{"id":4945,"date":"2022-12-26T12:03:12","date_gmt":"2022-12-26T12:03:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/?p=4945"},"modified":"2022-12-26T12:03:14","modified_gmt":"2022-12-26T12:03:14","slug":"un-special-rapporteur-facing-smear-campaign-for-calling-out-israeli-settler-colonialism-and-apartheid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/un-special-rapporteur-facing-smear-campaign-for-calling-out-israeli-settler-colonialism-and-apartheid\/","title":{"rendered":"UN Special Rapporteur facing smear campaign for calling out Israeli settler-colonialism and apartheid\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The new UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Francesca Albanese<\/a>, has recently come under attack by a host of pro-Israel actors, including the supposedly free Israeli press. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Albanese stepped into her role in May, following Michael Lynk, who had already been raising Israeli apartheid<\/a> and settler-colonialism towards the end of his six-year tenure. Albanese\u2019s first report took these concepts a step forward. In a September report, she highlighted \u201csettler-colonialism\u201d in the heading paragraph, pointing to the \u201ccontext of the settler-colonial features of the prolonged Israeli occupation.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cApartheid,\u201d in Albanese\u2019s appraisal, is not even a sufficient term to describe the Israeli settler-colonialist paradigm. It\u2019s bigger than Apartheid. And it is this call to accountability that has instigated\u00a0Israel lobby<\/a>\u00a0groups<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0government officials<\/a>\u00a0into an all-out smear campaign.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The attacks against Albanese can best be summarized by a major hit-piece that was published last Wednesday in the Times of Israel<\/em><\/a>. It contained a dossier of her supposed antisemitic statements and was titled, \u201cUN Palestinian rights official\u2019s social media history reveals antisemitic comments.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The center of author Luke Tress\u2019s reporting is a comment made by Albanese in 2014, during Israel\u2019s unprecedented summer onslaught on Gaza, where she used the words \u201cJewish lobby\u201d instead of \u201cIsrael lobby.\u201d Here is the segment from Albanese\u2019s open letter, which the Times of Israel <\/em>also provides:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cAmerica and Europe, one of them subjugated by the Jewish lobby, and the other by the sense of guilt about the Holocaust, remain on the sidelines and continue to condemn the oppressed \u2014 the Palestinians \u2014 who defend themselves with the only means they have (deranged missiles), instead of making Israel face its international law responsibilities\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Before digging into the context of this, it is important to note another irony here found in the piece\u2019s third paragraph, where Tress himself uses the term \u201cJewish state\u201d and \u201cIsrael\u201d in the context of Albanese\u2019s supposedly malicious usage of the term \u201cJewish lobby\u201d rather than \u201cIsrael lobby.\u201d So, it\u2019s the \u201cJewish-state lobby\u201d then? Anyhow, there is a lobby of Jewish organizations that are politicized towards Israel-apologia. As Jeremy Stern-Weiner points out in his defense<\/a> of Albanese:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201c[W]hen these lobby groups advocate for Israel, they often do so as Jewish groups. During Israel\u2019s 2014 Gaza offensive, a typical press release read: \u2018Jewish Leaders \u2026 Call on International Community to Stand With Israel\u2019. The American Jewish Committee styled itself \u2018the State Department of the Jewish people\u2018 as it \u2018mobilized to \u2026 present the case for Israel\u2019s military response to US leaders\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

From one fallacy, the next is derived. The Times of Israel<\/em> thus chides Albanese for claiming that the \u201cJewish lobby\u201d is in control of the United States and that \u201creferences to Jews and Jewish lobbies wielding disproportionate power are viewed as antisemitic because they conjure age-old tropes and conspiracy theories about Jews controlling the world from the shadows.\u201d But did Albanese make such a generalization? She was referring to a specific context. Back to Stern-Weiner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201c[I]t\u2019s clear that Albanese was referring to US support for Israel\u2019s assault on Gaza, not to the US government in general. It is certainly possible to overstate the influence of American Jewish advocacy organisations, and any suggestion that such groups control US politics as a whole would be manifestly inaccurate. But Albanese didn\u2019t say this.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The Times of Israel<\/em> piece goes on to cite the Israeli Foreign Ministry as part of its fusillade against Albanese. This is a ministry that actually houses the office of Hasbara \u2013 Israeli propaganda. The Ministry condemned Albanese\u2019s supposedly \u201cantisemitic comments.\u201d If the Israeli Hasbarists said so, it must be true!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And if the Israeli Foreign Ministry gets a space, why not the Anti-Defamation League too? The ADL condemned the supposed invocation of \u201cage-old antisemitic tropes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Times of Israel <\/em>did give Albanese some space to reply:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cSome of the words I used, during Israel\u2019s offensive on the Gaza Strip in 2014, were infelicitous, analytically inaccurate and unintendedly offensive,\u201d she said through her office. \u201cPeople make mistakes. I distance myself from these words, which I would not use today, nor have used as a UN Special Rapporteur\u2026. Following this clarification, our attention should not be distracted from the unlawful state practices which cause suffering for millions and denial of human rights on a daily basis in the occupied Palestinian territory,\u201d she said. \u201cThis is what I am mandated to report on and which should be our focus.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

But no, that is not enough, and the Times of Israel<\/em> will not let her off the hook. The charges continue: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cIn 2018 Albanese posted a screenshot of a quote she attributed to David Ben-Gurion that said, \u2018We will abolish partition and expand to the whole of Palestine.\u2019 The quote appeared to be a translation of a disputed 1937 letter Ben Gurion wrote to his son.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

This is very sloppy \u2013 not Albanese\u2019s sloppiness \u2013 Tress\u2019s. Those words were said to the Zionist executive by Ben-Gurion; they do not come from his letter to his son. The screenshot of the citation linked to by the Times of Israel<\/em> is probably Simha Flapan\u2019s The Birth of Israel \u2013 Myths and Realities. <\/em>The screenshot explains that the words were said at the Zionist Executive at the time but that they were reiterated to the family (in a letter to his son Amos). A similar quote from that letter is this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cThe establishment of a state, even if only on a portion of the land, is the maximal reinforcement of our strength at the present time and a powerful boost to our historical endeavors to liberate the entire country.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

That letter and that quote (and others in the letter making the same point) are not disputed, this is just propaganda. It\u2019s a sound historical fact<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So Albanese was actually accurate, whereas Tress was pedantic, erroneous, and historically sloppy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What else angers the Times of Israel<\/em>?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cShe has also said Israel may be guilty of alleged major crimes including genocide, ethnic cleansing, war crimes and crimes against humanity.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

We don\u2019t need to really scrutinize ethnic cleansing, war crimes, and crimes against humanity because this is a fairly mainstream understanding. It is also clear that Israel has applied ethnic cleansing, watch the film Tantura<\/em> (2022) if you want to hear about it from the perpetrators themselves. War crimes? All the colonies (settlements) are just that by international law. Crimes against humanity? Apartheid is one of them, it\u2019s not that controversial, and a host of leading human rights organizations are in consensus about that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, that leaves the charge of genocide. Tress links to Albanese\u2019s post promoting a Jadaliyya interview with Israeli historian Ilan Pappe, author of the outstanding book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2006), on the concept of \u201cincremental genocide.\u201d Pappe\u2019s immediate context is the 2014 Gaza onslaught, and it is certainly worth following his logic of how policies that may, in isolation, seem ad hoc policies amount to the strangulation of a civilian population. Indeed, Gaza has become officially \u201cuninhabitable\u201d by UN criteria. So there\u2019s definitely something to consider there. It\u2019s not at all antisemitic. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What else, Times of Israel<\/em>?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cShe said this year that \u201cdozens\u201d of journalists have been killed in the conflict since the year 2000, all by Israel. According to the UN\u2019s own statistics, both those claims are false.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Oh, really, false? Let\u2019s see. The link provided on \u201cown statistics\u201d is to a UNESCO graph<\/a> of killed Palestinian journalists \u2013 but it is from 2002 onwards. There are 22 on this one<\/a>. Add Aziz Yousef al-Tanh from 2000. It\u2019s pedantic to claim that it\u2019s not dozens. Anyhow, the Palestinian Ministry of Information lists 45 killed journalists by name, and there are higher counts yet. Albanese\u2019s claim was also in the context of the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh this year \u2013 a deliberate targeting<\/a> for which Israel will not be held accountable. It\u2019s beyond tasteless for Tress to attack this one. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It just goes on and on. Albanese said this, Albanese said that. All meant to distract from the work she is trying to do, which is obviously to shed light on the systematic aspect of Israeli crimes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The witch hunt is against Israel. Obviously. Not against Francesca Albanese, God forbid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luckily, many are coming to her defense. Just yesterday, 64 scholars, overwhelmingly Jewish, released a\u00a0very strong statement<\/a>\u00a0\u201cdenouncing the smear campaign\u201d against Albanese. May there be many others.\u00a0

(Source: Mondweiss)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The new UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Francesca Albanese, has recently come under attack by a host of pro-Israel actors, including the supposedly free Israeli press.  Albanese stepped into her role in May, following Michael Lynk, who had already been raising Israeli apartheid and settler-colonialism towards the end of his six-year tenure. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":4946,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[219,187],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-219","category-187"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4945"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4945\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4948,"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4945\/revisions\/4948"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}