FIRST REPORT AS UN SPECIAL RAPPORTEUR ON OCCUPIED PALESTINE

31 Oct

[Prefatory Note; This post is the text of opinion piece published in Middle East Eye on Oct. 27, 2022. It is slightly modified.] 

FRANSCESCA ALBANESE’S FIRST REPORT DEVOTED TO THE RIGHT OF SELF-DETERMINATION

For more than a century, the Palestinian people have endured a series of ordeals that have violated their most basic individual and collective rights.

Instrumental to this epic saga of suffering has been the success of the Zionist movement in establishing the state of Israel on the premise of Jewish supremacy in 1948. 

Such success depended also on perpetrating a distinct international crime, a consequence of the Zionist Movement seeking to establish not only a Jewish state but a democratically constituted state. This combination of goals could only be reliably ensure and maintained by demographic measures that Jews in Israel would enjoy a permanent  demographic majority. Note that other settler colonial states so long as they kept a hierarchical relationship with the native population never pretended to be an inclusive electoral democracy. 

As an operational undertaking this  required Israel to make a drastic demographic adjustment involving either a large increase in the Jewish presence in Palestine – which was not feasible at the time – or the drastic reduction of the Arab presence, which was course taken.

This logic informed the forced expulsion of 750,000 or so Arab citizens of British Mandate Palestine from that part of historic Palestine set aside for the Jewish state by the United Nations partition plan, itself territorially enlarged by Zionist territorial acquisitions in the 1948 war.

A Jewish majority in Israel was further reinforced and safeguarded by the implementation of a rigid denial of the right of return of displaced and dispossessed Arabs of Palestine in violation of international law. This Palestinian experience of expulsion coupled with the denial of any right of return is what is known as the Nakba (or catastrophe). 

Of course, this is not the whole story surrounding the founding of Israel. There was a Jewish presence and biblical connection with Palestine stretching back thousands of years, although the Jewish minority had dwindled to less than 10 percent in 1917, when the British foreign secretary pledged support for establishing a Jewish homeland by way of the infamous Balfour Declaration. Nevertheless, the Zionist narrative, taking various forms, became widely accepted, especially in the West.

Highly relevant to this endorsement of the dominant Jewish narrative was the rise of European antisemitism in the 1930s, culminating in the Holocaust, which made a Jewish sanctuary a condition of survival for a significant portion of Jews in the world. It also increased receptivity to the founding of Israel, reflecting liberal guilt about failing to stop Naziism at an earlier stage and by an Orientalist dismissal of Palestinian nationalist claims.

The historical context certainly mobilized the Jewish diaspora, especially in the US, to back the Zionist project to colonize Palestine, and ever since, to provide geopolitical muscle and massive economic and military assistance over the course of many years to support the security and expansionist ambitions of Israel continuing even as it became strong and prosperous. .

A UN innovation 

At the international level, particularly within the UN, there has been constant sympathy and support for Palestinian rights under international law, especially in the General Assembly and the Human Rights Commission (HRC), which carries out the decisions of the Human Rights Council, consisting of 47 elected governments.

In 1993, a country mandate concerned with Israel’s human rights violations in the Palestinian territories of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza occupied since 1967 was created. 

It is from this initiative that the mandate of the special rapporteur (SR) derives.

A special rapporteur is selected by a consensus vote of the HRC on the basis of a rather elaborate vetting process that includes a committee of diplomats from member government that conveys to one-year rotations of country diplomatic representatives who serve as president of the HRC a ranked shortlist of preferred candidates.  The candidates are supposed to be selected because of their expert credentials.

The president generally follows the recommendation, which is then submitted to the HRC for an up or down vote, with a single dissenting vote sufficient to reject a candidate.

The SR position itself is a U N innovation, with each individual normally serving two three-year terms. 

Although requiring considerable work by way of travel and reports, it is an unpaid position. The up-side of this voluntary status is that SRs are not subject to administrative discipline as UN civil servants. This feature is designed to provide the position with political independence, at least with respect to UN Members and the UN itself, but offers no insulation from hostile media or NGOs, or even governments so long as they do not interfere with the work of SRs.

It should surprise no one that Israel and the US were against establishing the mandate since it was first proposed in the HRC. In recent years Israel has refused to cooperate with SRs even refusing to allow access to Occupied Palestine..

By denying entry into Israel or the occupied territories, the Israeli government denies the UN rapporteur direct contact with the people and situation on the ground, and forces a reliance on public information and meetings in neighboring countries. For those of us who have been to Occupied Palestine, there is no adequate substitute for a direct experience of the place.  

It is significant that during the last 15 years, Israel and its supporters have stopped responding to the substance of the carefully documented SR reports and other UN assessments of alleged Israeli violations. Instead Israel and its most ardent apologists have concentrated their political energies on allegations of UN antisemitism and related vilification of successive rapporteurs. 

I would explain the shift in tactics in this way. When the Israeli violations became too flagrant and documented by multiple sources it was a. fool’s errand to attempt refutation. Better attack the messenger than address the message. It is most unfortunate that ofteen such a tactic has been effective, diverting the discourse, especially in the media, to questions about whether or not the SR is in fact biased or antisemitic, and burying the serious allegations in the process.

Despite being confronted by this personally unpleasant, abusive, and diversionary Israeli pushback, the reports of SRs have gained influence and legitimacy over the years. They are relied upon by several important governments, as well as by some of the more independent media and many civil society actors including churches, labor unions, and human rights organizations. 

Within this context, the new SR for Palestine, an Italian academic jurist and highly esteemed human rights expert, Francesca Albanese, has recently issued her first report, due shortly for presentation to the UN General Assembly in New York. [UN GA Doc. A/77/356, 21 Sept 2021]

It is a most impressive document that comprehensively depicts and offers evidence relating to the most fundamental violations of the basic rights of the Palestinian people.

Against the flow of history

The Albanese Report appropriately gives primary attention to the Palestinian entitlement to the fulfillment of the inalienable right of self-determination. It was this right of self-determination that provided the normative foundation for the anti-colonial struggles in the period of 1950-80. These struggles shared and interacted with the Cold War on the global center stage after the end of World War II.

Albanese takes note of the supreme irony that Zionism managed to go against the flow of history by establishing a durable and legitimated settler-colonial state of Israel at the very moment when European colonialism was elsewhere under assault by national resistance and liberation movements, enjoying media and public support.

Her report has already gained widespread attention and praise both for its spirit of fierce independence, the lucidity of its argument, and the superior quality of its analysis. Such an exemplary performance in the formal start as SR has expectedly also provoked hostile commentary by way of taunts and defamatory accusations. Albanese’s report is accused of deliberately slanted interpretations of law and facts, which enabled her to reach conclusions hostile to Israel.

I would submit that such a complaint is unjustified and believe that any fair reading would confirm this. An objective reading of the Albanese report would conclude, in opposition to her venomous critics, that the author has gone out of her way to gain direct access to Israel’s narrative and sought to present to the reader Israel’s own justifiications of its contested behavior.

Although accepting the emerging civil society consensus to the effect that Israel is imposing an apartheid regime on the Palestinian people, Albanese sets forth an entirely original and illuminating argument for why the elimination of apartheid would not by itself be enough to end the ordeal of the Palestinian people.

Briefly summarizing, the most influential depictions of Israeli apartheid are territorially bounded either to the occupied territories or an enlarged entity that includes Israel proper (often identified as stretching “from the river to the sea”). As Albanese notes, such spatial delimitation of apartheid are not directly relevant to refugees in the occupied territories and neighboring countries, as well as to the several million involuntary exiles living in various places around the world living outside the boundaries of Palestine.

Dismantling settler-colonial occupation

Beyond that, without satisfying the full spectrum of Palestinian basic rights, including economic and social rights, there is no assurance that Israel would not be able to maintain exploitative forms of domination characteristic of settler-colonialism even should Israeli apartheid be dismantled.

For Albanese, it is indispensable to recognize that justice for all the Palestinian people will not be done until their right of self-determination is fully implemented. She analyses this Palestinian right by reference to two principal dimensions: free choice of the form of political governance and permanent national sovereignty over natural resources.

The resounding message of this historically significant report is its call for a solution premised on respect for relevant history and international law

In essence, as articulated by Albanese, the right to self-determination is the right of a people “to exist as independent both demographically (as a people) and territorially (within a given region) and to pursue their cultural, economic and social development through what the territory and associated resources offer.”

In the more prescriptive sections of her report, Albanese puts her analytic skills to work in clearing a path forward for the Palestinians. In doing this she does not exempt the UN from its many past failures to uphold international law in relation to the struggles for justice and the rule of law in Palestine and is insistent that it should do better in the future.

She indicts the UN as having “systematically failed to hold Israel accountable”, thereby enabling Israel’s imposition of settler colonialism accompanied by flagrant, repeated violation of international humanitarian law.

In passing, she also argues that Israel’s defiant rejection of a stream of General Assembly resolutions calling upon Israel to uphold Palestinian rights, including the rights of self-determination “legitimated a Palestinian right of resistance” and undermined the legality of Israel as an occupying power.

The Palestinian People Deserve Respect for their Rights under International Law

The resounding message of this historically significant report is its call for a solution premised on “respect for history and international law.” It is to be enacted by the immediate withdrawal from the occupied Palestinian territories and the payment of reparations for decades of unlawful harm inflicted on the Palestinian people.

Albanese is to be commended for the clarity and forthrightness of this report to the UNGA, but it would be naive to suppose that it will by itself bring overdue liberation to the Palestinian people.

What it does bring is an authoritative and deeply informed legitimation of Palestinian resistance to occupation and a convincing critique of UN weakness when it comes to the implementation of basic rights.

It would be wrong and misleading to conclude from the realization that the UN has been useless in relation to the Palestinian struggle. Even though the UN is helpless to change the behavior on the ground, it remains crucially important in the symbolic and normative domains of legitimacy wars, which have controlled the eventual political outcomes of major anti-colonial wars. These outcomes have astonished ‘realists’ who continue to exert a dominating influence over the formation of foreign policy. Astonished but not persuaded. These realists continue to suppose that the side with the better military technology and smarter tactics should be able to prevail even in anti-colonial wars, and so the bloodstained failures of imperial warfare are repeated, ignoring this record of defeat.

A Concluding Remark

This sense of UN impotence to achieve substantive results whenever the dictates of justice clash – as here – with the vital strategic interests of a geopolitical actor is an operative fact of international life. Such a phenomenon is at play in the Ukraine Crisiis.

At the very least, Francesca Albanese’s courageous report should serve as a wake-up call for the Global South and a reminder to all of us that the anti-colonial movement still faces a formidable challenge.

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