Francesca Albanese wants you to believe she speaks for peace. But peace is not what drives her. From her first day as UN special rapporteur to her most recent deranged report on the “situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967,” Albanese has used her position not to mediate, but to inflame; not to bring justice, but to wage a political war against Israel.
Her reports are framed as human rights documents. In truth, they are polemics dressed in the language of law, despite the fact that she holds no legal license to practice law. They omit the facts that matter, erase the victims who don’t fit her narrative, and read more like propaganda pamphlets than credible investigations.
The target is always the same: Israel. The villains are always the same: Israelis. The beneficiaries are, time and again, those who openly glorify terror.
For years, Albanese has trafficked in rhetoric that blurs the line between criticism of Israel and outright antisemitism. She’s accused Israel of everything from “apartheid” to “genocide,” while excusing or ignoring the actions of Hamas, an internationally recognized terrorist organization that calls for, in its founding charter, the annihilation of Jews worldwide. She’s likened Israel’s war on Hamas in Gaza to the systematic extermination of Jews by Nazis in the Holocaust.
When a UN rapporteur’s loudest cheerleaders are Hamas leaders and their online acolytes, it’s a sign that something has gone profoundly wrong.
Her latest report marks a new low. It invokes the gravest of crimes, “genocide,” yet makes scant mention of the October 7 massacre that left more than 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals dead in a single day. There is not a word about the rape, the torture, or the kidnapping of Israeli hostages. Not a whisper about Hamas’s execution of its own people in Gaza since the ceasefire was reached in early October. Instead, Albanese casts Israel as the aggressor, a nation supposedly consumed by cruelty, while the actual aggressors are airbrushed out of the story entirely.
Israel's very existence is the problem
This is not oversight. It is deliberate erasure and reprehensible malpractice. Albanese’s moral calculus begins and ends with a single premise: that Israel’s very existence is the problem. From that assumption, every conclusion conveniently follows. Terrorists become “resistance fighters.” Murderers are recast as “political prisoners” or “hostages.”
The democratic state that protects the rights of Jews, Muslims, and Christians alike becomes the supposed embodiment of evil.
Consider who she chooses to champion. She has defended convicted killers like Marwan Barghouti as “symbols of hope.” She has romanticized the “selfie” Gaza flotilla, a reckless stunt that aided no one. She even once suggested Hamas should not be viewed as armed extremists. Try explaining that to the survivors of October 7, to the families still waiting for word about their loved ones buried in Gaza’s tunnels.
Her bias has never been subtle. Albanese claims neutrality, yet her social media posts seethe with virulent hostility toward Israel, the United States, and Western democracies. She is not an advocate for peace; she is an activist for one side of a conflict that has already cost too many lives.
Now, the mask is off. When she recently called for sanctions and boycotts against Israel, it was not an act of moral courage but of political theater. Within days, it was she who was sanctioned, not for defending human rights, but for spreading hate and disinformation. It was a moment of poetic justice: the boycotter was boycotted.
Israel, meanwhile, continues the difficult, painful work of building real peace. After two years of fighting, the country has paid a staggering price. Some hostage families have buried their loved ones. Entire communities have been displaced. Yet through it all, Israel has remained committed to rescuing its hostages, dismantling Hamas’s terror infrastructure, and preventing another October 7. That is what responsibility looks like. That is what defense of life looks like.
Albanese’s words, by contrast, are empty. She claims to defend international law while undermining its credibility. She accuses Israel of threatening world peace when, in fact, Israel is the region’s most vibrant democracy and a driver of cooperation and innovation. She dismisses historic peace accords as “aggression,” even though those agreements – from the Abraham Accords to ongoing regional dialogues – have done more to advance coexistence than any UN report in decades.
While Albanese condemns from afar, Israelis and their allies act. They build security frameworks that allow Arabs and Jews to live side by side. They extend hands to moderate voices that still believe in diplomacy. Peace, in other words, is being built not in lecture halls or UN chambers, but on the ground.
Albanese’s crusade against Israel will fail for the same reason every campaign to delegitimize the Jewish state has failed: it misunderstands history, and it misunderstands the Jewish people. Those who seek to curse Israel end up strengthening it. Each attempt to isolate the Jewish state only deepens its alliances. Each false accusation only reinforces the moral clarity of its mission: to defend its people and secure a future where peace is not just a slogan, but a reality.
Francesca Albanese may imagine herself as a champion of justice, but she has become something smaller. She has become a partisan voice echoing the rhetoric of terrorists. Her legacy will not be one of peace or progress. Her legacy will be shaped by the discrediting of a UN office that once aspired to stand above politics.
Israel, on the other hand, will endure. It will heal. It will continue to bring its hostages home, protect its citizens, and pursue peace with those who genuinely desire it. Because no UN official, no biased report, and no campaign of lies can extinguish the determination of a nation built on survival, hope, and truth.
The writer is Israel’s permanent representative to the United Nations.