Anti-Israel United Nations official Francesca Albanese, who blamed the Jewish state for Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, is scheduled to speak at Brown University, just weeks after six hostages, including an American, were executed in Gaza. In response, members of the Brown community have circulated a letter urging the college to cancel the speech, citing Albanese’s anti-Semitic history.
Albanese, the U.N.’s special rapporteur for the West Bank and Gaza Strip, has long disparaged Israel. She has claimed the Jewish state doesn’t have a right to defend itself against Hamas, liked posts on X endorsing the anti-Semitic trope of the “Jewish billionaire class,” and hours after the Oct. 7 attack, said the “violence must be put into context.”
2/3 Today’s violence must be put in context. Almost six decades of hostile military rule over an entire civilian population (incomprehensibly ignored by too many official statements & media outlets) are in themselves an aggression, and the recipe for more insecurity for all.
— Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt (@FranceskAlbs) October 7, 2023
Beshara Doumani and Fulvio Domini—Brown professors who signed letters supporting a ceasefire and students’ anti-Semitic boycott, divest, and sanctions movement—will host Albanese for the Sept. 16 event, “Anatomy of a Genocide: A Failure of the International System?” Members of Brown’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter also suggested asking Doumani to review its statement blaming the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, according to internal documents obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
In March, the U.N. published a report similarly titled “Anatomy of a Genocide.” In it, Albanese accused Israel of committing genocide and advancing a “settler-colonial project in Palestine.” She also wrote that Israel’s leaders and military have “intentionally distorted” international law regarding war conduct to “legitimize genocidal violence against the Palestinian people.”
Albanese has repeatedly used her position as a U.N. official to denounce the Jewish state since the Israel-Hamas war began. A month after Oct. 7, Albanese blamed Israel for the terrorist attack. She told the Sydney Monthly Herald that “violence breeds violence” and that Hamas is “entitled to embrace resistance.”
Albanese also said it isn’t a crime for Palestinians to kill Israeli soldiers. And in addition to liking X posts that endorsed an anti-Semitic trope, she also liked one calling on University of Pennsylvania students to boycott classes demanding Liz Magill’s reinstatement after she resigned as president over campus anti-Semitism.
The U.N. official called it “unacceptable” to demand Hamas release its hostages and condemned Israel over the violence used to rescue four of them.
Israel banned Albanese from the country in February, calling her past statements anti-Semitic. The International Legal Forum, an activist group of more than 4,000 lawyers, similarly called on the U.N. to fire Albanese for her “anti-Semitism and virulent bias” and for “endorsing the murder of Israeli civilians, including children.”
The United States contributes more than $700 million annually to the United Nations, not including its contributions to the body’s peacekeeping mission. Historically, the U.S. sent more than $150 million to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) in the Near East. But the U.S. imposed a funding ban until 2025 after a lawsuit alleged that Hamas pocketed some $1 billion and used it on weapons and tunnels. An internal U.N. investigation also confirmed that UNRWA officials participated in the Oct. 7 attack.
Brown’s Center for Middle East Studies did not respond to a request for comment.
Original News Source – Washington Free Beacon
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