Pirate's Cove

She wanted to take the side of Hamas, denigrate Israel, and show serious Jew hatred. FAFO

She Spoke Out About Gaza. Now She Can’t Use a Credit Card.

Francesca Albanese was on stage receiving a standing ovation when she first learned how the United States was going to punish her.

It was July 9 last year. The Italian legal expert, who is the U.N. special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories, was in the Slovenian capital Ljubljana wrapping up a two-hour talk on her most incendiary report yet.

As she spoke, her tone flicked between professorial bromides on international law and flares of outrage as she detailed how some of the world’s largest companies — including giants of American tech, energy and defense — were aiding Israel in the starvation and killing of Palestinians of Gaza. Now and again she fixed the audience with a look of exasperation.

Albanese’s head dropped. She stared at the floor, absorbing what it meant, thinking that she needed to call her husband and children. Sanctions would cut her and her family off from U.S. banking, travel and tech. Would they be okay? But the crowd was still there. Clapping. Hollering. Her head snapped up. She stretched her arms wide, palms facing her supporters, with a wry smile that said, “What are you gonna do?”

When the talk ended, Albanese stood to accept the crowd’s adulation. One of the organizers walked across the stage, leaned close and said into her ear: “The United States has imposed sanctions on you.” (snip)

Albanese is a self-admitted partisan in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, making her loved and loathed with equal extremes of feeling.

Maybe a United Nations representative shouldn’t be a self professed Jew hater and supporter of Islamic terrorist groups?

This has earned her powerful enemies. Israel and U.S. officials, antisemitism watchdogs and a group of European governments say she is an antisemite, whose simplistic depiction of the conflict and inflammatory language is fanning hatred toward Jews. Some Jews who might otherwise be sympathetic to her cause find some of her public statements — which, for instance, have drawn parallels between Israel’s government and the Nazis — troubling and offensive.

But even against a campaign to discredit and silence her, the U.S. sanctions were an escalation — and an impressive expression of American power and animus. She was, after all, only an unpaid U.N. expert, whose only real weapon (aside from the symbolic authority of her office) was her voice. That’s a point her family will take up in a court in the District of Columbia on Wednesday as they challenge the sanctions on free-speech grounds.

She’s called Hamas a political force. She said they had a “right to resist” the Israel occupation a month after Hamas launched their attack on Jewish civilians, killing over 1,000, raping and torturing. She said the Hamas attack “must be put in context”. She was against Hamas releasing the hostages.

She told Italian Jewish communities to “stop” feeling offended or threatened by criticism of Israel. She has criticized the IHRA definition of antisemitism, calling it a tool for repressing solidarity with Palestine. She keeps yammering about the “Jewish lobby”. She called Israel “the common enemy of humanity”. She has a long history of showing Israel and Jew hatred.

Albanese was among the first official voices to label what has happened in Gaza a genocide, the conclusion of her March 2024 report. Eighteen months later, a U.N. commission concluded the same. In November 2024, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant over alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. Whatever the legal definition, more than half of the dead are women and children, according to the Lancet study.

She may be “unpaid” but her Jew and Israel hatred has weight at the UN.

Since 2021, the family has lived in Tunis, where Cali had been posted by the Bank. The lawsuit filed in the district court in Washington in February by Cali and Albanese’s 13-year-old eldest daughter — Albanese is unable to bring suit herself under U.N. rules — enumerates the impacts of the sanctions on the family: Not only has the U.S. blocked them from their property, but banks have frozen Albanese’s accounts. Transactions involving her are stopped because intermediaries, such as Stripe, are American. Her health insurance has halted payments. Hotels have canceled bookings in her name.

She lives as a “financial outcast,” she said. She hides her identity, surviving on cash and the goodwill of friends and family. “If I were alone, I would be utterly, utterly screwed,” she said.

Unfortunately there are not more people learning FAFO when it comes to supporting Islamic terrorists.