UN Special Rapporteur facing smear campaign for calling out Israeli settler-colonialism and apartheid
By Jonathan Ofir December 21, 2022 – Mondoweiss
▻https://mondoweiss.net/2022/12/un-special-rapporteur-facing-smear-campaign-for-calling-out-israeli-sett
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. Albanese’s first report took these concepts a step forward. In a September report, she highlighted “settler-colonialism” in the heading paragraph, pointing to the “context of the settler-colonial features of the prolonged Israeli occupation.”
“Apartheid,” in Albanese’s appraisal, is not even a sufficient term to describe the Israeli settler-colonialist paradigm. It’s bigger than Apartheid. And it is this call to accountability that has instigated Israel lobby groups and government officials into an all-out smear campaign.
The attacks against Albanese can best be summarized by a major hit-piece that was published last Wednesday in the Times of Israel. It contained a dossier of her supposed antisemitic statements and was titled, “UN Palestinian rights official’s social media history reveals antisemitic comments.” (...)
