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francesca albanese
Francesca Albanese, Gaza, and the Military-Propaganda Nexus Behind the US-Israeli War on Iran
The gaggle of for-profit genocidaires is looking to expand its mission from Gaza to other conflicts, seeking to further dismantle international law and the humanitarian community. We can follow Albanese's lead in fighting back.
Mar 03, 2026
When the Israeli lobbying group UN Watch spread disinformation about Francesca Albanese, they were trying to silence her condemnations of the true “common enemy of humanity”—the illegal system of oppressive, corporate-media-military and surveillance forces shaping a brutal new world order, and now bombing Iran.
Francesca Albanese has evoked the ire of Israeli officials, the US government, and Western countries that have failed to stop, and continued to support, Israel’s genocide in Gaza. They are mad at her for doing her job and excelling at it. When she accepted the position as United Nations special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, she was a widely published human rights expert. She never hid her focus and strong positions on the rights of Palestinians or the fact that her historically grounded research focused on Israel’s occupation of Palestine. She began as special rapporteur in May 2022, and by November she gave a talk at the Irish Center for Human Rights titled, “Resetting the Mind: Settler Colonialism, Apartheid, and the Right to Self-determination in Palestine.”
Albanese has proven to be the most important global voice defending Palestinians against the Israeli extermination campaign in Gaza that has continued for 28 months. In doing so, she exposed a growing web of neocolonial forces at the forefront of genocide, still intent on completing the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and turning Gaza into a multibillion-dollar resort for the billionaire class (revealed on a disgusting though rarely cited videotape). President Donald Trump’s profit-making enterprise called the “Board of Peace” convened for the first time in January, and some 60 countries were invited to join for a one-billion-dollar fee in a pay-to-play scheme that Pope Leo XIV referred to as an attempt to replace the UN. Jeremy Scahill explained on Democracy Now! what exactly this muddle of corporate shills, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and a group of ragtag government representatives are dreaming up for their Epstein-Class playground on the Mediterranean. Depriving Gazans of any independent representation or defense, their terms are these: “You either fully bend the knee and accept a colonial apartheid regime [and] accept a new reality as dystopian plantation workers on Jared Kushner’s real estate project or we’re going to kill you.” As Asal Raad pointed out, “’They’re building resorts on the graves of Palestinians… slaughtered in a genocide—for profit—and @nytimes calls it a ‘glittering plan.’”
Francesca Albanese has incisively corrected the record and debunked Israel’s denials and justifications for genocide so often repeated in the Western Press. It took her one eloquent sentence to expose media’s role in facilitating Israeli attacks on the enclave when she wrote, “Israel has written one of the darkest pages of human history and the world is still holding the pen.”
The powerful global consortium of weapons-based profiteering and neocolonial states have attacked one of the most forceful advocates for humanity, at the same time the US and Israel are bombing Iran.
She made it look easy when she shattered a foundational rhetorical question lobbed at anyone who dare criticize the state of Israel, Do you believe Israel has a right to exist? When a journalist threw that one at Albanese, she patiently explained: “Israel does exist. It is a recognized member of the United Nations.” France and Italy exist, if they want to merge that’s up to them, but she added, “What is enshrined in international law is the right of a people to exist.”
Last year over 700,000 people signed a petition nominating Albanese for the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize. But her effective advocacy for Palestinian rights made her the target of US sanctions. The action came after she published a study in July 2025, naming the major global corporations profiting from Israel’s ongoing occupation and genocide in Gaza. She named 60 companies that have played a role in "sustaining Israel’s settler-colonial project.” The military-industrial complex, dominated by US weapons manufacturers, is, unsurprisingly, at the heart of this nexus. The occupation and bombing of Gaza “provided a testing ground for cutting-edge military capabilities: air defense platforms, drones, AI-powered targeting tools, and even the US-led F-35 programme.” After being used on Palestinians, deadly technologies are marketed as “battle proven.” At a major weapons conference in Tel Aviv in December 2025, Israel boasted that their weapons are tested “live on Palestinians” to increase profits.
In the July report, Albanese also drew attention to the financial industries, consulting firms, social media, and public relations companies that help design the misleading narratives that have deflected blame, refused to use terms likes genocide, and parroted Israeli talking points in sanitizing Israel’s brutality.
In tandem with the nexus of military force, security surveillance, corporate and media power, its acolytes are formulating an attendant neocolonial ideology. At a Munich Security Conference in February, US Secretary of State Mario Rubio introduced the conceptual architecture for, in the words of Jonathan Cook, “a return to brutal Western colonialism,” in a speech well-received by European dignitaries. The humanitarian community is left struggling to find a way to continue to represent humanity as the ground shifts beneath their feet.
When Albanese began to expose the big picture of expanding military domination, and warned of its global consequences, the campaign to discredit her went into high gear. The latest attacks on the special rapporteur came in response to a videotape appearance she made at a conference in Doha where she argued that this growing systemic threat should be viewed as a “common enemy of humanity.”
The pro-Israeli lobbying group UN Watch, released an altered video of her talk and claimed that Albanese called Israel itself the “enemy of humanity.” One need only look at the original tape of her address to prove that she said no such thing. French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot augmented the false charges adding that Albanese condemned Israel “as a people and a nation,” and demanded her resignation. Pointing to the doctored videotape being used to portray her as antisemitic, Albanese told Medhi Hasan, “The cut and paste of that video was so rudimental that it was almost insulting to human intelligence.”
The powerful global consortium of weapons-based profiteering and neocolonial states have attacked one of the most forceful advocates for humanity, at the same time the US and Israel are bombing Iran. They are committing crimes of aggression against a sovereign state that has not threatened or attacked them, and major media outlets such as the New York Times have spurred them on. After a US bomb struck a girls’ elementary school in Minab, Iran, killing 165 people (mostly girls between the age of 7 and 12), hours later another US-Israeli strike on the town of Lamerd hit mostly teenagers in a gymnasium, killing 20 youthful volleyball players. Witnesses described “the continuous screaming of the injured.” But news of these bombings were not prominently featured in establishment media. As Fatima Bhutto put it, “From Gaza to Iran, Children Have Always Been Sacrificed by Western Imperial Aims.” Trump’s illegal war is unpopular—just a quarter of Americans back the strikes on Iran—and there is no legitimate rationale for another war in the Middle East.
Former UN official and Human Rights Lawyer Criag Mokhiber has also identified what he referred to as a “US-Israeli Axis,” calling it “the greatest threat facing humanity today” and describing it this way: “A murderous bombing campaign in Iran, continuing genocide in Palestine… belligerent occupation of several countries, acts of transnational terrorism, repression at home, schemes to profit from murder and colonization… massive corruption of the public and private sectors across the West, sanctions against human rights defenders and international courts, attacks on international institutions, the dismantling of international law, mass surveillance of the rest of us, and a growing trail of blood and destruction around the globe.”
In her characteristic expression of deep humanity, woven into Francesca Albanese’s words is an alternative vision of a world shaped by humanity and freedom. “We, who do not control large amounts of financial capital, algorithms, and weapons, we now see that we, as a humanity, have a common enemy. And freedoms, the respect for fundamental freedoms, is the last peaceful avenue, the last peaceful toolbox that we have to regain our freedom.”
The gaggle of for-profit genocidaires, or what Trump calls his Board of Peace, is looking to expand its mission from Gaza to other conflicts, seeking to further dismantle international law and the humanitarian community. As the death toll escalates under US-Israeli bombs and spreads war throughout the Middle East, Negin Owilaei argues in Truthout, “We need to reckon with the American War Machine,” and I would add, push back against the common enemy of humanity—the growing nexus of military and propaganda alliances.
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Family of UN Palestine Expert Francesca Albanese Sues Trump Over Sanctions
"At its heart, this case concerns whether defendants can sanction a person, ruining their life and the lives of their loved ones... because defendants disagree with their recommendations," the lawsuit states.
Feb 27, 2026
Relatives of independent United Nations investigator Francesca Albanese this week sued US President Donald Trump and three of his senior Cabinet officials over sanctions imposed for her efforts to hold Israeli leaders and international corporations profiting from the Gaza genocide accountable.
Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories was sanctioned last July for what Secretary of State Marco Rubio called “her illegitimate and shameful efforts to prompt International Criminal Court (ICC) action against US and Israeli officials, companies, and executives.”
UN rules prohibit Albanese from suing under her own name, so her husband—World Bank official Massimiliano Cali—and their unnamed child filed a lawsuit in the US District Court for the District of Columbia on Wednesday.
“It is a shared interest for all who believe in international law, accountability, and the world governed by rules and not by force or by bullying,” Albanese, 48, said Thursday at a news conference hosted by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
The lawsuit—which names Trump, Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and Attorney General Pam Bondi as defendants—details how US sanctions have severely impacted the plaintiffs' lives, including loss of access to banking, the ability to travel to the United States, their home in Washington, DC, Cali's workplace, and professional ties to universities.
“Francesca’s expression of her views about the facts as she has found them in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and about the work of the ICC is core First Amendment activity,” the lawsuit states. “At its heart, this case concerns whether defendants can sanction a person—ruining their life and the lives of their loved ones, including their citizen daughter—because defendants disagree with their recommendations or fear their persuasiveness."
“Sanctions, used appropriately, are a powerful tool to disrupt and undermine the activities of terrorists, criminals, and authoritarian regimes,” the suit asserts. “Sanctions are abused, however, when they seek to silence disfavored points of view and to violate the constitutional rights of people the government does not like.”
Speaking to the New York Times Thursday, Albanese said that "I have experienced enormous hardship."
“There is a criminalization of my motherhood and the family bonds I have," she added, noting that her relatives fear committing a felony if they help a sanctioned person.
The State Department responded by calling the lawsuit “baseless lawfare” and claimed that the sanctions against Albanese are “legal and appropriate.”
“Francesca Albanese has openly supported antisemitism, terrorism, and has engaged in lawfare against our nation and our interests, including against major American companies vital to the world economy," the department added.
Albanese has never supported antisemitism or terrorism. Last year, she published a report, From Economy of Occupation to Economy of Genocide, in which she named and shamed dozens of international companies that are aiding and abetting Israel's genocide in Gaza.
Since her appointment nearly four years ago, Albanese has been a vocal advocate for Palestinian rights and a fierce critic of Israel's policies and practices, including invasion, occupation, colonization, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing.
Albanese accuses Israel of violating the Genocide Convention, as does South Africa, which is leading a case against Israel based on the landmark treaty—that Israel signed and ratified—at the International Court of Justice.
Last September, a panel of independent UN human rights experts—which did not include Albanese—found that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, a conclusion shared by many scholars, jurists, world leaders, and rights groups.
More than 250,000 Palestinians, the vast majority of them civilians, have been killed or wounded in Gaza over the past 28 months, including thousands who are still missing. Two million people—the overwhelming majority of the strip's population—have been forcibly displaced, starved, or sickened. Gaza lies in utter ruins.
Albanese also supports prosecuting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant—who ordered the "complete siege" of Gaza that fueled a famine—for crimes against humanity and war crimes, as alleged in arrest warrants issued by the ICC in November 2024.
In an interview with the Associated Press shortly after she was sanctioned, Albanese said: “My daughter is American. I’ve been living in the US and I have some assets there. So of course, it’s going to harm me. What can I do? I did everything I did in good faith, and knowing that, my commitment to justice is more important than personal interests.”
While US complicity in Israel's genocidal assault on Gaza predates Trump's return to office, he has waged a broad attack on critics of his administration's foreign policy, including nearly unconditional support for Israel. Last year, he issued an executive order authorizing sanctions against anyone who helps the ICC investigate or prosecute Americans or US allies.
Albanese has been also targeted by several European nations. Earlier this month, the foreign ministers of Austria, the Czech Republic, France, and Germany have publicly called for Albanese’s resignation or termination after the pro-Israel group UN Watch—which is unaffiliated with the world body—circulated an deceptively edited video of her purportedly calling Israel “the common enemy of humanity."
“European governments accuse me—based on statements I never made—with a virulence and conviction that they have NEVER used against those who have slaughtered 20,000+ children," Albanese said in response.
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Wall of Carnage: Gazans, Olive Trees, and Mosques
Pro-Israel advocates complain that younger people are being exposed to too many violent images of the Gaza genocide, but in fact the Western press underreports the death and destruction caused by the war.
Feb 25, 2026
In the small town of Berkeley Springs, West Virginia where I live, during Israel’s destruction of the Gaza Strip, a Democratic Party activist hung a flag of the state of Israel across the way from the only grocery town in town—so that almost every member of the community would see it.
As if to say—“we stand with the genocide.”
But it’s not just small town Democrats who are clueless.
Take DC Democrats, like former Obama speechwriter Sarah Hurwitz.
Was any of this destruction of mosques and olive trees reported in the mainstream news in the United States? Not that we could find. (If you find it, we’d like to know.)
Speaking before the Jewish Federations of North America annual meeting in Washington, DC in November 2025, Hurwitz waved her rhetorical Israeli flag in a speech that went viral on the internet, but pretty much stayed out of the mainstream media.
“So you have TikTok just smashing our young people’s brains all day long with video of carnage in Gaza,” Hurwitz said. “And this is why so many of us can’t have a sane conversation with younger Jews because anything that we try to say to them, they are hearing it through this wall of carnage. So I want to give data and information and facts and arguments and they are just seeing in their minds carnage and I sound obscene.”
Yes you do, Sarah. You sound obscene. But since this is a TikTok free zone, let’s go to the “data and information and facts” you say you want.
On January 29, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz ran an article under the headline "IDF Accepts Gaza Health Ministry Death Toll of Over 71,000 Palestinians Killed During the War."
“The Ministry’s tally includes only those killed directly by Israeli military fire in its tracking, not people who died of starvation or from diseases exacerbated by the war,” the paper reported.
This after years of Israeli officials saying the Hamas figures were unreliable, untrustworthy, and unbelievable.
And former British Labor Party leader and current Independent Member of Parliament Jeremy Corbyn pointed out the obvious Sarah—“There’s only one reason the IDF accepts this figure—they know the real number is much, much higher. Palestinians tried to tell the world. Shame on all those who discredited them. By hiding the genocide, you fueled the genocide.”
As we have pointed out repeatedly over the last year in the Capitol Hill Citizen, Israel has killed hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza since October 7, not the tens of thousands as now both Hamas and the IDF say. (See for example, "The Vast Gaza Death Undercount: Hamas Says 66,000, It’s More Like 600,000" by Ralph Nader, November/December 2025 Capitol Hill Citizen, page 30.)
As we go to press, Zeteo is publishing a three-part investigation by California surgeon Dr. Feroze Sidhwa titled "The Truth About Gaza’s Dead."
On direct deaths from violence, Sidhwa writes that “the number is likely between 120,000 and 215,000, representing 1 out of every 10 to 18 people in Gaza, but may be significantly higher. It is extremely unlikely that fewer than 120,000 Palestinians have been killed, and it is unlikely that more than 437,000 have been killed directly by US-Israeli military violence.”
Sidhwa is working on a final paper that looks at indirect deaths—deaths from unsanitary conditions, disease, lack of medical facilities, malnutrition, starvation, and exposure to the elements. Epidemiologists often use a ratio of 4 indirect deaths for every 1 direct death in such conflicts, which would place the toll much higher than current reported figures—somewhere in the neighborhood of the more than 600,000 Nader has estimated.
Nor will you see reporting on the fact that Israel has destroyed the vast majority of mosques and olive trees in Gaza.
According to Fayyad Fayyad, the head of the Palestinian Olive Council, Gaza’s olive sector is “almost completely destroyed.”
“There is no olive season this year,” Fayyad told Drop Site News. “We estimate that nearly 1 million of Gaza’s 1.1 million olive trees have been destroyed.”
In 2022, Gaza produced about 50,000 tons of olives. This year, Fayyad said, the total will be well under a thousand.
“The destruction is deliberate,” Fayyad told Drop Site. “Israel aims to eliminate the agricultural sector, including olives. What remains are scattered trees—not groves, not production.”
“The olive trees have become firewood now,” 75-year-old farmer Hajj Suleiman AbdelNabi told Drop Site. “I feel pain with every cut—not just for the loss, but because these trees are life itself. For Palestinians, they are a symbol of steadfastness. When they die, it feels like another disaster.”
According to the Gaza Ministry of Endowments, Israel has also destroyed more than 800 mosques in Gaza—or 79% of the mosques in the Gaza Strip—and completely demolished three churches. More than 150 mosques have been partially damaged.
“The targeting of mosques and places of worship by the occupation forces is a clear violation of all sanctities, international law, and human rights law,” the ministry said. The Israeli army has also targeted 32 of Gaza’s 60 cemeteries, completely destroying 14 and partially damaging 18, the ministry said.
Was any of this destruction of mosques and olive trees reported in the mainstream news in the United States? Not that we could find. (If you find it, we’d like to know.)
And what happens when a Westerner tries to bring this to light?
Let’s take the case of Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur for Palestine.
Last year, the Trump administration placed Albanese on the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) list—usually reserved for terrorists and money launderers—six days after the release of her report that documents US corporate support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
It was this report—fingering as it does the powerful American corporations and institutions—including Palantir Technologies, Lockheed Martin, Alphabet Inc., Amazon, International Business Machines Corporation, Caterpillar, Microsoft Corporation, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology—that led to the Trump administration sanctioning Albanese.
“Far too many corporate entities have profited from Israel’s economy of illegal occupation, apartheid, and now, genocide,” Albanese wrote in the report. “The complicity exposed by this report is just the tip of the iceberg—ending it will not happen without holding the private sector accountable, including its executives. International law recognizes varying degrees of responsibility—each requiring scrutiny and accountability, particularly in this case, where a people’s self-determination and very existence are at stake. This is a necessary step to end the genocide and dismantle the global system that has allowed it.”
The independent journalist Chris Hedges reports that as a result of the sanctions, Francesca’s assets in the US have been frozen, including her bank account and her US apartment.
“The sanctions cut her off from the international banking system, including blocking her use of credit cards,” Hedges writes. “Her private medical insurance refuses to reimburse her medical expenses. Hotel rooms booked under her name have been cancelled. She can only operate using cash or by borrowing a bank card.”
“Institutions, including US universities, human rights groups, professors, and NGOs, that once cooperated with Francesca, have severed ties, fearful of penalties established for any US citizen who collaborates with her. She and her family receive frequent death threats. Israel and the US have mounted a campaign to get her removed from her UN post.”
“Francesca is proof that when you stand steadfastly with the oppressed, you will be treated like the oppressed.”
“She is unsure if her book—When the World Sleeps: Stories, Words, and Wounds of Palestine—which has been translated into English and is expected to be released in April, will be distributed in the US.”
Sarah Hurwitz’s obscene narrative?
Or Francesca Albanese’s justice narrative?
You choose, America.
This article ran in the February/March 2026 print edition of the Capitol Hill Citizen. To get a copy of the print newspaper, go to capitolhillcitizen.com)
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