In Sanctioning Francesca Albanese, The US Continues Its Global Persecution Of Ethical Heroes
The wrong side of history. How the most dangerous country on earth openly rewards and embraces sociopathic murderers, religious fanatics and terrorists while targeting the world's bravest heroes.
Francesca Albanese is an international lawyer, specialised in human rights and the Middle East. Since May 2022, she has served as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967. Her job is to monitor and report on Israel’s human rights violations against Palestinians. Albanese, like all UN Rapporteurs, is an independent expert who volunteers her work pro bono.
Like the United States’ persecution and 14 year-long detainment and torture of Julian Assange - whom many consider the greatest and most responsible journalist of our time - President Trump’s sanctioning today of Francesca Albanese has helped further solidify the United States as one of the world’s leading enemies of the rule of law. Or of peace. Or of justice. It is a rogue and violent nuclear-powered nation that has - with the complicity of many other Western countries - decimated the very structure of international law itself. It has turned our world into one which is ruled and terrorized by a seditious criminal faction of the obscenely wealthy consisting largely of sociopaths, narcissists, predatory opportunists and religious extremists.
Here are just some of the words and language that the United States, under both Republicans and Democrats, Trump and Biden, apparently consider to be dangerous, anti-semitic, terrorist-supporting and punishable:
“We are part of the same family. This is what humanity means,” shares Francesca Albanese on The Chris Hedges Report. “Doesn't matter the color of your skin, doesn't matter the God you worship or don't, doesn't matter. It's what makes us human and we are so cruel among all animals, among all creatures in this world because we really have so many barriers that we have erected and we need to remove them… This genocide is triggering something more. You see the war in Iran? The war against Iran? It was totally predictable. It was totally predictable because Israel has been seeding wars in the region for decades. And it was Iraq, then it's been other countries, Libya and Syria have also been devastated… Israel has surely benefited from an annihilation of all adversaries in the region. And Iran, bombing Iran has been like feeding a demon. It was the long-term goal of several Israeli governments and finally it has happened.
“What would the Israelis have to gain from this seriously? From the death of innocent lives, being them Iranians or Israelis? This is why I say this needs to stop. And the enforcement is there, but it's with member states… There is this movement and at the level of countries I see for example, the Hague Group, which is a coalition primarily of countries from the Global South and it shouldn't be like that. So I've supported, I've sustained, I've commended these countries and I call on other states from Asia to Africa and especially the West to join the Hague Group, which says let's start by taking some modicums, some minimal steps to comply with international law… Well, member states keep on, you know, kicking the can in the air and expecting that it's a deus ex machina to intervene, being the European Union as a whole or being the United Nations as a whole. No! It starts with principal member states and this is why, once again, I commend so much the Hague Group because they are acting, not as a regional or trans-regional organization, but as a coalition of like-minded and principled states.”
U.S. Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, not a fan of Albanese’s message or her view of humanity, accused Albanese of having "spewed unabashed antisemitism, expressed support for terrorism, and open contempt for the United States, Israel, and the West."
On the flip side of that coin, here are the words and sentiments that the United States government sees as reasonable, ethical, righteous and with which it completely and proudly aligns itself:
“The war we are fighting today, which we embarked on the 7th of October, is a war against a Nazi enemy that threatened the existence of the Jewish people in the land of Israel. That is the whole truth,” vomits up Israeli Parliament member Zvika Fogel on Israel’s Channel 7. “So the Prime Minister [Netanyahu] decided to do it sequentially. I'm with him. No problem. Let's do it sequentially. You eliminated. You dealt a a severe blow, maybe even more than that, to Iran. Now the time has come to deal with the Gaza Strip. How do we do that? You take off the glove, stop the humanitarian aid, cut off electricity, cut off water, start destroying and expel voluntarily, so to speak, voluntary migration of the Gazans. There are no uninvolved people there, no innocents, no one who isn't guilty. As far as I'm concerned, they're all Hamas members.”
Here is world renowned economist and global political advisor, Jeffrey Sachs, in his interview with Judge Napolitano on Judging Freedom, responding to Fogel’s comments:
“It's the language of the Nazi Holocaust. It is the language of genocide. It’s actually sad to say, it is the language of the Bible in the book of Joshua, which many Israelis read literally. In that book, it says that God tells Joshua, "Go in and kill every man, woman and child in the nations that you will confront in the land which I give you." So in the book of Joshua, the Israelites are to commit multiple genocides. And this is taken as a literal command. This vulgarity that you just heard is genocidal language, pure and simple. There are no innocents. There will be no Gazans, no Palestinians left in Gaza. It's horrific. That is representing a policy that the Trump administration and the Biden administration and many administrations before that have supported. It's beyond cruel. It's beyond criminal. It is clearly, explicitly, vulgarly genocidal.”
Here is U.S. Senator Ted Cruz explaining to journalist Tucker Carlson - who responsibly pushes back and challenges Cruz and, rightfully, mocks him - that it is a biblical commandment and the duty of all Christians to bless and support Israel and, therefore, to bless and support Benjamin Netanyahu’s version of Israel. Of course, one doesn’t know if Cruz actually believes anything that comes out of his own mouth or whether he is just paid handsomely (Cruz has received $1,872,038 from the Israel Lobby) to promote this genocide-justifying, absurdist and outright disturbing narrative.
Meanwhile, the United States - since it’s already on a roll openly embracing genociders, terrorists and mass-murderers as allies - decided to take Abu Mohammed al-Jolani - who fought for Al Qaeda in Iraq, was a former deputy leader of ISIS and founded Jabhat al-Nusra, the Al Qaeda affiliate in Syria - off the list of official wanted terrorists and al-Nusra off the list of official terrorist groups. This is a man who, until yesterday, was considered by the US State Department to be a "Specially Designated Global Terrorist." The State Department had placed a $10 million reward on al-Jolani’s head.
The main poster the State Department released offering the $10 million reward for al-Julani alongside the statement “Stop This Terrorist,” described al-Julani as:
Muhammad al-Jawlani, also known as Abu Muhammad al-Golani, also known as Muhammad al-Julani, is the senior leader of the terrorist organization, the al-Nusrah Front (ANF), al-Qalida's affiliate in Syria. Under al-Jawlani's leadership, ANF has carried out multiple terrorist attacks throughout Syria, often targeting civilians. The U.S. Government is offering a reward of up to $10 million for information about al-Jawlani. Absolute confidentiality is assured and relocation may be available. If you have information, please contact the nearest U.S. embassy or consulate or info@rewardsforjustice.net.
Today, Muhammad al-Julani is the new President of Syria after the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad - another in a long line of U.S.-backed regime change operations. Al-Julani has been - like so many before him - anointed and installed by the United States, NATO and Israel to do their bidding.
As Glenn Greenwald explains on his show System Update:
“They [al-Nusrah and Muhammad al-Julani] haven't changed at all in terms of their tactics, their beliefs. What has changed is that they are willing to be subservient to the US and Israel and to take marching orders from the US and Israel. They allowed Israel to overflight rights when they went and attacked Iran. They're about to join the Abraham Accords where they're going to officially recognize Israel. So our new friends in al-Qaeda are no longer terrorists because now they do our bidding. They're not killing fewer people. They're not respecting the lives of civilians anymore than they did before. They're just working with us instead of against us, which means they're no longer terrorists.”
That, of course, hasn’t stopped al-Julani and al-Nusrah from targeting and massacring thousands of Muslim Alawites and Christians across Syria. A recent Reuters investigation found that “nearly 1,500 Syrian Alawites were killed and dozens were missing. The investigation revealed 40 distinct sites of revenge killings, rampages and looting against the religious minority.” This report included an instance where a “young man’s heart was sliced from his chest and placed on his body. His name was No. 56 on a handwritten list of 60 dead that included his cousins, neighbors and at least six children from their coastal Syrian village.”
In addition to removing al-Julani and al-Nusrah from the U.S. terrorist list, the U.S. also - and this needs to be mentioned in light of the new sanctions imposed on Francesca Albanese - decided to REMOVE all sanctions from the al-Julani-led government of Syria. The U.S. posture in the world, its ideological stance and its choice of allies and enemies could not possibly be more clear or more solidified. There can be no question on the world stage what role the United States plays and who and what it intends to foster, and who and what it intends to demonize and crush.
As co-founder and executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, and founder and former president of the National Iranian American Council, Trita Parsi recently posted:
Meanwhile, the UK has just officially deemed the activist group Palestine Action as a terrorist organization. Palestine Action describes itself as “a pro-Palestinian organisation which disrupts the arms industry in the United Kingdom with direct action.” They are “committed to ending global participation in Israel’s genocidal and apartheid regime.” Supporters and members of the group now risk up to 14 years in prison!
According to Al Jazeera:
“Since its founding in July 2020, Palestine Action (PA) has carried out hundreds of protests across the UK aimed at disrupting the operations of companies they accuse of profiting from Israeli military operations, with a particular focus on the Israeli arms manufacturer, Elbit Systems. Palestine Action members’ tactics typically involve breaking into facilities, chaining themselves to machinery, daubing buildings with red paint and destroying equipment... the highest-profile move made by the group so far, activists sprayed red paint into the turbine engines of two Airbus Voyager aircraft, used for air-to-air refuelling.”
No beheadings, no mass-murders, no rapes, no hearts being sliced out of chests, no violence against people at all, no acts of terrorism. But in this upside down Western “civilization” of ours, the term “terrorism” doesn’t refer to targeted genocide or the calculated mass-starvation of millions or planting explosives in thousands of pagers or illegally bombing and killing hundreds of thousands of civilians in sovereign nations and elsewhere, it is in the act of protesting such behavior. It’s like the Democratic Party has been trying to tell us, the greatest threat doesn’t come from the Right, it comes from the Left. It takes the form of student protestors, of those fighting for equal rights, those engaging in acts of civil disobedience against countries that break international law and act with violent impunity. Humanitarianism is the new terrorism. Welcome to the United States and the West, where justice and free speech are dirty words, but the mass-murder of children is self-defence.
As we speak, the United States president, in Washington D.C., is greeting with open arms our contemporary world’s most applicable version of Adolph Hitler in the form of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. This act alone - even putting ethics aside for a moment - is a direct betrayal of international law as Netanyahu is a war criminal wanted by the International Criminal Court (four of whose judges were also sanctioned last year by the U.S. for issuing the arrest warrant for Netanyahu as well as for former Israeli minister of defense, Yoav Gallant). But the United States no longer recognises international law, which makes it, itself, a criminal state, a criminal nation with nuclear weapons led by those who profit off of war and dehumanization and whose chosen language of communication across the globe is threats of violence and acts of violence.
“The genocide in Gaza has not stopped because it's lucrative, it's profitable for far too many,” Albanese shares on The Chris Hedges Report. “It's a business. There are corporate entities, including from Palestine-friendly states, who have for decades made businesses and made profits out of the economy of the occupation. Israel has always exploited Palestinian land, resources and Palestinian life. The profits have continued and even increased as the economy of the occupation transformed into an economy of genocide… People need to understand that because Palestinians have simply, and I say simply with a lot of pain, and I don't mean disrespectful toward the Palestinians, but they have provided these boundless training fields to test the technologies, test weapons, to test surveillance techniques that now are being used against people everywhere from the Global South to the Global North.”
Albanese’s recent UN report presented at the Human Rights Council’s fifty-ninth session documents in great detail the companies and organisations that are directly profiting off of this genocide. These include, as Chris Hedges reports in his article The Persecution of Francesca Albanese, “Palantir Technologies Inc., Lockheed Martin, Alphabet Inc. (Google), Amazon, International Business Machine Corporation (IBM), Caterpillar Inc., Microsoft Corporation and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), along with banks and financial firms such as BlackRock, insurers, real estate firms and charities, which in violation of international law, are making billions from the occupation and the genocide of Palestinians.”
For this reason, alongside Albanese’s outspokenness and in being one of the most high-profile international voices calling for lawful action and justice in response to Israel and the United States and the West’s illegal and anti-humanitarian deeds, Albanese has become the target of death threats, vicious accusations and, as mentioned above, US sanctions. These punitive measures will freeze Albanese’s financial assets, prevent her from using credit cards and bank accounts and deny her entry into the United States.
As Albanese recently responded: “The powerful punishing those who speak for the powerless, it is not a sign of strength, but of guilt.”
The price for Albanese’s determination and conscience continues to be quite high. “I never imagined that in 2025, people would be calling my house in the middle of the night, saying they’ll kill me and my children."
But like so many individuals, countries and organisations that have been threatened by the United States and Israel, those who have been designated “terrorist” or “anti-semite” or “enemy,” those who have been attacked, both verbally or in direct, violent action, their defiance, movements and numbers continue to grow and become stronger, not weaker. The majority of the world sees what is taking place. Every time the US or Israel attempt to bomb or discredit or threaten or punish those who call out their crimes and/or take direct action to stop their illegal activities, those entities grow even more determined, their following intensifies, their message spreads wider. Unwittingly, the United States, by openly proclaiming ethical heroes and international humanitarian forces as their chosen enemies, has clearly defined their version of right and wrong, ethical and non-ethical, and they have placed themselves on the global side of criminality, genocide and dehumanization. And in response, those who oppose and challenge such existential dangers grow more tenacious, more empowered, their mission more clearly defined.
“I often say that the attacks against me are emblematic of various aspects of this struggle,” Albanese explains on The Chris Hedges Report. “On the one hand, what happens to me is not unique in the sense that being accused of being pro-Hamas, pro-terrorism, antisemitic, it's the litany of falsehood that everyone from the Pope to the secretary general to scholars, activists, journalists, anyone with a minimum of decency who has dared denouncing the abhorrent reality in Palestine had to face. So what has happened to me again is not unique. What I think is unique is the relentlessness of the attacks and how they continue to grow because I don't give up. I believe it's that because the more they threaten me, the more I say ‘let me see how better I can do my job.’ I call them the barking dogs. They're really barking dogs and they don't matter. Their objective is to distract me and they will not succeed because I know them, I understand them, because I often say I come from a place [ in Italy] that has been plagued by the mafia. You know how many things I've realized over the past months also about myself. Why am I the way? Why I'm not scared by them? Why every time I ignite my car, I am scared. Of course there are times where I don't open the door thinking ‘my god, who's going to be behind it?’ But this is why I live my life in a way that it's full of meaning. I love my family. I love my kids. I love my husband. I love my friends. I love my colleagues and this is what I treasure and I cherish every day and whenever I manage to go to bed and sleep, I have no regrets because I'm doing what everyone should be doing…. The fact that on the one hand they don't manage to make me shut up, rather the contrary, at every attempted slap there is a storm against them. Doesn't matter where they come from, doesn't matter who they are, it always turns into more support over me. This is why when people ask me, how do you feel to be so hated? By whom? By this bunch of minions and charlatans who are defending the genocide? Who cares? There is an entire world which is in turmoil and somewhat I have the possibility to be listened to, which is a huge privilege for me. And because I know how fallacious human nature can be.”
On July 9, U.S. Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, posted this on X:
Can you imagine berating, punishing and calling someone’s actions “shameful” for their aiding of the International Criminal Court in trying to maintain and enact International Humanitarian Law and then framing that as a form of “warfare?” If it is warfare, then it is warfare against rampant global criminality, against acts of terrorism, against genocide and against those who directly seek to prevent war crimes from being recognised or prosecuted.
This is one of the reasons the United States and Israel do not recognize the Rome Statute treaty that is the basis for the ICC’s ruling. The Rome Statute, according to the ICC, “sets out the Court's jurisdiction over genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and – as of an amendment in 2010 – the crime of aggression.” Perhaps even more tellingly, the Rome Statue “criminalizes those who seek to prevent war crimes from being prosecuted.” This means that U.S. government officials including Presidents, Secretaries of State and other high-level officials, along with EU and UK Prime Ministers, Presidents and officials, can be charged by the ICC with war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Albanese has called for warmongering EU President, Ursula von der Leyen, and her foreign affairs chief, Kaja Kallas to face charges. “I call for these top EU officials, and others, to face charges of complicity of war crimes over their support for Israel’s 19 month assault on Gaza. This cannot be met with impunity”
In an ongoing effort to both defang and delegitimise not just Albanese but the United Nations itself, there is a well-funded campaign by the U.S. and Israel to portray the United Nations as innately anti-semitic and pro-terrorist.
"Last week, the United Nations overwhelmingly passed a disgraceful antisemitic resolution to demand that Israel surrender to barbaric terrorists who seek the destruction of both Israel and America,” U.S. Congresswoman Elise Stefanik falsely proclaimed. “Once again the UN’s antisemitic rot is on full display as it punishes Israel for defending itself and rewards Iranian-backed terrorists."
According to the Israel Lobby group AIPAC:
“The United Nations has long had a glaring anti-Israel bias, advancing biased and one-sided efforts to isolate and delegitimize the Jewish state.”
In 2024, the US government suspended funding for UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees. According to Al Jazeera:
“The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), which is the main humanitarian agency in Gaza [and provides basic support including food, healthcare and education to tens of thousands of Palestinian refugees], has been facing an unprecedented funding crisis after its main international donors led by the United States cut its funding over “terror” allegations.”
In its place, the U.S. and Israel has created what they call “The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” (GHF). It is a foundation that, according to the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, is “known to have been set up by Israel in coordination with U.S. evangelicals and private security contractors. Its current CEO is an evangelical leader close to U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.”
Using Nazi-style tactics, Israel, the United States and the GHF are luring starving Palestinians into South Gaza with the promise of food for their families and then either shooting them or corralling them into cages. Chris Hedges writes about the “surging crowds of Palestinians fighting to get a food parcel, which has resulted in Israeli and U.S. private contractors shooting dead at least 130 and wounding over seven hundred others in the first eight days of aid distribution… Benjamin Netanyahu’s arming ISIS-linked gangs in Gaza that loot food supplies. Israel, which has eliminated hundreds of employees with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), doctors, journalists, civil servants and police in targeted assassinations, has orchestrated the implosion of civil society.”
Haaretz also reported that “IDF officers and soldiers told Haaretz they were ordered to fire at unarmed crowds near food distribution sites in Gaza, even when no threat was present. Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed, prompting the military prosecution to call for a review into possible war crimes. Netanyahu, [Israeli Defense Minister Israel] Katz reject claims, call them 'blood libels.'“
The Haaretz article continues: “According to the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza, 549 people have been killed near aid centers and in areas where residents were waiting for UN food trucks since May 27. Over 4,000 have been wounded, but the exact number of those killed or injured by IDF fire remains unclear.”
Israeli Defense Minister Katz, in a briefing to journalists on Monday, July 7, revealed Israel’s plan to build a “humanitarian city” in Rafah. He added that “Palestinians would be screened before entering the zone and would not be allowed to leave.”
In a recent post by the head of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini pointed out that “This would de-facto create massive concentration camps at the border with Egypt for the Palestinians”
As reported in a Mondoweiss article from July 11, “Holocaust historian at the Hebrew University, Amos Goldberg, also called Katz’s plan “a concentration camp or a transit camp for Palestinians before they expel them,” stressing that it is “neither humanitarian nor a city.”
One hopes and prays that a day of reckoning for these unspeakable crimes is growing near. Like the inevitable collapse of the corrupt and violent U.S. empire and its blood-soaked international tentacles, American politicians who have supported and been complicit in genocide, those who have balked at international law and attempted to prevent the ICC from prosecuting war crimes, those who have both defunded and accused the UN of complicity in terrorism and anti-semitism, ultimately know that their impunity is not limitless. They know, though they will do everything within their power to prevent or prolong the inevitable, that their names will also soon appear next to arrest warrants from the ICC (and perhaps others) for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
It is our duty to stand with the world’s heroes like Francesca Albanese. Let’s never forget that it was the United States who designated Nelson Mandela a terrorist during our grotesque support of South Africa’s apartheid. In the US, the word “terrorist” is reserved for anyone who does not align with or who actively confronts US aggressions or the aggressions and crimes of their allies, as they did with Martin Luther King, Jr and so many other heroes of equality and dignity across the globe, particularly when they were making waves fighting for the rights of people of color or the poor or the oppressed.
The people of the world - particularly those in the West whose governments commit these atrocities and enact dangerous tactics of discrimination and criminalisation - must rise up and put a stop to this. Whether via the power of mass strikes or mass protests, widespread civil disobedience and/or in loudly calling out and being endlessly vocal about the atrocities and criminal acts taking place in our name. The United States and the West are destroying any semblance of a world order. They are leaving us with a world where the strongest nations are nuclear-powered, lawless and completely unhinged. And far too many people are quietly and subserviently watching them do it. Kicking the can in the air, as Albanese describes it. Meanwhile, the US, Israel and much of the West continue to enact very real and very definable acts of global terrorism.
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