UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese has been condemned for supporting the Green Party's “antisemitic” policy stating that “Zionism is racism”.
Speaking to Israeli-British historian Avi Shlaim on Monday for a discussion event at St Antony’s College, Oxford, she commended Zack Polanski’s party for “doing something extremely human” in adopting the policy.
Albanese, one of Israel’s most outspoken critics, said: “Frankly the Palestinians... have been the victims of Zionism for... years... if they [the Greens] want to say Zionism is racist, it is our responsibility to protect them.”
The Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories declared that Zionism was “racist” but appeared to attempt to moderate her position, adding: “I don’t think that it is completely fair to reduce Zionism to racism”.
Alex Hearn, the co-director of Labour Against Antisemitism, told the JC: “Albanese has talked about the ‘Jewish lobby’ dominating the US.
"Given her history, it is no surprise to see Albanese supporting the antisemitic policy by the Green Party which casts the overwhelming majority of Jews as racist.”
Gavin Stollar, chair of Liberal Democrats Friends of Israel, said: "Albanese’s claims are an attempt to delegitimise the Jewish people’s right to national self-determination. "
In her discussion with Shlaim, Albanese added that she thought the Greens’ ‘Zionism is racism’ policy was “not the most strategic” decision for the party because it will allow “the other side to amplify their movement”.
On the topic of rising Jew-hatred in the UK, Albanese said: “I do see the signs of antisemitism and... I see a manipulation of the response – an instrumentalisation of the antisemitism.
“This is something that calls for immediate action.”
Albanese also spoke about the importance of campaigning for Palestine and claimed former prime minister Sir Keir Starmer stood down as a result of pressure from the Gaza marchers.
“I think the reason Keir Starmer is no longer your prime minister is [because of] how many times you have joined the protest,” she said.
Answering a question from the audience on how to keep protesting even when fatigued, Albanese stressed that “perseverance” was the key, and that the other side was “getting you by exhaustion”.
“The tactics are the same,” she said. “They are doing to the collective what they have done for decades to the individual.
“It is all written already - we can expect this - we need to be better equipped to deal with this.
“This is a test for fortitude and perseverance. If there is one word I would like you to leave this room with it is ‘perseverance’. It’s not that ‘I’ve been to 100 demonstrations’, it is... what you have managed to produce.”
According to Albanese, the Boycott, Divest, Sanction (BDS) movement was the “best case study” of effective action against Israel.
Ireland and its 97 per cent public support for Palestine was the “perfect example” of a country working well against the Jewish state, she said.
Answering another question from the floor about the ban on the phrase “globalise the Intifada”, Albanese said it was “absurd” and “a symptom of anti-Arab sentiment in most Western countries”.
As well as using her talk to condemn Israel for “destroying Palestine”, she said: “People need to overcome their trauma and look at what Israel is doing to Judaism once and for all, and then they will deal with their other issues, because I think there is deep-seated racism that was not born with Israel.
“I think the anti-Arab sentiment is so deep and entrenched.”
Stollar said about Albanese: "Palestinian rights must never be used as a pretext to deny Jewish rights. You cannot credibly champion equality while treating the national aspirations of one people as inherently racist."
A spokesperson for Campaign Against Antisemitism said: “Francesca Albanese just can’t help herself. She is not a rapporteur but an activist, and her rhetoric and conduct are all designed to undermine the world’s only Jewish state. Her language is appalling. She would have been booted from any other institution long ago, but not the UN.
“Now she is even weighing in on the Green Party’s vile ‘Zionism is racism’ motion. Given the UN reversed itself on this antisemitic charge decades ago, it’s astonishing that she appears not to have learned from that.”
Albanese has been long accused of anti-Israel bias.
In August 2022, months after taking on the UN role, she tweeted: “Palestinians' right to resist is inherent to their right to exist as a people. An unlawful act of resistance does not make the resistance unlawful.”
Six weeks after October 7, she posted: “Fellow Europeans, Italians, Germans, after the Holocaust, we should instinctively know that genocide starts with dehumanising the other.
“If Israel's current attack [on] Palestinians doesn't prompt our strong reaction, the darkest page of our recent history has taught us nothing.”
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