On July 3, UN Special Rapporteur “on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967” Francesca Albanese will present a report to the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC). In “From Economy of Occupation to Economy of Genocide,” Albanese alleges that global companies across a range of industries “sustain[] Israel’s illegal occupation and ongoing genocidal campaign.”

The companies targeted by Albanese span multiple sectors, including infrastructure, finance, real estate, tourism, and resource extraction. This underscores her ongoing efforts to stigmatize a wide range of lawful commercial activity as complicit in international crimes, based solely on their connections to Israel. As part of her efforts to internationally isolate Israel, the report targets companies domiciled in countries most closely allied with Israel such as the United States.

Albanese’s report advances a highly politicized narrative, alleging that private companies operating in or otherwise linked to the West Bank are in violation of international law. This assertion reflects a fundamental mischaracterization of international legal frameworks, which do not impose direct obligations on private entities under international humanitarian law. By accusing businesses of “complicity” in alleged war crimes, absent any binding legal precedent or judicial findings, Albanese promotes a strategy aligned with the BDS movement, aiming to delegitimize Israel through economic pressure. Her recommendations, including calls for divestment and sanctions, seek to transform complex political disputes into legal indictments of private sector actors, weaponizing human rights language to advance a discriminatory agenda.

Moreover, in preparing her report, Albanese relied extensively on sources from politicized NGOs, including several organizations with documented ties to EU-designated terrorist groups, raising serious concerns about the credibility, objectivity, and due diligence underlying her findings.

Criticism by the United States

The report has already sparked strong condemnation, including formal warnings from the U.S. Department of Justice. In a letter authored by Leo Terrell, head of the Justice Department’s newly established Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, Albanese was urged to terminate her investigation, which the DOJ described as “an alarming campaign of letters targeting institutions that support or invest in the state of Israel.” The letter further states: “Your suggestion that these organizations may be criminally liable for aiding and abetting genocide or war crimes is not only legally groundless. Your actions are defamatory, dangerous, and a flagrant abuse of your office.” 

This unprecedented rebuke highlights the extent to which Albanese’s report has crossed from legitimate human rights inquiry into politically motivated targeting.

UN Blacklist of Companies

According to Albanese, the report “builds upon and situates within the broader matrix of Israel’s unlawful occupation, the database established by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), pursuant to Human Rights Council resolutions 31/36 and 53/25. The ‘UN Database’ lists only business enterprises that have ‘directly and indirectly enabled, facilitated and profited from the construction and growth of the settlements’.” As part of her report, Albanese informed “over 45 entities…of the facts that led the Special Rapporteur to formulate a series of allegations.”

This UN blacklist, ordered by the UNHRC but opposed by almost all Western governments and the EU, is meant to bolster BDS campaigns. It was created without any due process; is based on a non-transparent, arbitrary, and discriminatory methodology; and provides no evidence that companies are engaging in the activity alleged by Albanese and her NGO allies. Instead, the “database” tars the listed companies with generalized allegations. No specific information or supporting documentation is provided, nor is there any transparent procedure available for companies to combat OHCHR’s harassment, defamatory claims, and listings.

Unreliable Sources

According to Albanese, the report “builds on extensive literature, especially by civil society.” In her report, Albanese cites and reiterates unverified claims by many politicized and biased NGOs including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Oxfam, Al-Haq, Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, B’Tselem, SOMO, Who Profits, American Friends Service Committee, DanWatch, Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, Forensic Architecture, Stop the Wall, 972 Magazine, Al-Shabaka, Jerusalem Legal Aid and Human Rights Center (JLAC), BADIL, EuMEP, International Centre of Justice for Palestinians, PAX, Peace Now, and the BDS Movement.

Some of these NGOs, such as Al-Haq and Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, have ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a designated terrorist organization by the US, EU, Canada, and Israel. Many of these NGOs consistently promote false narratives, such as the “apartheid” libel and accusations of war crimes. Almost all of these groups systematically fail to document or condemn Palestinian violations of human rights and international law. Those that have on occasion done so, do so solely in cursory, token fashion to blunt criticism of their ongoing bias and lack of credibility.

Recommendations

Albanese’s report concludes with recommendations that closely align with the aims of BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) activists. The report urges Member States to “impose sanctions and a full arms embargo on Israel,” “suspend/prevent all trade agreements and investment relations,” and ensure “corporate entities face legal consequences for their involvement in serious violations of international law.” Albanese also “urges trade Unions, lawyers, civil society and ordinary citizens to press for boycotts, divestments, sanctions.”

Albanese also demands the “International Criminal Court and national judiciaries to investigate and prosecute corporate executives and/or corporate entities for their part in the commission of international crimes.” 

These sweeping demands reflect an overly politicized agenda that weaponizes human rights rhetoric to advance political warfare against Israel, undermining legitimate businesses and unjustly targeting the Israeli economy. 

Past Demonization by Francesca Albanese

While claiming to uphold human rights and humanitarian agendas, Francesca Albanese has repeatedly employed antisemitic themes and imagery to demonize the Jewish people and the state of Israel. She has also consistently minimized and negated Israel’s right to self-defense against Palestinian terrorism.

In October 2023, following the brutal Hamas attacks of October 7th, Albanese framed the violence in terms that minimized Hamas’ culpability, stating that the conflict must be seen “in the context of decades of oppression imposed on the Palestinians” and characterizing Israel’s presence as a “militarized settler colonial occupation” that “entraps both people.” Albanese also claimed that continued Israeli “oppression” would inevitably lead to “catastrophe,” thereby implicitly excusing the Hamas terror assault.

In February 2024, after French President Emmanuel Macron described October 7th as “the largest antisemitic massacre of our century,” Albanese publicly rejected this characterization, asserting, “The victims of 7/10 were not killed because of their Judaism but in response to Israel’s oppression.” Such statements erase the antisemitic motives behind the attacks and distort the nature of Palestinian terrorism.

Albanese has also made inflammatory and false analogies between Israeli policies and the Holocaust. In January 2024, Albanese claimed in an interview that “I have said many times that what happened in the Holocaust, and the persecution of the Jews people in Europe, and the genocide that happened, must not be repeated by Israel against others…What I am seeing today reminds me of that tragic experience…what we need to understand is that this is similar to what happened in the Holocaust.”

In May 2021, Albanese equated the “Nakba” to the Holocaust stating that “Just as tragic, terrible, unspeakable, is the tragedy that befell the Jewish people with the Shoah, so for the Palestinians, the Nakba represents the crumbling of the connective tissue of a people.” In January 2015, Albanese shared a post on Facebook that compared Gaza to the Warsaw Ghetto, equating “resistance” by Hamas and Jewish resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto.

Additionally, in November 2015, Albanese posted on Facebook two pictures of “a Nazi soldier, a dog, and a man on the ground – who is a Jew. In the second pic an Israeli soldier, a dog, and a man on the ground – who is a Palestinian.”

Albanese has also issued statements that incite Palestinian violence against Israel, as well as defend those linked to terror. In November 2022, Albanese participated in a conference hosted by the “council of international relations – Palestine,” a Hamas body, recognized as such by multiple sources, and chaired by Hamas senior member Basem Naim. The conference also hosted Hamas spokesman Abdul-Latif Qanu, senior Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) member Khader Habib, and PFLP Deputy Secretary-General Maher Mezher.

In August 2022, regarding the 2022 Gaza conflict against PIJ forces in Gaza, Albanese tweeted, “Palestinians’ right to resist is inherent to their right to exist as a people. An unlawful act of resistance does not make the resistance unlawful.” In July 2022, Albanese liked a tweet commemorating the 50th anniversary of Ghassan Kanafani’s death. Kanafani was a “leading member of the PFLP.

Albanese’s rhetoric and associations reveal a consistent pattern of bias, antisemitism, and endorsement of extremist actors, undermining her credibility as a neutral human rights investigator and calling into question the objectivity of her work on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.