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palestine
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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Israeli Analysis Affirms Gaza Health Ministry’s Official Palestinian Death Count
One Israeli expert placed discrepancies in the list at "around 1%." Another said the error rate appears even lower.
Feb 24, 2026
An Israeli analysis published Tuesday examining the Gaza Health Ministry's list of Palestinians killed during Israel's US-backed annihilation of the Gaza Strip largely affirmed the official death count, while noting some imperfections in the 2,000-page document.
Haaretz, Israel's oldest daily newspaper, dissected the Gaza Health Ministry's (GHM) database of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in Gaza, which at the time contained nearly 70,000 names—it's now over 72,000—in part by using artificial intelligence to analyze the massive file.
"A consensus has taken shape: Even if the list has weaknesses, including the fact that it does not differentiate between combatants and civilians, it reflects the scale of the disaster inflicted on Gaza and its people," article author Nir Hasson wrote. "It also forms the basis for allegations that Israel committed war crimes, crimes against humanity, and even genocide."
Lee Mordechai, a historian at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem who says Israeli is committing genocide in Gaza, told Hasson, "It's clear that the list isn't 100% accurate and that it has errors, but I think they're around 1%."
Gabriel Epstein, an associate at the US-based Israel Policy Forum who was formerly skeptical of the GHM list, "now believes it is largely accurate and may even slightly undercount the dead," according to Hasson.
"Epstein reviewed the list obtained by Haaretz," the article states. "He found 24 duplicates and 38 entries with problems in the ID numbers. That means 99.91% of the entries were complete, with verified ID numbers. He also found that 64 deaths that had appeared on earlier lists were later removed, while 158 names removed by March of last year were added back."
The GHM list notably only contains the names of people who died from combat-related violence, not from "hunger, disease, accidents, or the collapse of the health system."
It also does not include the thousands of people who are missing and likely dead and buried beneath the rubble of the 80% of Gaza's buildings that have been destroyed or damaged during the war.
Other research, including multiple peer-reviewed studies in the prestigious British medical journal the Lancet, have also concluded that the ministry was undercounting the number of people killed by Israel's war on Gaza.
As for the issue of Hamas not differentiating between combatants and civilians on the ministry's death list, an investigation last year by Israeli journalist and filmmaker Yuval Abraham and Guardian senior international affairs correspondent Emma Graham-Harrison analyzed classified Israel Defense Forces intelligence data showing that 5 in 6 Palestinians killed by Israeli troops through the first 19 months of the war were civilians. The probe obliterated IDF claims of a historically low civilian-to-combatant kill ratio.
Last September, Former IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi—who was in command for much of the war—said that “over 10%” of Gaza’s approximately 2.2 million people “were killed or injured” since October 2023. Halevi’s acknowledgment tracked with GHM figures showing at least 228,815 people killed or wounded at the time.
In January, Israeli media outlets including Haaretz, the Jerusalem Post, and the Times of Israel reported that the IDF accepted the accuracy of GHM's death count, which at the time stood at over 71,000.
Israeli officials and media, along with their supportive US counterparts during both the Biden and Trump administrations, once cast doubt upon or outright denied GHM figures because the ministry is under Hamas' control. These aspersions came in addition to widespread Israeli and US denials of Israel’s forced famine and starvation deaths and IDF war crimes in Gaza.
"As the months have passed, claims of fabrication and exaggeration have largely remained confined to Israeli television panels," Hasson wrote in the new analysis. "At the end of January, an apparent dispute over the number of dead seemed to end in Israel when a senior army source confirmed that the IDF recognizes that 70,000 people died, precisely the figure cited by Gazan authorities."
"Even if the argument over the total number of dead is, for now, largely settled, disagreement in Israel continues over who the dead were," he continued. "How many were gunmen, how many were affiliated with Hamas, how many were killed under circumstances that meet the conditions of international law?"
"None of this alters the stark figures in the table," Hasson added. "Of the recorded deaths, 20,876, about 30%, are young girls, teenage girls, and women. Another 3,220 were aged 65 and over, including the final name on the list, Tamam al-Batsh, who was 110 when she died."
While Israel officials continue to insist that GHM figures are "misleading and unreliable"—or even "fake"—Hasson noted the general consistency between Israeli and Palestinian tallies across past Israeli attacks on Gaza. During Operation Cast Lead (2008-09), the Palestinian count was 23% higher than Israel's. For Operation Pillar of Success (2012), Israel's tally of Gazan deaths was 11% higher than the Palestinian figure. In Operation Protective Edge (2014), the Palestinian count was 8% higher. And during 2021's Operation Guardian of the Walls, Palestinian officials counted 10% more Gaza deaths than Israel.
The United Nations and US administrations of both major political parties have long acknowledged the GHM's accounting of Palestinian casualties in Israeli attacks, including the assault that began in October 2023.
Hasson noted that "it has been increasingly harder to find Israeli officials commenting on the subject" of the GHM death count in the ongoing war as evidence of its accuracy mounts.
"Since the war began," he said, "Israel has made no serious effort to demonstrate that the list is false or to present an alternative. It has not proven even once that a person listed as deceased is in fact alive."
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Huckabee Accused of Inciting Murder After Israeli Settlers Kill Palestinian-American Teen
"The US ambassador to Israel is engaging in empowering and allowing for actions that lead to the targeted lynching and killing of US citizens," said one group.
Feb 23, 2026
Human rights defenders this week accused US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee—who recently endorsed Israel conquering much of the Middle East—of inciting deadly violence after Israeli colonists in the illegally occupied West Bank of Palestine fatally shot a Palestinian-American teenager who was trying to stop settlers from stealing livestock.
Nasrallah Abu Siyam, 19, was shot dead last Wednesday by a masked Israeli settler armed with an M-16 rifle in the village of Mukhmas, where the 19-year-old Philadelphia native had been living and helping his father, Mohammed Abu Siyam, tend the family's livestock and cultivate their olive trees.
According to eyewitness accounts as reported by independent New York journalist and Palestine specialist Jasper Diamond Nathaniel:
At least four other local Palestinians were wounded by settler gunfire during the invasion of the village, including another young man whose foot may be amputated. Some were shot while carrying the wounded to safety. Many others were severely beaten with metal rods. Israeli soldiers, who accompanied the settlers into the village, responded to the shooting rampage by firing stun grenades and tear gas into the residential area, burning an elderly man. When it was over, settlers walked off with more than 300 of the village’s sheep and goats under the military’s watch. It was the first full day of Ramadan. As of this writing, no one has been arrested.
While human rights groups and some Democratic US lawmakers have called for a full investigation into Abu Siyam's killing, Huckabee has so far been silent. Last July, Huckabee responded to Israeli settlers' killing of 23-year-old Palestinian-American Sayfollah Musallet, who was beaten to death while visiting relatives in the West Bank, as "a criminal and terrorist act" that Israeli authorities should "aggressively investigate." As is usually the case when Israeli settlers kill Palestinians, no one has been charged for killing Musallet.
Last Friday, Huckabee—who during his ill-fated 2008 presidential campaign denied the very existence of the Palestinian people—sat for an interview with conservative commentator Tucker Carlson during which he backed the realization of a so-called “Greater Israel” stretching from the Nile River in Egypt to the Euphrates in Iraq, saying that "it would be fine" if Israel "took it all," as many Jews and Evangelical Christians believe their common deity figure "God" intended them to do.
Numerous observers said the envoy's remarks inherently endorsed violence and forced displacement akin to what's happening to Palestinians living under occupation, colonization, ethnic cleansing, apartheid—and in the case of Gaza, genocide.
"Shortly after the lynching murder of an American citizen, footage aired of the US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee justifying the very structure of occupation, and rhetoric of ethnic cleansing, that led to the murder and continuing attacks on the occupied West Bank," the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) said in a statement Monday.
ADC said Huckabee's endorsement of Greater Israel "signals permission and the green light for Israeli forces to use violence and empower settlers for further annexation and dispossession."
The group continued:
The United States continues to fund, shield, and excuse Israeli violence, forced displacement, and mass atrocity across Palestine. Now the US ambassador to Israel is engaging in empowering and allowing for actions that lead to the targeted lynching and killing of US citizens. At the same time, Congress continues to put Israel first by sending American taxpayer dollars to Israel.
Israeli settlers and soldiers have killed at least a dozen Americans since 2022. Time and again, our government refuses to defend the rights, dignity, and safety of its own citizens simply to appease the demands of a foreign government and give impunity to Israel.
"The impunity cannot continue," ADC added.
Israeli leaders including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—a fugitive from the International Criminal Court wanted for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza—have publicly declared their support for Greater Israel, sparking widespread condemnation throughout the Arab world and beyond.
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