26 May 2025 – The Liberty Values & Strategy Foundation (LVS Foundation) welcomes the U.S. Justice Department’s demand that the United Nations immediately remove Francesca Albanese as Special Rapporteur for the Palestinian territories. This decisive step is both courageous and necessary. As LVS Foundation’s mission affirms, any institution that tolerates an antisemitic official forfeits its moral authority. Albanese’s documented record — detailed exhaustively by watchdogs like NGO Monitor — is a litany of hate speech and hidden alliances. She has repeatedly compared Israelis to Nazis, equated the Holocaust with Palestinian suffering, and even described Gaza as a “Warsaw Ghetto”. Such slanders are not academic critiques but classic antisemitic tropes, as NGO Monitor observes, including blaming a secret “Jewish lobby” for shaping Western policy. A UN Special Rapporteur who traffics in this rhetoric cannot be a guardian of human rights.

Crucially, Albanese has openly celebrated violent extremists. She lauded former PFLP members (like the hijacker Leila Khaled) as heroes and insisted Hamas militants possess a right to “resist”. In one UN report she even labeled convicted terror operatives as “human rights defenders,” inverting the meaning of justice. This disgraceful pattern shows how she has warped human-rights language into a cloak for terror. Moreover, reliable investigations have exposed Albanese’s secret financial entanglements with Hamas-linked groups. In late 2023 she took roughly \$20,000 from pro-Hamas charities to underwrite her UN field trips – a blatant breach of the UN’s own Code of Conduct. Only after a watchdog complaint did even the UN’s internal review admit she accepted “undisclosed external funding” and engaged in other “improprieties”. In short, Albanese operated with the finance, friends, and agendas of extremists, all while pretending to be an impartial human-rights official.

1. Pattern of Antisemitic Libels: NGO Monitor documents that Albanese equates Israel with Nazi persecution, seeing Israeli self-defense as a “crumbling” of Palestinian life akin to the Shoah. She sensationally compared Gaza to the Warsaw Ghetto, while publicly blaming America and Europe on “the Jewish lobby”.
2. Glorification of Terror:She has praised and participated alongside known terror figures. Albanese cheered PFLP leaders and the infamous hijacker Leila Khaled, even celebrating their “right to resist.” At the UN she absurdly defended jailed terrorists as “human rights defenders”, inverting every principle of justice.
3. Covert Hamas Funding: Investigations reveal she funneled her own UN mandate travel through Hamas-sympathizing NGOs. UN Watch and media reports show her November 2023 tour of Australia/New Zealand was bankrolled by pro-Hamas associations, hidden from UN oversight. This secret sponsorship violates Article 3 of the UN’s code, which forbids any non-governmental “favors” to mandate-holders.
4. Global Censure: Democratic governments across the globe have recoiled at Albanese’s vitriol. France, Germany, Canada and others formally denounced her blatant antisemitism. Earlier this year a U.S. Task Force on Antisemitism, led by Leo Terrell of the DOJ, bluntly called out Albanese’s “defamatory, dangerous” actions as an “abuse of \[her] office”.

Every fact above is borne out by independent reporting. The U.S. Justice Department’s recent letter exhaustively catalogued Albanese’s abuse – noting even the brutal October 7 Hamas massacre, which Albanese incessantly downplayed or excused in her public statements.

In that letter, DOJ lawyers tersely concluded: “Your actions are defamatory, dangerous, and a flagrant abuse of your office”. This rebuke echoes LVS Foundation’s own stance: human rights credibility depends on moral clarity. An official who weaponizes her mandate to slander Israel and glorify its enemies undermines the cause of all victims of injustice, Jewish and non-Jewish alike.

For the Liberty Values & Strategy Foundation, defending universal dignity means holding hatred to account. Albanese’s tenure is a stain on the U.N.’s founding principles of equality and truth. Her removal is not a partisan demand, but a correction to preserve the integrity of international human rights. We commend the U.S. for acting with this conviction and urge others to follow suit. Every democratic government must recognize that "tolerating" an outspoken antisemite in the role of human-rights monitor corrodes the entire system. LVS Foundation calls on the United Nations Human Rights Council and its member states to act immediately and decisively.

The time for equivocation is over.

LVS Foundation urges every like-minded democracy to answer the U.S. lead with equal resolve. Reject the blind eye to Albanese’s hate. Demand that the UN uphold its own standards by removing this Special Rapporteur without delay. Only by acting now to purge institutionalized bigotry can we ensure that the cause of human rights genuinely protects the vulnerable – including the global Jewish community – everywhere. Our fundamental values are non-negotiable, and defenders of liberty must stand ready. The world’s democracies and the United Nations must rise with one voice: Albanese’s term must end.

About the Liberty Values & Strategy Foundation

The Liberty Values & Strategy Foundation is a non-partisan organization dedicated to promoting constitutional democracy, the rule of law, and accountable governance in South Africa. Through research, advocacy, and public engagement, LVS Foundation works to advance reforms that strengthen public institutions and protect fundamental rights.

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