Israeli Actress Sues UN Adviser Francesca Albanese Over Nazi Comparison
Shiryn Ghermezian
Francesa Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories, speaks at a conference, “A Cartography of Genocide: Israel’s Conduct in Gaza,” at the Roma Tre University, in Rome, Italy, Oct. 6, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Remo Casilli
Israeli actress and model Sarai Givaty filed a defamation lawsuit on Tuesday against Francesca Albanese, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on the human rights situation in the Palestinian territories, for allegedly twisting comments she made and comparing them to remarks made by Nazi officials.
The 500,000-shekel lawsuit was filed at the Jerusalem Magistrates’ Court on behalf of Givaty by the Israeli legal advocacy organization Shurat HaDin.
The lawsuit claims that Albanese, who has a mandate from the UN to advise the international body on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, shared a “selectively edited” clip on X from a television interview that Givaty did in September 2025. The clip is “falsely portraying Givaty’s warning about extremist indoctrination as justification for killing children,” the suit notes, and Albanese compares Givaty’s words “to Nazi justifications for murdering children during the Holocaust.”
Albanese’s post on X led to Givaty receiving online abuse and death threats, and resulted in damage to her career in Israel and internationally, according to the lawsuit.
“Francesca Albanese is waging a venomous antisemitic campaign against Israel and is responsible for spreading yet another defamatory accusation against its citizens. We will not let her hide behind her immunity,” said Shurat HaDin president Nitsana Darshan-Leitner.
During a television interview in September 2025 with the Hebrew-language i24NEWS, Givaty talked about growing extremism in the aftermath of the Hamas-led massacre on Oct. 7, 2023, and the need to confront radicalization. “I feel sad for every child in the world who cries. I do. But I also understand that if we don’t act, that child will grow up to be a terrorist,” Givaty said in part.
According to the lawsuit, cited by Ynet, Givaty was referring to the dangers of children being exposed to hatred and extremist indoctrination and was not advocating or suggesting that children should be targeted with violence. However, the brief clip posted on X by Albanese includes a partial English translation of Givaty’s remarks and does not explain the context of her discussion, according to Givaty’s lawyers. Albanese’s post allegedly gives the false impression that the Israeli actress supports or justifies the killing of or violence against children in the Gaza Strip.
On Sept. 19, 2026, Albanese shared the clip on X and wrote in the caption: “The children will grow up.” She added, “This was also the argument that Nazi officials gave, during the Nuremberg Trials, to justify why they had killed children during the Holocaust.”
The clip has since been removed from Albanese’s post, but her comments remain. The post on X has garnered 2.2 million views, 24,000 reposts, and 92,000 likes.
Photo: Screenshot
Givaty claims in her lawsuit cited by Ynet that Albanese’s post on X is wrong in tying her to arguments made by Nazis to defend their mass murders during the Holocaust. Givaty argues that after Albanese’s post, she received abusive messages online, as well as threats to her life, reputation, and personal security.
Clarifying her comments on the Israeli talk show “ALL CAPS,” Givaty said, “[Albanese] took a clip from an old interview of mine and twisted my words to suggest that I justified killing children, God forbid. No Francesca, not me or anyone I know in Israel would ever say that we must kill Palestinian children. That’s not something we want. That’s not something we do.”
“If a parent deliberately put their children in the middle of a busy highway and that child would get hurt, everyone in the world would blame the parent, who would probably end up in jail for the rest of their life. But when Hamas puts children’s daycare centers on top of tunnels and rocket launchers, suddenly it’s Israel that hurt the children,” she added, referring to Hamas’s known tactic of operating out of civilian areas such as schools, kindergartens, and hospital.
“Why is putting children in harm’s way somehow different when it comes to Israel?” Givaty asked. “So yes, I believe Israel has to finish the job against Hamas — for Israeli children and for Palestinian children.”
Albanese has an extensive history of using her role at the UN to denigrate Israel and seemingly rationalize the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s attacks on the Jewish state.
The UN adviser has decried Israelis as “foreign” Jews who expelled “indigenous” Palestinians from their land for the purpose of creating an exclusionary ethnostate, erasing the millennia-long presence of Jewish people within the land of Israel. She has also repeatedly condemned Israel as a “colonial” enterprise, comparing the Jewish state to British India or French Algeria.
The UN launched a probe into Albanese, who has repeatedly accused Israel of “genocide,” in 2024 for allegedly accepting a trip to Australia funded by pro-Hamas organizations.
While speaking at a Washington, DC bookstore last October, Albanese also accused Israel of weaponizing the fallout of the Oct. 7 massacre to justify the “colonization” of Gaza.
Zawartość publikowanych artykułów i materiałów nie reprezentuje poglądów ani opinii Reunion’68,
ani też webmastera Blogu Reunion’68, chyba ze jest to wyraźnie zaznaczone.
Twoje uwagi, linki, własne artykuły lub wiadomości prześlij na adres:
webmaster@reunion68.com