By Seth Mandel
Monday, February 16, 2026
I concede the field to no one in my disdain for Francesca
Albanese, who speaks as if she’s reading Julius Streicher’s notebook in
Mussolini’s accent. But I still cannot imagine how she can resign, or be forced
to resign, from her perch at the United Nations—even in the face of
unprecedented pressure to do so by several European governments.
To be clear: She should resign. To state the
obvious, she never should have been given a position of influence in any
organization for any reason. But how can she step down now? Albanese has come
to represent something crucial to the UN ecosystem. She is the tireless mascot
of the Global Intifada, the activist masquerading as an academic and a
respected legal figure to confer a patina of legitimacy on the corrupt and
corrupting NGO complex.
Normally, this slot would be easy to fill, were Albanese
to take a more traditional position for an anti-Semitic resume-builder, such as
the presidency of an Ivy League university. But we don’t live in normal times.
Or, rather, we live in the new normal. Hamas’s crimes on October 7 were
identical to those of the Kishinev pogromists and the Nazis, broadcast proudly
by the barbarians burning Jews alive and torturing and raping their way through
village after village of peacenik kibbutzniks.
Because the UN’s Gaza institutions were coopted by Hamas,
the UN was not only pro-Hamas—a monstrous-enough position already—but
implicated directly in the crimes. It wasn’t sufficient, therefore, for the
UN’s pretend legal expert on the conflict this time to be a mild-mannered
jurist who spat lies about Israeli “disproportionality.” This time, the job
required someone with a fiery, wild-eyed demeanor and a comfort with
representing a level of evil that was thought to have been left in
civilization’s past.
How many people would volunteer for this job after seeing
Palestinian militants kidnap a baby, murder it with their own hands, and then
parade its remains around in a coffin in a televised event set up by the Gazan
government? Even for a professional anti-Zionist, it’s a lot to ask.
But it’s not a lot to ask of Francesca Albanese. So here
we are.
The current controversy is over Albanese’s remarks at a
recent Al Jazeera conference which Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal also addressed.
Albanese referred to Israel as the “common enemy of humanity.” Albanese’s
defenders deny that she was referring to the Jewish state as the “common
enemy,” and that she was only talking about those who “control vast amounts of
financial capital, algorithms, or weapons.”
To reiterate: that is the defense of Albanese. That
the enemy of humanity is merely a global cabal of financiers who support
Israel.
My sense is that the hilariously weak “defense” of
Albanese is evidence of Albanese’s own likely belief that her comments don’t require
a defense or an explanation at all, because she does see Israel as the common
enemy of humanity. Albanese has never been subtle about this. Her long
history of anti-Semitism exists in the public record
precisely because she does not want there to be any confusion about her
bigotry.
So it’s encouraging to see the French foreign minister say enough is enough: “[Albanese] presents herself as a UN
independent expert, yet she is neither an expert nor independent — she is a
political activist who stirs up hate.”
Austria and Germany have joined France’s declaration of
no confidence in Albanese. Longtime UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric distanced Secretary General Antonio Guterres from Albanese’s comments
and, in general, “much of what she says.” Next week, at a UN meeting, France
will publicly call for her resignation. Britain may
even join the club.
But what would the UN do without Albanese? What would it
be? It would certainly be less honest, for starters. People should think
of Albanese when they think of the UN. She is an indefatigable agent of misery,
a publicist for totalitarian death squads, and a figure of unity in the vast
interconnected movement of Jew-haters worldwide.
We deserve a better UN. And until we get it, the UN and
Francesca Albanese deserve each other.
No comments:
Post a Comment