(Sept. 25, 2026 \/ JNS)\n <\/p>\n
It\u2019s been 20 years since the U.N.\u2019s Alliance of Civilizations identified the conflict between the Palestinians and Israel as a \u201cmajor factor in the widening rift between Muslim and Western societies.\u201d<\/p>\n
That conflict wasn\u2019t, the Alliance stressed, the only one fueling this clash of cultures and belief systems; Afghanistan and Iraq, which in 2006 were the locations of two major U.S. interventions in the wake of the 9\/11 atrocities, were also significant contributors to the divide. However, it continued, \u201cthe Israeli-Palestinian issue has taken on a symbolic value that colors cross-cultural and political relations among adherents of all three major monotheistic faiths well beyond its limited geographic scope.\u201d<\/p>\n
There you have it: \u201cPalestine\u201d as a symbol like no other of the world\u2019s cleavages and fissures, which will only deepen as long as the conflict lasts. Using this claim as a foundation, the United Nations and its agencies have assiduously cultivated the myth that relations between Western and Islamic nations hinge on a resolution of this one conflict.<\/p>\n
At every annual U.N. General Assembly, we have heard speeches reinforcing this notion, invariably focusing on Israel\u2019s supposed responsibility to evacuate territories it conquered during a defensive war and never regarding the Palestinians as anything other than passive victims.<\/p>\n
This year was no different.<\/p>\n
The usual suspects\u2014among them Turkey, Jordan, Iran and Qatar\u2014all rounded upon Israel. So did the representatives of some Western democracies, one of whom, French President Emmanuel Macron, ludicrously claimed that, in contrast to Gaza, Hamas has virtually no presence in Judea and Samaria. For his part, outgoing U.N. leader Ant\u00f3nio Guterres melodramatically told the gathering that the war in Gaza was \u201cunlike anything I have seen in all my years as Secretary General,\u201d inadvertently confirming that, as far as he\u2019s concerned, other devastating wars in places like Sudan, Myanmar and Ethiopia aren\u2019t nearly as important.<\/p>\n
The supreme irony here is that these grand visions of a peace that shrinks Israel territorially in exchange for vague promises of recognition are the reason why the U.N.\u2019s interventions on this conflict are distrusted in Washington and regarded with contempt in Jerusalem. As long as it functions as a forum for the demonization of Israel\u2014and as long as its experts and committees and agencies and international leaders continue issuing reports depicting Israel as the very model of a rogue state\u2014that will remain the case.<\/p>\n
Firing Albanese won\u2019t wipe the slate clean when it comes to the secretary-general\u2019s disproportionate focus on Israel. But it will add some welcome balance.<\/p>\n
Critically, the world body\u2019s approach bolsters the efforts of pro-Hamas activists\u2014those who wish to see the State of Israel eliminated\u2014both inside and outside the world body. And no organization or individual better encapsulates this woeful state of affairs than Francesca Albanese, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the \u201coccupied Palestinian territories.\u201d<\/p>\n
The dismal record of Albanese, who has been sanctioned<\/a> by the United States, is by now widely known. She shills for terrorist groups, believes that Zionism is racism (in keeping with the now discarded 1975 U.N. General Assembly Resolution endorsing the same libel), and has eagerly cultivated the Western solidarity movement whose sole contribution has been to dramatically escalate the levels of antisemitism faced by Jews in the Diaspora.<\/p>\n None of that has convinced Guterres to fire her, even though he acknowledged in a recent interview that some of the special rapporteurs are \u201cout of control\u201d\u2014he was thinking primarily of Albanese\u2014and has let it be known that he \u201cdespises\u201d her.<\/p>\n The reason she is still in her role supposedly stems from a reluctance on the part of Guterres to clash with the U.N.\u2019s system of special rapporteurs for fear of compromising their independence.<\/p>\n But now, he really does have a reason to boot her.<\/p>\n The special rapporteurs are required to stay within their mandates, but spitting on Israel is no longer enough for Albanese. During a speech last week in her native Italy, she turned to Ukraine. After hedging on the question of responsibility for the conflict, admitting that Russia did, in fact, invade Ukraine but insisting that there were \u201ca number of reasons\u201d that led to the war, she then urged an arms embargo against Kyiv in order, she said, to advance the diplomatic process.<\/p>\n Absent was the kind of condemnation that she lashes upon the Israelis\u2014nothing on the abduction by the Russians of thousands of Ukrainian children, or their lethal drone and missile attacks against Ukrainian population centers, or even the fact that Russian army recruits typically lose their lives within 30 minutes of arriving on the front line.<\/p>\n Such words will be music to the ears of Vladimir Putin\u2019s regime, especially as she unfavorably contrasted the treatment of Russia with that of Israel.<\/p>\n Then, in a separate interview with none other than the Russian state broadcaster RT, she set her sites on the U.S. embargo on Cuba. Denouncing the \u201cideological\u201d underpinning of U.S. policy towards the island\u2019s brutal Communist regime, she described the embargo as \u201ca revealing sign of a system that uses force and strangles entire populations to achieve political objectives.\u201d She also sycophantically thanked \u201cCuban medical staff\u201d for lavishing their scarce resources on her friend Alessandro di Batista, a former parliamentarian for Italy\u2019s antisemitic, populist Five Star Movement<\/a> who fell ill in Havana while on a solidarity visit.<\/p>\n Speaking to the Saudi outlet Al Majalla, Albanese described Israeli actions in Gaza as \u201ca model that reveals how power is exercised across the world. Palestine is a laboratory\u2014a prototype of repression and oppression.\u201d She may believe that this analysis legitimizes her comments on other situations, but the United Nations and Guterres should not see it that way.<\/p>\n Albanese\u2019s remarks on Ukraine and Cuba were by any yardstick a serious violation of her U.N. mandate. Before he leaves office at the end of December, Guterres has the opportunity to counter the widespread impression that he\u2019s a pushover by taking her to task.<\/p>\n Firing Albanese won\u2019t wipe the slate clean when it comes to the secretary-general\u2019s grossly disproportionate focus on Israel\u2019s alleged offenses. But it will add some welcome balance.<\/p>\n After all, in a 2024 speech, Guterres noted that antisemitism \u201cwas not born with the Nazis and did not die with the Nazis.\u201d He is correct\u2014and figures like Albanese are its standard bearers nearly a century later. If he wants those words to be more than a sop to wounded Jewish feelings, he should act by ejecting Albanese from the halls of the United Nations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Sept. 25, 2026 \/ JNS) It\u2019s been 20 years since the U.N.\u2019s Alliance of Civilizations identified the conflict…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":627145,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[85,46,43],"class_list":["post-627144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=627144"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627144\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/627145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=627144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=627144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=627144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}