Bipartisan Congressional Letter Calls for UN Official’s Firing Over ‘Outrageous’ Antisemitic Remarks

Andrew Bernard

UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine Francesca Albanese, October 27, 2022 (Photo: Screenshot)

11 Democratic and Republican members of Congress on Monday called for the firing of the UN’s special rapporteur on Palestine, Francesca Albanese, for her “outrageous” antisemitic statements. 

“Enough is enough,” the letter, led by Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA), reads. “Ms. Albanese’s comments are only the latest in a pattern of antisemitic behavior and rhetoric at the UN, which is obsessively focused on the world’s only Jewish state.”

The letter, which was addressed to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, cites Albanese’s comments and writings over the past 10 years, including a 2014 letter in which she claimed America was “subjugated by the Jewish lobby” and her 2022 remarks to a Hamas conference in Gaza where she told the terrorist group’s attendees that they “have a right to resist this occupation.” Albanese has repeatedly asserted a Palestinian “right to resist”, including during the latest round of indiscriminate rocket fire from Gaza in August. “An unlawful act of resistance does not make the resistance unlawful,” she said.

Albanese, whose formal title is “Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967” and who was appointed to a six-year term in May, has refused to apologize for any of her remarks, and says that her statement about the US being subjugated by Jews was “wrongly mischaracterized as antisemitic.”

Monday’s letter also criticizes the fact that Israel was subject to more UN General Assembly resolutions in 2022 than all other nations combined, and that it is the only country subjected to two open-ended UN investigations.

The commissioner of one of those investigations, Miloon Kothari of the UN’s Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, was forced to apologize in August after saying in an interview that social media was “controlled largely by the Jewish lobby.”

Citing Secretary General Guterres’ claim that “there is no room for antisemitism in the UN,” the letter concludes with a call for Albanese’s ouster.

“Failure to take meaningful action on repeated instances of antisemitism by UN officials undermines the UN’s credibility,” it reads. “We urge you to demonstrate that the UN is capable of genuinely addressing antisemitism by removing Ms. Albanese from her post.”