ABRIDGED FROM SOURCE [Opinion. Annihilation of a population or its attempt, is genocide. Do Israel’s Jews not remember the Holocaust? Really? That was the attempted annihilation of all the Jews in Europe. What do we call that? Genocide. How is it possible that Israeli Jews have lost their way? Francesca Albanese is part of the solution, by calling out the genocide.] Francesca Albanese Won’t Back Down Talking to the UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian Territories about genocide, standing up to the hatred of the establishment, and ending war. Katrina vanden Heuvel and John Nichols The Nation: 22 July 2026 SOURCE: https://www.thenation.com/article/world/francesca-albanese-interview-palestine/ Francesca Albanese has served as the UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian Territories since May 2022; she was confirmed for another three years in April 2025. Albanese is the first woman to hold the office. (The Nation’s editorial board member Richard Falk held the same position between 2008 and 2014.) As special rapporteur, Albanese has been a courageous figure battling numerous efforts to discredit and delegitimize her. In March 2024, she reported to the UN Human Rights Council that Israel’s actions in Gaza amounted to genocide. And in June 2025, the UN published a report by Albanese stating that many corporate entities, including Microsoft, Amazon and Alphabet Inc., were enabling and profiting from the occupation of the Palestinian territories and the Gaza genocide. In response, the Trump administration imposed sanctions on Albanese, naming her a “specially designated national,” forbidding all US persons and companies from doing business with her. Albanese called the sanctions “obscene” and said she was being punished for her “pursuit of justice.” Amnesty International called the move “a disgraceful affront to international justice.” We met with Albanese via Zoom in May on the very day that a US district judge blocked the sanctions against her, ruling that they violated Albanese’s First Amendment rights. Our conversation was wide-ranging, defined by what Albanese has called her “intolerance for injustice.” John Nichols: Early on, you did a couple of reports in which you very specifically sought to assert the word “genocide,” essentially to say to people, “Look, it is time to use this word [about what is happening in Gaza].” You faced a tremendous amount of resistance initially. Now, there’s been much broader acceptance, but I’m interested in why you made that choice at that point. Francesca Albanese: I think that many Europeans of my generation, at least Italians of my generation, have had as part of their bread and butter an education about ‘never again.’ We have been exposed to the memory of the Holocaust. And so there is something already planted there that something as horrible as what happened during the Holocaust starts unseen, starts because the crimes against a specific group are normalized. So this was in the background; I had colleagues at the beginning of October [2023], telling me, “Oh my God, this is genocide.’ I had Israeli scholars saying, ‘This is genocide,” and I was totally reluctant. I didn’t want to use that word. But then in the following weeks, I started studying. I started talking to academics and survivors. And I started documenting the facts and raising the risks for months [that] there could be [a genocide unfolding], because the language was genocidal. There were acts of killings, conditions calculated to destroy, endless cases of mental and physical suffering caused intentionally. And this is where I said, ‘Look, this is what Israel has done over the first five months, killing 30,000 people, an average of 150 people per day.’ Then it was statistics: 85 percent steadily were women and children. How it’s possible that this is just a miscalculation of where to throw a missile? I understood: It was a genocide, and like other genocides, it was unseen. Denial of the genocide is part and parcel of the genocide itself. [International Court of Justice] member states have an obligation to act to prevent genocide the moment they have noticed [it]. So, in January 2024, the International Court of Justice recognized the plausible irreparable harm under the Genocide Convention to the Palestinians in Gaza. Member states had to stop all trading with Israel immediately, especially weapons.
