Francesca Albanese’s Deceptions at Brown

Francesca Albanese, a U.N. special rapporteur, was invited to speak at Brown University on Sept. 16. Her comments were a consistent source of dishonestly, evincing a lack of principles and hostility toward Jews.

Simply highlighting some of the individual distortions from her presentation, “Anatomy of a Genocide: A Failure of the International System?” really doesn’t do justice to the dogmatic anti-Israelism at her core — a hostility around which she carefully arranges, like logs in a firepit, her array of lies, decontextualized facts, and citations of international law. It doesn’t do justice to the distorting feedback loop she’s involved in — bad-faith reports under the U.N. imprimatur, which are then cited by ICJ judges, who are in turn cited by the rapporteur.

And it doesn’t explain the mechanics behind the U.N.’s systemic slant toward extremism. After all, U.N. Rapporteur Albanese, who once insisted that the United States is “subjugated” by the “Jewish lobby,” follows admiringly in the footsteps of U.N. Rapporteur Richard Falk, who went on to write a blurb endorsing one of the most noxious antisemites alive today, Gilad Atzmon, whose ostentatious antisemitism went too far, even for the anti-Israel fringe. Personnel is policy, and this is the personnel.

But the narrow examples of dishonesty at the Brown lecture offer at least a glimpse of the bigger picture. As she has previously, Albanese propped up her big lies of genocide and apartheid with more specific distortions.

In her presentation:

• Albanese equivocated to conceal antisemitism: To “push back” against a question about extremism in Gaza, Albanese insisted: “No, there is not such a thing like an idealization of ‘Mein Kampf’ or antisemitism. Actually, I think that there is more animosity against the Israelis and, to an extent, against Jewish people in the Arab world — not necessarily as antisemitism as it is in Europe, discrimination against the Jews because they are Jews.”

A 2009 Pew poll found showed 97% of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza admitting to an “unfavorable” opinion of Jews. (It wasn’t a source of much relief when, two years later, the number dropped to 95%.) A more specific ADL poll in 2014 found similarly high levels of bigotry.

And if Palestinian leaders haven’t idealized “Mein Kampf,” they’ve certainly echoed it. Hamas MP Marwan Abu Ras, for example, explained that Hitler abhorred the Jews “because they are a people of treachery and betrayal.” Such views are also broadcast on Gaza’s Al Aqsa TV.

• Invented an absence of anti-Israel attitudes: “I’m just saying there is an acceptance [in Gaza] of the Israelis … I would not be surprised to see animosity among the Palestinians toward the Israelis; but again, again, this has not been the dominant feeling.”

It’s a curious “acceptance.” Consider, among so many other things (see attitudes on Jews above), the results of a 2022 poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research. Asked about their views of the solution to the conflict, 74% of Gazans opposed a two-state solution “based on the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.” But 79% also opposed one-state solution in which “the two sides enjoy equal rights.” Ask yourselves what type of solution that leaves.

• Invents facts: “There has been starvation used as a method of war because since Oct. 8, Israeli leaders declared … a full tightening of the siege, so no water, no medicine, no fuel and no food, which has led to starvation.”

Over a million tons of aid have entered Gaza with Israel’s cooperation since the Hamas attack, including tens of thousands of tons of medical supplies, tens of thousands of tons of water, and hundreds of thousands of tons of food.

• Invents quotes: To defend her charge of genocide, she falsified quotes by Israeli officials. “The language was absolutely genocide,” she told students, “like calling for the elimination of a nation of responsibles [sic] together with Hamas.”

She didn’t attribute the statement, but we can find the answer in her report, on which her presentation was based. And following her own footnotes, it becomes evident that she was deceiving the students.

The report, as “evidence of genocidal intent,” partially quotes Israel’s president, who unlike the country’s prime minister holds an essentially ceremonial role: “President Isaac Herzog stated that ‘an entire nation out there … is responsible,’ for the 7 October attack and that Israel would ‘break their backbone’”

A footnote points to a Herzog’s press conference shortly after the Hamas attack. And while the words within her quotation marks are correct, Herzog,  who could not hide his emotions when referring to the massacre, did not call for eliminating an entire nation. In the words of one reporter at the press conference, Herzog spoke passionately about how “Israel was not retaliating but targeting with regard to the operations in Gaza.”

When the same reporter asked what Israel could do to alleviate the impact of civilians that have nothing to do with Hamas, Herzog’s somewhat rambling reply showed anger at Gazans but emphasized Israel’s adherence to international law.

“First of all,” the Israeli president said, “we have to understand, there’s a state, in a way, that has built a machine of evil right at our doorstep. It’s an entire nation out there that is responsible. It’s not true, this rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved, it’s absolutely not true. They could have risen up, they could have fought against that evil regime which took over Gaza in a coup d’etat, murdering their family members who were in Fatah. There’s a short memory in the world, Israel evacuated Gaza unilaterally, in order to show that it’s willing to make peace … Well, reality has turned into a tragedy. Therefore I must say that this situation impacts the entire vision of people as to the ability to adhere to the same old rhetoric. We are working, operating militarily according to rules of international law, period. Unequivocally. But we are at war. We are at war. We are defending our homes. We’re protecting our homes. That’s the truth. And when a nation protects its home it fights. And we will fight until we break their backbone.”

Already here it seems likely that the “backbone” in question is that of Hamas. And Herzog later leaves little doubt that this is what he meant. After reiterating to two other journalists that Israel will operate according to international law, another reporter asks for clarification on the very words Albanese cites:

“Let me first of all say that there’s an enormous amount of genuine, authentic sympathy for what your country is going through right now. But listening to your answers in the last few minutes, I’m a little confused. Because on one hand you say that Israel abides by the rules of war and is very careful to avoid the loss of civilian life in the Gaza Strip. But at the same time you seem to hold the people responsible of Gaza responsible for not trying to remove Hamas… And therefore, by implication, that makes them legitimate targets.”

Herzog responded:

“No, I didn’t say that. I did not say that, I want to make it clear. I was asked something about separating civilians from Hamas, but with all due respect, if you have a missile in your goddamn kitchen, and you want to shoot it at me, am I allowed to defend myself? Yes …”

The reporter continued: “But the question is this. Ultimately, you can’t remove the people of Gaza, they are going to be stuck in this neighborhood.”

Herzog: “So we have to fight. What do you want us to do? So we tell them ‘Get out,’ and we fight against the launchers.”

Reporter: “But what happens eventually once this war is over, you’re going to have to live with them side by side”

Herzog: “Absolutely.”

Reporter: “What’s the plan?”

Herzog: “The plan is we have to make sure the Hamas will not be able to repeat this again. That is the plan. That is what we’re trying to do.”

After reiterating that Hamas has significant support among the population of Gaza, Herzog added, “I agree, there are many, many innocent Palestinians who don’t agree to this,” but if the Hamas fighters are embedded within the civilian population, he added, Israel has a right and obligation to fight it.

• More games with quotes: Albanese’s report sheds more light on what she meant when telling students about genocidal rhetoric. It cites Israeli army spokesman Daniel Hagari saying that that the “focus should be to ‘maximize damage,’” which, per the report, “demonstrate[es] a strategy of disproportionate and indiscriminate violence.”

Her own footnote, though, leads to a page in which Hagari is quoted saying the opposite: “We are using every piece of intelligence to maximize damage to meeting spots for terrorists planning to invade Israel, houses belonging to senior Hamas commanders, terrorist operational centers and headquarters and terrorist infrastructure.”

• ICJ misrepresentations: Albanese spoke of South Africa’s charge that Israel is violating the genocide convention, “which the court, the International Court of Justice, already in January found plausible …”

But the president of the ICJ at the time of its ruling subsequently made clear that this did not happen. “It did not decide, and this is something where I’m correcting what’s often said in the media, it didn’t decide that the claim of genocide was plausible.”

• More ICJ misrepresentations: Albanese told students that “in May, the court even asked, ordered, Israel to cease the hostility” in Gaza.

It did not. The ruling was specifically about one small section of the Gaza Strip. And according to most ICJ judges who formally clarified the language of the ruling, the ruling allowed Israel to continue hostilities in that section of Gaza.

* Exaggerating destruction: Albanese told students that in the first five months of the war, “there has been the almost total destruction of Gaza.”

But U.N. satellite data at the time found that 19% percent of the territory’s buildings were “destroyed” or “severely damaged.”

• Even more inventions: “The Palestinian in the occupied Palestinian territory, not Gaza, but the East Jerusalem and the West Bank cannot build a house, cannot take or change residence, cannot get to university, cannot open a business, cannot do anything without an Israeli permission.”

This is false, most glaringly because most West Bank Palestinians live in Area A, which is under full security and civil control of the Palestinian Authority. They no more require Israeli permission to do any of the above than Gazans — or for that matter Egyptians or Jordanians.

• Revisionist history: Albanese posthumously recruits Raphael Lemkin, who coined the phrase genocide, to support her anti-Israel views. Referring to the concept, in vogue among anti-Israel activists, that holds the “settler-colonial” country of Israel as illegitimate and born in sin, she said that “what … Lemkin had in mind was settler-colonialism. Settler-colonialism is the genocidal conduct par-excellence.”

In fact, researchers note that Lemkin was a lifelong Zionist — a supporter of the legitimacy of the Jewish state.

• Egregious omissions: “Over 57 years, Israel has frustrated the possibility for the Palestinians, not to have a state, no, but to realize their right of self-determination, their right to exist as a people, and to determine themselves as a people. This is what the right of self-determination is about.”

Albanese here omits multiple peace plans offered or accepted by Israel, which would have led to a Palestinian state on virtually all of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. By rejecting those offers, Palestinian leaders are the ones who rejected self-determination.

Gilead Ini is a senior research analyst at CAMERA.