We need to talk about Francesca
The General TL;DR Gist of this blog:
Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, has become a major target for the Israel lobby and the U.S. government because she dares to tell the truth: that Israel is committing apartheid and war crimes against Palestinians. In June 2025, the U.S. led by figures like Marco Rubio sanctioned her in a grotesque abuse of power, simply for doing her job. This violates international law and reveals the U.S. as an enforcer of colonial violence, not a champion of human rights. Meanwhile, Netanyahu has the audacity to nominate Donald Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize, despite his role in deepening the occupation and empowering Israeli extremism. The bitter irony is that someone like Albanese, who actually defends international law and works toward real peace rooted in justice is punished, while warmongers are celebrated. It’s not just hypocrisy, it’s a complete inversion of morality and it should make anyone who still believes in human rights absolutely furious.
Why we need to talk about Francesca
Francesca Albanese terrifies the Israel lobby. She terrifies them because she is building up a ever widening body of evidence against everyone complicit in Israeli war crimes, in Israel, in the USA and in Europe. As with everyone else they can't control, they are trying to silence her.
Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), has become a lightning rod for attacks by the Israel lobby precisely because she exposes the legal and moral bankruptcy of Israeli apartheid using the language of international law. From a left-wing perspective, Albanese represents the rarest of things in global diplomacy: a figure unbought, unbowed, and unafraid to speak plainly about Israeli settler colonialism, occupation, and war crimes. Her clarity terrifies the defenders of the Israeli regime not because it is radical, but because it is unassailably correct.
Why Francesca Albanese is a threat to the Israel lobby
Albanese’s March 2023 report to the UN Human Rights Council: Domination and Apartheid explicitly concluded that Israel's regime in the occupied Palestinian territories meets the legal definition of apartheid under international law. This was not a rhetorical flourish, but a tightly documented legal analysis drawing on the 1973 International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid and the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
The inescapable reality is that a system of apartheid has been implemented in the Occupied Palestinian Territory,Francesca Albanese UN A/HRC/52/76, March 2023
The Israel lobby, particularly organisations like the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), AIPAC, and UK groups such as Labour Friends of Israel (LFI), are deeply threatened by such language because apartheid is not just a political accusation, it is a crime under international law. Albanese is not engaging in protest rhetoric; she is laying the groundwork for legal accountability, potentially even prosecution.
In July 2025, the United States government escalated its assault on international accountability by imposing sanctions on her. This marked an extraordinary and deeply cynical move: for the first time in history, a UN human rights expert was sanctioned not for wrongdoing, but for doing her job too well. The official justification: accusations of bias and delegitimising Israel was transparently political. Albanese’s real “crime” was documenting Israeli apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and systemic war crimes with clarity and legal rigour. These sanctions not only violate the UN’s Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations (1946), which protects the independence of its experts, but also send a chilling message to the entire human rights system: speak too loudly for the colonised, and you’ll be punished like the colonisers. From a left-wing perspective, this is a textbook case of empire defending empire: Washington shielding its client state in Tel Aviv from the consequences of decades of occupation, displacement, and mass killing.
The sanctions on Francesca Albanese strip away any remaining pretence that the United States stands for human rights or international law. It’s pure political thuggery, a desperate attempt to silence a UN expert for daring to hold Israel to account for apartheid and war crimes. And leading the charge was Marco Rubio, the ghoulish Republican senator whose slavish loyalty to Israel’s far-right government borders on the fanatical. Rubio called Albanese a 'disgrace' and celebrated the sanctions as a 'victory against antisemitism' an obscene twisting of language that reveals just how hollow and weaponised the term has become in the hands of empire. In truth, this was no defence of Jewish safety, it was the brutal disciplining of a principled woman who refuses to let the world look away from Palestinian suffering. The US, in sanctioning her, showed itself not just as a flawed democracy but as a cynical enforcer of colonial violence, willing to crush even the UN’s own mechanisms if they threaten the impunity of its allies. This wasn’t just about Francesca Albanese. This was about making it clear: international law applies to everyone: except us and our friends.
A left-wing framework: anti-colonialism, anti-racism, and international solidarity
From a left perspective, Albanese embodies a principled anti-colonial voice that refuses to treat Palestinians as expendable or invisible. Unlike the gutless careerists who dominate Western politics, she speaks from a tradition that includes Fanon, Angela Davis, and Edward Said, a global left that understands Zionism not as an ethno-religious movement alone, but as a settler colonial project that has dispossessed a native people for over 75 years.
When Albanese calls Israel’s actions 'domination by a racial group over another' she is not being antisemitic; she is echoing what groups like B’Tselem and Human Rights Watch have already concluded. The difference is that she holds formal authority within the UN system, and that terrifies the Israel lobby because it cannot be easily dismissed as fringe.
The backlash: smears, slander, and diversion
Albanese has been the target of a relentless smear campaign. She has been falsely accused of antisemitism for tweets criticising Zionist policy, standard tactics used to silence critics of Israel. The UN, however, has defended her, noting that her comments were not antisemitic but rather critical of Israeli state policy. Even the UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric has reiterated that her statements fall within her mandate and that she continues to enjoy the Secretary-General’s confidence. The Zionist press and aligned politicians have tried to discredit her by digging up years-old tweets and insinuating bias. For example, a 2014 tweet in which Albanese said that 'America and Europe... owe their existence to a sense of guilt about the Holocaust' was seized upon as evidence of antisemitism. But this statement is a critique of Western foreign policy, not Jewish people, a distinction the Israel lobby deliberately obfuscates. As the Jewish leftist writer Moshé Machover notes:
Accusations of antisemitism are weaponised to shield Israel from criticism and to delegitimise solidarity with Palestinians.Moshé Machover: Worker, 2022
This is precisely what is happening to Albanese.
Palestinian voices and the left’s responsibility
Albanese’s work has been praised by Palestinian civil society, including organisations like Al-Haq, Addameer, and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights. She regularly cites their reports and includes their perspectives in her findings, amplifying the voices the Western media marginalises. The left has a responsibility to defend Albanese not just as an individual but as a symbol of institutional resistance to the erasure of Palestinian humanity. Her work is part of the broader push to decolonise international law, long warped to serve imperial interests, so that it can finally protect the people it was meant to serve.As academic Noura Erakat writes:
International law is not inherently just, but it is a terrain of struggle. Albanese is using that terrain effectively, and that’s what makes her dangerous to those who benefit from impunity.Noura Erakat: Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine (2019)
The silence of the so-called Left in power
What makes Albanese even more essential is the sheer cowardice of the official Left in the West. Keir Starmer’s Labour has purged pro-Palestinian voices and embraced a form of soft Zionism that mirrors the Tories in all but tone. Figures like Lisa Nandy, who once claimed to support international law, have gone mute as Israel rains white phosphorus on civilians. In this context, Albanese’s voice is all the more powerful. She speaks truth to power where the silence from those who should echo this is deafening . She names where others equivocate. She calls it apartheid, domination, ethnic cleansing: because that is exactly what it is.
Conclusion: Francesca Albanese is right and she’s not alone
Francesca Albanese terrifies the Israel lobby because she is building a case. She is not just documenting suffering; she is collecting evidence. Her reports are blueprints for accountability, and she is doing so from within a UN framework that despite its flaws still commands global authority. Her courage reminds us that it is not the radicals who are extreme, but the warmongers, the ethnic cleansers, and their enablers in Washington, London, and Tel Aviv. The Left must stand with Albanese, not just in solidarity, but in readiness for the moment when these crimes are finally put on trial.
At a time when the world has plunged through the looking glass, where Netanyahu, drenched in the blood of Gaza, can straight-faced propose Donald Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize: the sheer, seething irony is almost too much to bear. Trump, the man who shredded any pretence of peace by recognising illegal settlements, green-lighting annexation, and cutting aid to Palestinians, is hailed as a peacemaker by the very architects of apartheid. Meanwhile, Francesca Albanese, who has spent her tenure exposing the daily brutalities of occupation, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing with forensic precision and moral courage is sanctioned, smeared, and silenced. If anyone deserves a Nobel Peace Prize, it is Albanese. But that would require the Nobel Committee to honour truth over power, law over impunity, and justice over Western hypocrisy. Instead, we live in a grotesque parody where those who call for peace rooted in accountability are punished, and those who orchestrate bloodshed are lauded as statesmen. The rage comes not just from the injustice, it comes from the insult. A world where Trump is peace laureate material and Albanese is a pariah is a world that has declared war on the very meaning of peace.
References:
- UN Human Rights Council, A/HRC/52/76, "Domination and Apartheid", March 2023. https://www.ohchr.org
- Human Rights Watch, "A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution", April 2021.
- B’Tselem, "A Regime of Jewish Supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This is Apartheid", January 2021.
- Noura Erakat, Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine, Stanford University Press, 2019.
- Moshé Machover, “Zionism and Antisemitism,” Weekly Worker, 2022.
- UN Spokesperson statement on Francesca Albanese, December 2022.
A bit of shameless self-plugging here. This is www.TetleysTLDR.com blog. It's not monitised. Please feel feel to go and look at the previous ones on the website and if you like them, please feel free to share them.
