More outrageous UN anti-Semitism: High-level official says Israel to blame for Palestinians murdering Jews

A Palestinian resident of East Jerusalem plowed his car into a busy Jerusalem bus stop Friday, killing three Israelis, including 6- and 8-year-old brothers. The response from Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur for the Palestinians: crickets.

Perhaps that’s for the best. The day before, Albanese blamed Israel for last month’s Palestinian terrorist attack outside a Jerusalem synagogue that left six Jews and one Ukrainian national dead.

In a tweet Thursday, Albanese heaped praise on Barcelona’s city council for falsely labeling Israel an apartheid state — a classic example of anti-Semitism by declaring the world’s only Jewish state to be a racist endeavor. A Twitter user replied by asking her if she had addressed a murder of Jews, citing a 14-year-old killed in the synagogue attack and a shooting carried out by a 13-year-old Palestinian terrorist the following morning that injured two Jews. Albanese responded that she had — by condemning Israel.

She asserted that the “brutal colonial occupation Israel maintains over the Palestinians (an apartheid regime by default) continues to traumatize millions of people, pushing them into hopelessness &despair, including kids.” Truly a master class in victim-blaming. Never mind that Palestinians have been murdering Jews since long before Israel controlled the West Bank.

This is far from Albanese’s first anti-Semitic controversy. In December, a review of her social media history revealed several virulent comments: She’d described the United States as “subjugated by the Jewish lobby” and claimed that the “Israeli lobby,” directed by “Israel’s greed,” skewed media coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Top US officials condemned these remarks as anti-Semitic.

Albanese, meanwhile, is leading a campaign to undermine the internationally accepted definition of anti-Semitism the US State Department and 36 other countries have adopted. Why? She wants to change the definition of anti-Semitism to accommodate her anti-Semitism. Under the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition, Albanese is engaging in clear-cut anti-Semitism by holding Israel to a double standard, claiming Israel is a racist endeavor and comparing Israel to Nazi Germany.

It’s not enough to condemn Albanese, though. The job she holds at the UN is intrinsically anti-Semitic and should be abolished. Out of 59 special rapporteurs of the UN Human Rights Council, the special rapporteur for the Palestinians is the only one with an open-ended mandate. Its mission: investigate imagined Israeli human rights abuses while ignoring Palestinian terrorism. By holding Israel to this double standard, the UNHRC guarantees a steady stream of decontextualized attacks on Israel’s legitimacy.

It is this selective focus on supposed Israeli crimes, but not Palestinian ones, that underpins the apartheid charge against Israel. Anyone with a cursory understanding of Israel would know there is no form of institutionalized racial segregation or discrimination like what was practiced in South Africa. There are no segregated beaches, benches or hospitals.

But by ignoring Israeli security concerns, Albanese and others frame Israeli measures designed to prevent attacks like Friday’s as signs of institutional racism. This leads to absurd comparisons to apartheid South Africa and makes Jews inside and outside Israel more prone to violent attacks.

There’s a long list of examples of the UN holding Israel to a double standard. Among them: the UNHRC’s standing agenda item to criticize Israel at every meeting; the UNHRC targeting Israel with half of all country-specific condemnatory resolutions; the UNHRC maintaining a blacklist of companies operating in Israeli-controlled disputed territories; the UN maintaining a Palestinian-specific refugee agency with a uniquely expansive refugee definition that nurtures Palestinian grievances against Israel; a UN special committee to investigate Israel; and an entire UN division for the Palestinians, which promotes Palestinian propaganda and maligns Israel.