Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: Francesca Albanese

Showing posts with label Francesca Albanese. Show all posts

Sunday, November 20, 2022

UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, Antisemite

Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur of the "occupied Palestinian territories," has a smoking gun in her quest to demonize Israel and to shut up her critics who accuse her of antisemitism.

She shows a video of an Israeli policeman abusing a Palestinian truck driver. She frames this as if it happens every day. She rhetorically asks, "Do you think the policeman faced any consequences?"

The event happened over five years ago. It was widely publicized and condemned in Israel. The policeman was fired and charged with assault.

Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan, who oversees the Israel Police, said the policeman’s behavior was “very grave and worthy of condemnation” in a post on his Twitter account last month.

In its statement Thursday, police said that “as was clarified immediately after the incident, this is an irregular and violent incident that is contrary to all the values of the Israel Police.

“This irregular incident is not only not in line with the values and commands of the police, but also damages the tens of thousands of policemen and -women who work day and night for the security of the citizens of the State of Israel with integrity and decency.”

Albanese tries to pretend that this is an everyday event in Israel. It obviously isn't. The Israeli public would not stand for it. The Israeli police would not stand for it. The Israeli government would not stand for it. And we know that from the outraged reactions from all of them in 2017.

Her dishonesty, and her spreading the lie that this is indeed normal, without even spending five minutes to research the incident, is indeed proof of her antisemitism. What else would you call someone who assumes the worst about Israeli Jews - and is clearly wrong?

Can you call it "anti-Zionism?" If so, that means that she admits that her "anti-Zionism" is irrational hate, based on prejudice, not facts. Which makes it just as evil as antisemitism, and then one would have to believe that it is a pure coincidence that anti-Zionism is emotionally and psychologically identical to antisemitism. (Her response to my charge of prejudice would no doubt be to bring up other instances of Israeli lapses, just as antisemites have a ready supply of examples of Jewish immorality - and just like antisemites, she would never consider her default position of assuming the worst to be anything but a reflection of reality.)

This was not the only notable thing about Albanese this weekend.

She was also hosted by Palestine Chronicle in a discussion this weekend. Palestine Chronicle and its editor have a history of publishing antisemitism and support for terrorism, and even recently reports on Jews respectfully visiting the Temple Mount as "settlers breaking into Al Aqsa Mosque."

Again, she didn't bother to research the newspaper hosting her talk - or maybe she did, and decided that it was an appropriate venue.

Either way, Albanese cannot be considered objective when discussing Jews in Israel. And she proves it every day.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

11/18 Links Pt1: Congress Eyes Investigation Into Anti-Israel Bias at Biden Justice Department; Why Is Israel Always Held to a Different Standard?; Eureka! Arab lobby discovered

From Ian:

Eureka! Arab lobby discovered

As I documented in my book, the Arab lobby, starting with State Department Arabists, has been active since the 1930s. My book focused on how the Saudis attempted, and sometimes succeeded in influencing U.S. policy. At the time, the other Gulf nations were far less involved in lobbying, but that has changed. The Post reported, for example, that since 2016, the UAE has spent more than $154 million on lobbyists, and “hundreds of millions of dollars more on donations to American universities and think tanks, many that produce policy papers with finding favorable to UAE interests.”

As of 2007, I wrote that Arab governments, and donors from Arab countries, had donated more than $320 million to American universities. Qatar had given $150 million, Saudi Arabia, more than $130 million, and the UAE $52 million. In a study published last year, I reported total contributions since 1986 had ballooned to more than $8 billion (most donated since 2015) with 80 percent coming from Qatar ($4.3 billion), Saudi Arabia ($2.1 billion) and the UAE ($1.1 billion).

Most of the Arab lobby is focused on Arab states, not the Palestinians. A tiny component of the lobby is pro-Palestinian. It is also the least influential. Even when the Arab states were lobbying the United States to oppose partition and, later, criticized support for Israel, their interest was never in the establishment of a Palestinian state. Even Jimmy Carter revealed in 1979, “I have never met an Arab leader that in private professed the desire for an independent Palestinian state.” Arab leaders might rant about Israel, but their primary interest was acquiring weapons, economic assistance, and promises of protection.

The UAE and the Arab lobby in general operate mostly below the radar. Unlike supporters of the Palestinians who make a lot of noise without having any influence, the Arab states prefer to remain invisible and quietly impact policy. The Arab states also lobby for something—their national interests—whereas homegrown pro-Palestinian groups primarily attack Israel.

Before deciding to finance political candidates, AIPAC also had a more Rooseveltian approach of speaking softly and carrying a big stick. The pro-Israel lobby, however, can’t avoid attention because of the conspiracy theories, sometimes promoted by the Arab lobby, about Jewish power and the constant media focus on Israel. By contrast, most Americans couldn’t find the Gulf states on a map let alone care about their lobbying activities.

Congress Eyes Investigation Into Anti-Israel Bias at Biden Justice Department

Garland is "using the FBI to attack and undermine one of our closest allies at the behest of the anti-Semitic Squad," Cruz said. "Merrick Garland has already done more damage to the FBI’s credibility and legitimacy than anyone in history, including [Richard] Nixon’s [attorney general] who was literally sent to prison."

Two senior congressional officials tracking the situation told the Free Beacon that the DOJ should prepare to face its own probe into politicized weaponization.

"We're going to find out who thought it was a good idea to unleash the FBI on Israel and reopen something that everyone else—including the president's State Department—had already resolved," said one of the sources, who was not authorized to speak on the record.

The second source, also not authorized to speak on record, said the DOJ’s probe is the result of the president hiring far-left progressive activists, including anti-Israel agitators, who are now working at all levels of government.

"Biden has seemingly filled every department with woke activists who hate Israel, and now they’re burrowing in," said the source, a veteran congressional official who works on Israeli issues. "They’re everywhere. It’s going to take years of investigations and work, and ultimately a new president, to even begin to fix the problem."

Pro-Israel organizations are also applying pressure on Congress to find out why the DOJ decided to reopen the Abu Akleh case.

"It is both shocking and appalling that the Department of Justice has allowed anti-Israel Members of Congress to pressure an allegedly independent arm of the executive branch into this investigation," Pastor John Hagee, founder of Christians United for Israel (CUFI), the nation’s largest pro-Israel advocacy organization, said in a statement.

A senior official with a pro-Israel organization told the Free Beacon the DOJ probe "smacks of politics." The probe was announced shortly after conservative Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu—who was close with former president Donald Trump—was reelected as the country’s prime minister.

The Caroline Glick show: The Biden administration is weaponizing the FBI against Israel

In this week’s “Caroline Glick Show,” author Lee Smith joins Glick to talk about the Biden administration’s newest move against Israel: the FBI’s probe of the death of Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh. Glick also warns against the frightening mainstreaming of antisemitism in the U.S.

Jonathan Tobin: Israel’s new coalition shouldn’t write off American Jewry

It’s true that evangelical Christians provide most of the pro-Israel muscle in American politics nowadays. But relying entirely on them, or on the minority of American Jews who are Orthodox, ignores a vast reserve of people who are, or who might be, persuaded to back Zionism.

It wasn’t that long ago that Conservative and Reform Jewry were bastions of pro-Israel sentiment. That has changed in recent decades, with evidence mounting that even many rabbis are adopting fashionable liberal stands according to which Israel is an illegal occupier and human-rights abuser.

That 90 students at the Reform and Conservative rabbinical seminaries signed an outrageous letter taking sides against Israel in the spring of 2021, when the Jewish state was under assault from thousands of rockets and missiles launched by terrorists in Gaza, was a seminal moment.

Against this travesty, a movement of rabbis dedicated to reviving support for Israel has arisen. The Zionist Rabbinic Coalition faces an uphill fight against long odds. But it is clearly in Israel’s interest for the organization to succeed in pushing back against these toxic trends that are rooted in antisemitism and woke ideology.

Letting the religious parties win on the conversion and Law of Return issues would effectively ensure that its efforts will have been in vain. That’s why it’s likely that Netanyahu, who understands Americans much better than most Israelis, is not likely to concede.

He is aware that writing off the vast majority of world Jewry would be a catastrophe, as well as a blow to Israel’s efforts to maintain its standing in the United States and to mobilize support from those Americans who are interested in helping the Jewish State.

Can Netanyahu stop Biden from strengthening a tottering Iranian regime?

In this week’s episode of “Top Story,” JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin speaks with columnist Ruthie Blum about the fallout from both the Israeli election and the American midterm elections. Blum says Israel is ready for a shift in policy on dealing with terrorism and crime as well as judicial reform from a new government led by Benjamin Netanyahu.

The two argue that a main challenge for Netanyahu will be dealing with the Biden administration’s commitment to a policy of appeasing Iran, even though the regime there is tottering. They also discuss former President Donald Trump’s prospects in the 2024 presidential race agreeing that his ego-driven attacks on fellow Republicans have undermined his case for leadership of the GOP.

UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese's report to the UN is Soviet-level anti-Zionist propaganda

I've seen bias from the UN before, but I don't recall ever seeing a document that looks like it was written by a hardened Israel hater.

The reports usually at least pretend to be unbiased. Not this one.

Francesca Albanese, UN "Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967," issued a report in September that apparently was just made public. The summary gives a flavor of how crazily biased it is.

One of her goals in this report, in the inevitable path to soon officially calling Israel an apartheid state, Albanese accuses Israel of "settler colonialism" without going into any arguments why, just footnoting lots of equally biased papers.

Israel is not a settler colonialist state.

Throughout the report, Albanese fully accepts the Palestinian narrative as true and doesn't even mention any Israeli counter-claims. The reader sees only one side of the argument, and is not even informed that perhaps Israel has its own arguments. Albanese doesn't want to acknowledge even the possibility that Jews have a right to their own state.

Her one-sidedness is quite deliberate. She describes the Palestinian right to self-determination this way:

The right to self-determination is an “inalienable right” of the Palestinian people, as affirmed by the General Assembly. The origins of Palestinians’ right to self-determination can be traced back more than a century, preceding the first codification in the Charter of the United Nations. The people of Palestine (Muslims, Christians and Jews), like other peoples in the Levant, also had their right to self-determination recognized under the Covenant of the League of Nations of 1919. Article 22 of the Covenant stipulated that “Class A” mandates (Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, Trans-Jordan and Syria) would enjoy provisional independence “until such time as they are able to stand alone”. The “wishes” of the local communities were to be “a principal consideration in the selection of the Mandatory”.

But she doesn't mention the Mandate for Palestine which specifically says that Jews have the right to self-determination - and no one else!

The Mandatory shall be responsible for placing the country under such political, administrative and economic conditions as will secure the establishment of the Jewish national home, as laid down in the preamble, and the development of self-governing institutions, and also for safeguarding the civil and religious rights of all the inhabitants of Palestine, irrespective of race and religion.

This is lying by omission. Albanese knows the contents of the Mandate document - but wants to hide it from those reading this propaganda. And it happens over and over again.

She offers a brief history of the region where Jews are the only people who ever do anything wrong:

The culmination of centuries of antisemitism and persecution of Jews in Europe in the genocidal horror of the Holocaust strengthened support for political Zionism. This movement saw Palestine as the land to realize a “State for the Jews” through settlement and colonization. However, in that land a native Palestinian Arab population had resided for millennia. In 1947, the United Nations resolved to reconcile the separate claims to the land of the indigenous Palestinian people and the largely European Jewish settlers and refugees from Europe, by recommending the partitioning of British Mandate Palestine into an “Arab State” and a “Jewish State”. Soon after, the creation of the State of Israel in most of the territory of Mandate Palestine was accompanied by massacres and the mass expulsion, wholesale denationalization and dispossession of most of the Arabs of Palestine. They continue to be deprived of their right to self-determination, together with their descendants, the refugees further displaced in 1967 and other non-refugee Palestinians.

She doesn't once mention that Jews have historical ties to Israel. She doesn't mention the attacks by Arabs on Jews in Palestine decades before 1948. She doesn't mention that the Arabs rejected partition. She doesn't mention that the Arabs attacked the Jews. She doesn't mention that the territories annexed by Jordan ethnically cleansed every single Jew.

It would take weeks to show the depth of Albanese's dishonesty, but here is just one paragraph of many:

The transformation of the Gaza Strip into a heavily populated, impoverished enclave controlled by Israel through a suffocating sea, land and air blockade, is part and parcel of that same settler-colonial design. The containment of the colonial population into heavily controlled reserves is at the core of the settler-colonial goal to ensure the demographic supremacy and prevent Palestinian self-determination.

How do these assumptions fit in with the fact that Israel forcibly removed every Jew from Gaza in 2005? Was that part of the plan too? And did Israel plan for Hamas to take over Gaza so it could have an excuse for blockading it?

This is not just re-writing history. This is Soviet-level propaganda.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur, absurdly pretends that she is objective.

Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur of the "Occupied Palestinian Territories," had a telling exchange with NGO Monitor's Anne Herzberg.

Herzberg, commenting on the reported kidnapping and beheading of a gay Palestinian man, tweeted, "Horrific. Will you be reporting on this @FranceskAlbs?"

Albanese subtweeted, "Passive-aggressiveness of the insinuation aside, I am impressed with certain people's talent for cherry-picking."

Herzberg: "It’s a legitimate question and falls under your mandate. So will you be addressing this case and other LGBTQ+ violations in the PA by Palestinian authorities and armed groups?"

Albanese acted offended: "Of course, I am even surprised you are asking such a question. I intend to investigate all human rights violations, and my visit to the occupied Palestinian territory is particularly necessary to this end."

Of course the UN Special Rapporteur will investigate Palestinian human rights abuses! How dare anyone question that?

Perhaps because since she assumed that position, she has called for submissions for three reports that are meant to attack Israel and none to investigate Palestinian human rights abuses? The three reports are titled, "Deprivation of liberty in the occupied Palestinian territory," "Thematic report to the UN General Assembly on the right to self-determination [for Palestinians only]" and "Is the Israeli conduct of its occupation of the Palestinian Territory in breach of the prohibition against apartheid in international law?"

Perhaps because virtually every tweet since she started the position has been anti-Israel? She has never mentioned Palestinian terror spree earlier this year, she never mentioned the Palestinian Authority or Hamas attacks on their own media freedoms or freedom to assemble, she never mentioned the anti-woman laws on the books in the PA, and she never mentioned Palestinian rockets killing Palestinian children.

The only time she said anything negative about any Palestinians - about rocket fire - she made sure that the tweets emphasized that everything Israel does it worse.

Here she almost agrees that Gaza rocket fire, while regrettable, is almost justified.

And here she pretty much says that Palestinians can aim to kill Israelis and Israel cannot defend itself.

Given this track record, does anyone honestly think Albanese will ever report anything negative about Palestinians outside of Gaza rocket fire?

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

@HRW and @FranceskAlbs defend a convicted terrorist as a fellow "human rights defender"

From Human Rights Watch:

Israeli authorities should immediately release the French-Palestinian human rights worker Salah Hamouri from administrative detention and reverse the decision to revoke his residency status in his native Jerusalem, Human Rights Watch said today.

...The military courts based their decisions to detain him on secret information they allege points to Hamouri’s involvement in the activities of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a Palestinian political movement with an armed wing.

UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese tweeted, "French-Palestinian Salah Hammouri is a human rights defender who has been persecuted for years. Israel may call him a 'terrorist' but the reality says otherwise. "

Let's look at reality.

HRW used to mention that the PFLP does not distinguish between its terror and "political" wings. Now it treats it as a political organization - even though nothing has changed.

The PFLP's own political platform explicitly supports terror: "It it is a natural right, and duty that the Palestinian people should defend itself, resist the occupation through various means of struggle, including armed struggle. ..[T]he form of armed struggle should be dealt with at each stage as a means to serve the inclusive political vision which is responsible for determining the function to be done at each stage of the struggle..."

And the PFLP still engages in terror. They were responsible for the murder of Rina Shnerb in 2019.

There is no doubt that Hamouri is a member of the PFLP, even though HRW says it is "alleged." Here is an article (archived) from the PFLP website that calls him a "comrade" and notes that he planned to assassinate the Chief Rabbi of Israel - and he justified it years afterwards.

Comrade Salah Hamouri, the former Palestinian prisoner freed as part of the prisoner exchange on December 18, 2011, said upon his release that “there is no option for the Palestinian people except resistance, because it is the only way for us to achieve our people’s rights, our freedom, and our self-determination.”

He served nearly seven years in Israeli prison, charged with planning to assassinate Ovadia Yosef, the leader of the Shas party and the Chief Rabbi of Israel. “This man is and will remain a symbol of racism and fanaticism in Israel,” Hamouri said.

And when he says "resistance," he means murdering Jews.

A PFLP envoy to Cuba claimed the organization supports human rights - and one of those human rights is to murder Israeli Jews.

We reaffirm our commitment to our goals, principles and inalienable Palestinian national rights. Some of these have been recognized and approved by the norms, principles, conventions, international resolutions, international law and human rights. The first of these rights is the right of the Palestinian people to resist the occupation by all means and methods.

"All means and methods" means terrorism. And its main website is filled with praise and support for terror attacks.

The PFLP is a terrorist organization. It is designated as such by the US, EU, Canada and other countries. No major Western nation distinguishes between a "political party" and "armed wing." Neither does the PFLP itself. This was something apparently created by Human Rights Watch.

But "human rights" leaders are claiming that this convicted and admitted terrorist, who calls for violence, is a "human rights defender." Which indicates that they subscribe to the PFLP philosophy that the first and most important human right is to murder Jews.

(h/t GnasherJew)

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

UN Special Rapporteur justifies Palestinian "resistance" which can only mean terror

The UN Special Rapporteur on the "occupied Palestinian territory," Francesca Albanese, tried to say she was against rocket attacks on civilians - but essentially caved when challenged.

She tweeted, "Indiscriminate rocket fire from Gaza is no acceptable response to Israel’s unlawful bombings, because it harms civilians and it is therefore unlawful too. This should not obscure Israel's responsibility for maintaining its violent 55yo occupation and 15yo blockade of Gaza."

Immediately, terror supporters challenged her. Instead of defending her anti-terror half of the statement, she responded with empathy.

Like here:

And here:

Killing civilians is not a fundamental right under any interpretation of international law. Her cowering to those who defend it reflects a complete lack of moral fiber - which we would expect from the UN.

But she went further, calling into question the idea of a Jewish state altogether:

So even within the "1967 borders," the UN Special Rapporteur questions Israel's right to exist altogether.

Albanese then went on to write a new tweet to clarify her position on terrorism:

Palestinians' right to resist is inherent to their right to exist as a people. An unlawful act of resistance does not make the resistance unlawful. An unlawful act of an unlawful occupation makes the occupation more unlawful (and the list on the desk of the ICC Prosecutor longer)

Albanese is trying to toe the line of saying that she supports "resistance" but not terror attacks.

But what does that mean, practically?

No one is stopping Palestinians from having peaceful protests, or from choosing to boycott Israeli products, or from calling strikes. No one questions those rights.

But when Palestinians use the word "resistance," it means only one thing: terrorism. It means attacking Jews. It means stabbings and car rammings and suicide bombings and firebombs, throwing boulders on cars speeding along a highway and bombing buses and cafes. Hamas' translation is the "Islamic Resistance Movement." The Arabic Wikipedia article on "Palestinian resistance" lists the most gruesome terror attacks as examples (even though it pays lip service to "civil and popular resistance," it brings practically no examples.)

So when a UN Special Rapporteur says she supports "resistance," it can only be interpreted one way by those who use the term the most.

Either she is ignorant as to how the term is interpreted (even though her responders made that clear,) or she on some level agrees with is while knowing that she cannot publicly support terrorism. Either way, it shows the immorality, not the morality, of the UN.

UPDATE: See also this.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!