UN faces calls to fire official who claimed Israel cannot defend itself against Palestinian terrorists

The Times of Israel reported that in February, a bipartisan group of U.S. House representatives urged that Albanese get the boot for her refusal to condemn terrorism.

In a Feb. 24 letter, 18 representatives noted that "when challenged about her continued silence regarding [January's] Palestinian terrorist attack outside a Jerusalem synagogue that murdered seven, Albanese repeated her assertion that Israel is a colonial, apartheid regime."

They underscored that Albanese's routine refusal to condemn terrorism and her nasty comments "provide further proof of the deep-seated prejudice inherent to the United Nations' approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."

Nearly 70% of all condemnatory resolutions in the U.N. General Assembly have targeted Israel since 2015, reported the Jerusalem Post.

Jay Sekulow and Robert Ash of the European Center for Law and Justice, a nonprofit human rights group, wrote to U.N. Secretary General António Guterres on April 19, arguing that Albanese was not only wrongheaded but factually incorrect.

Sekulow and Ash suggested that the special rapporteur failed "to consider two facts: (1) that 'occupation' presumes the existence of another sovereign whose territory is occupied and (2) that Israel has repeatedly stated that its application of the rules set forth in the Fourth [Geneva] Convention was for convenience and not because it was obligated to do so because of the lack of a foreign sovereign to whom such territory belongs."

"No Palestinian Arab political entity has ever possessed a single square centimetre of the territory it now claims to be 'occupied,' and the last foreign sovereign, Turkey (the successor state to the Ottomans), renounced its sovereignty in the 1920s," added Sekulow and Ash. "Regardless of the views one holds regarding the two foregoing facts, Israel's right to self-defence is inherent and undeniable."

Like Chikli and the American representatives, the ECLJ reasoned that "because Ms Albanese has openly sided with the Palestinians and concluded that the sovereign State of Israel may not defend itself and its people against Palestinian terrorist attacks, she has encouraged further violence and forfeited any claim to impartiality on her part. Her anti-Israel bias is on full display. Accordingly, she must be replaced forthwith."

The International Legal Forum comprising 4,000 lawyers similarly wrote to the U.N. last month demanding Albanese's termination, accusing her of exhibiting a "relentless, systematic and unhinged bias against Israel."

Albanese, an affiliate scholar at the Institute for the Study of International Migration at Georgetown University, was appointed to the position of special rapporteur in March 2022. She told the Middle East Eye, "This is neither the first nor the last time my mandate and persona will come under attack. ... An apartheid regime, as the international legal framework acknowledges, may resort to the persecution of persons and organisations opposing it."

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