The day after Donald Trump welcomed indicted war criminal Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the United States for the third time in less than six months, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio imposed sanctions against UN Special Rapporteur on Occupied Palestine Francesca Albanese for her clear-eyed critiques of Israel’s genocide.

In a July 9 press statement, Rubio charged that Albanese “has directly engaged with the International Criminal Court (ICC) in efforts to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute nationals of the United States or Israel, without the consent of those two countries.” He alleged that Albanese “has spewed unabashed antisemitism, expressed support for terrorism, and open contempt for the United States, Israel, and the West … including recommending that the ICC, without a legitimate basis, issue arrest warrants” for Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.

“No comment on mafia style intimidation techniques,” Albanese responded to the sanctions in a text message to Al Jazeera. “Busy reminding member states of their obligations to stop and punish genocide. And those who profit from it.” She queried why she had been sanctioned: “for having exposed a genocide? For having denounced the system? They never challenged me on the facts.”

In the height of irony, war criminal Netanyahu nominated serial lawbreaker Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize. But it is Albanese who deserves that prize.

“The UN Special Rapporteur on Occupied Palestine deserves the Nobel Peace Prize, not the U.S. punitive pushback by way of targeted sanctions denying her entry into the country and freezing any American assets she may have,” Richard Falk, who served as UN Special Rapporteur on Occupied Palestine from 2008 to 2014, told Truthout.

“This was an intimidating attack on Albanese, an unpaid civil servant, for her brave truth-telling and expert knowledge fully in accord with expectations of the job to report periodically to the UN Human Rights Council and the General Assembly,” Falk added. “Her well-documented reports have broken the mainstream silence in the West on Israel’s genocidal assault, carried out before the eyes and ears of the world, shocking many by its transparency and sadism over a period of more than 20 months. She has also exposed shameful patterns of U.S. complicity with Israeli criminality.”

As they dined together in Washington, Netanyahu told Trump he had nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize. The nomination, which Netanyahu sent to the Nobel Committee 10 days after the U.S. bombed nuclear facilities in Iran, rewarded Trump for his unwavering support for the crimes of the Zionist regime in both Palestine and Iran. Trump has continued and increased Joe Biden’s financial, political, and diplomatic assistance to Israel’s (now) 21-month-long genocide in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, which has killed more than 58,000 Palestinians. Trump also dutifully complied with Netanyahu’s plea to bomb Iranian nuclear sites, dropping several 30,000-pound bunker buster bombs on Iran. U.S. participation in Israel’s international crimes is patently illegal.

“Anatomy of a Genocide”

On July 1, 2024, Albanese filed her report “Anatomy of a Genocide” with the UN Human Rights Council. The summary begins, “After five months of military operations, Israel has destroyed Gaza.” That was one year ago. Not content with destroying Gaza, Israel continues to slaughter, starve, and displace the Palestinian people.

In this report, Albanese thoroughly documents Israel’s commission of genocide which is prohibited by the Genocide Convention. She cites the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ’s) order that Israel prevent and punish genocide and ensure humanitarian aid, which Israel has ignored. Albanese finds that “Israel has strategically invoked the international humanitarian law framework as ‘humanitarian camouflage’ to legitimize its genocidal violence in Gaza.” Israel, she charges, “appears to represent itself as conducting a ‘proportionate genocide.’” The crime of genocide, Albanese notes, entails “both individual and State responsibility.”

Israel’s actions “have been driven by a genocidal logic integral to its settler-colonial project in Palestine, signalling a tragedy foretold,” Albanese continues. “[D]isplacing and erasing the Indigenous Arab presence,” she writes, “has been an inevitable part of the forming of Israel as a ‘Jewish State.’”

Since illegally acquiring Palestinian territory by force in 1967, “Israel has advanced its settler-colonial project through military occupation, stripping the Palestinian people of their right to self-determination,” the report reads. “Genocide cannot be justified under any circumstances, including purported self-defence.” The ICJ has repeatedly held that Israel, as occupier, does not have a right to self-defense against the occupied Palestinians.

Albanese recommends that UN member states immediately implement an arms embargo on Israel, and investigate and prosecute war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide under principles of universal jurisdiction.

“Genocide as Colonial Erasure”

On October 1, 2024, Albanese filed her report “Genocide as Colonial Erasure.” In it, she expands her analysis of Israel’s genocide beyond the July 1 report. She cites the ICJ’s Advisory Opinion of July 2024, finding Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory illegal, and reaffirming that the unlawfulness of the occupation “vitiates [Israel’s] claims of purported self-defence.” Albanese writes that “the only lawful recourse available to Israel is its unconditional withdrawal from the whole of that territory.”

When this report was filed, at least 90 percent of Palestinians in Gaza had been forcibly displaced, “many more than 10 times,” Albanese writes. Israeli officials and religious leaders “continue to encourage erasure and dispossession of Palestinians, setting new thresholds for acceptable violence against civilians. The Nakba, which has been ongoing since 1948, has been deliberately accelerated.”

“As Israeli leaders promised,” Albanese writes, “Gaza has been made unfit for human life.” She found “an intent to destroy [the] population [of Gaza] through starvation … Hungry crowds waiting for food have been massacred.”

Indeed, between May 27, when the sham Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) began operations, and July 7, the UN Human Rights Office documented 798 killings “including 615 in the vicinity of the GHF sites and 183 presumably on the routes of aid convoys.” The deaths were mostly due to gunshot injuries received while trying to access aid.

Albanese characterized “the pattern of targeting children” as “shocking.” Moreover, she concludes, “The overall aim is to humiliate and degrade Palestinians as a whole,” citing sadistic torture en masse, piling up decomposing bodies in the street, “young children left limbless before they could even crawl,” and the destruction of homes so the people have nowhere to return to.

The report finds that “[c]ontinual, unproven attributions of Hamas affiliation … help disguise the systematic targeting of civilians, de facto erasing Palestinian civilian-ness altogether.” It states that “The State of Israel is predicated on the goal of Palestinian erasure; its entire political system is directed towards this goal.”

Indeed, a centerpiece of the recent talks between Trump and Netanyahu was the complete ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza. They referred to “Trump’s vision of relocating Gazans,” with Netanyahu claiming that they were “getting close to finding several countries” to accept Palestinians who want to leave the Gaza Strip, although no country has publicly agreed to do so. Netanyahu asserted that the plans for forced relocation would give the Palestinians the “freedom to choose” whether to leave Gaza.

“Freedom to choose is so Orwellian,” Peter Beinart, editor-at-large at Jewish Currents, said on Democracy Now! “Palestinians have actually been … asking for the freedom to choose, the real freedom to choose, since 1948, because the vast majority of Palestinians in Gaza are not from Gaza.” He added, “They were expelled from their homes in what’s now Israel … So, they do want the freedom to choose. They want the freedom to return to the places from which their families were expelled.”

Albanese urges UN member states to initiate a full arms embargo and sanctions against Israel; formally recognize Israel as an apartheid state; support the deployment of an international protection force in the Occupied Palestinian Territory; develop a protective framework for Palestinians who are displaced outside Gaza; support independent and thorough criminal investigations of apartheid and genocide; investigate and prosecute corporations involved in crimes in the Occupied Palestinian Territory; and ensure unhindered humanitarian aid to Gaza. She also urges the ICC prosecutor to investigate Israel genocide and apartheid.

“From Economy of Occupation to Economy of Genocide”

Albanese’s most recent report, “From Economy of Occupation to Economy of Genocide,” was filed on June 30. “Arms companies have turned near-record profits by equipping Israel with cutting-edge weaponry to unleash 85,000 tons of explosives — six times the power of Hiroshima — to destroy Gaza,” she said when presenting her report to the UN Human Rights Council.

In the report, Albanese investigates the corporate machinery that sustains the Israeli settler-colonial project of displacement and replacement of the Palestinians in the occupied territory. As political leaders and states evade their obligations, “many corporate entities have profited from the Israeli economy of illegal occupation, apartheid and now genocide,” the summary reads.

The report lists more than 60 corporate entities, including weapons manufacturers, arms dealers, travel agents, real estate brokers, aerospace companies, tech firms, banks, asset management firms, pension funds, surveillance and incarceration technologies, charities, insurers, and universities. She mentions Lockheed Martin, Chevron, Microsoft, Alphabet, Google, Amazon, IBM, Hewlett Packard, Caterpillar, Airbnb, BlackRock, Palantir, Elbit, Allianz, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, AXA, Drummond, BNP, HD Hyundai, and Volvo.

Citing the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, Albanese writes: “States have the primary obligation to prevent, investigate, punish and remedy human rights abuses by third parties, and may breach their obligations if they fail to do so.”

The corporate sector, which has provided Israel with weapons and machinery to destroy homes, schools, hospitals, places of worship, and productive assets, “has contributed to the creation of the conditions for Palestinian ethnic cleansing.” Corporations have sustained “Israeli expansion in occupied land while facilitating the replacement of Palestinians” and “turned the occupied Palestinian territory into a captive market.”

Albanese analyzes how “the forever-occupation has become the ideal testing ground for arms manufacturers and big tech” and “[a]rms companies have turned over near record profits by equipping Israel with cutting-edge weaponry that has devastated a virtually defenceless civilian population.”

She urges member states to impose sanctions and a full arms embargo on Israel; suspend or prevent trade agreements and investment relations; and impose sanctions, including asset freezes, on entities and individuals participating in activities that may endanger Palestinians.

Albanese urges corporate entities “to promptly cease all business activities and terminate relationships directly linked with, contributing to and causing human rights violations and international crimes against the Palestinian people, in accordance with international corporate responsibilities and the law of self-determination” and pay reparations to the Palestinian people.

In addition, she urges the ICC to investigate and prosecute corporate executives and/or corporate entities for international crimes.

Finally, Albanese “urges trade unions, lawyers, civil society and ordinary citizens to press for boycotts, divestments, sanctions, justice for Palestine and accountability at the international and domestic levels; together, the people of the world can end these unspeakable crimes.”

To Stand With Albanese Is to Stand With the Palestinian People

July 9 marked the 20th anniversary of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, a nonviolent campaign launched by Palestinian civil society to hold Israel accountable under international law. “We decided that, at a minimum, in order for Palestinians to exercise our inalienable right as an indigenous people in our homeland to self-determination, three rights must be achieved,” BDS co-founder Omar Barghouti said in an interview with Mondoweiss. “An end to the military occupation, an end to the system of racial domination, segregation and apartheid, and the right of refugees to return and receive reparations.”

Barghouti noted that before October 2023, not one country supported a military embargo of Israel. Now 53 states have official policies of military embargo. The Norwegian pension fund, the largest sovereign state fund in the world, divested from Israeli bonds and several companies that contribute to apartheid. Large churches throughout the U.S. are divesting from Israel, and U.S. universities are divesting in response to student encampments and mobilizations. There are corporate, academic, sports, and cultural boycotts as well.

“Sanctioning Francesca Albanese confirms the U.S.’s brazen contempt for international law and the UN, betraying the vision of why it was established under U.S. guidance in 1945, as a beacon of light after the carnage and genocide of World War II,” Falk told Truthout. “These sanctions on Albanese carry defiance of international law to another level, by inverting justice and punishing those who dare document what the U.S. government insists on covering up. We should have learned by now that hiding genocide from legal and moral scrutiny compounds the tragedy and brings added shame to its governmental and corporate accomplices.”

The Trump administration’s sanctioning of Albanese “is a blatant affront to the Palestinian people’s demand for justice, truth, and accountability; an act of support for and incitement to genocide; and an intervention designed to dismantle one of the core independent oversight mechanisms of the multilateral international system,” several organizations and individuals, including this writer, wrote in a public statement initiated by the International Association of Democratic Lawyers. “To stand with Francesca Albanese is to stand with the Palestinian people in their quest for justice in the face of occupation, genocide, and war crimes — and to defend the universal values of international law.”

Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, dean of the People’s Academy of International Law and past president of the National Lawyers Guild. She sits on the national advisory boards of Veterans For Peace and Assange Defense, and is the U.S. representative to the continental advisory council of the Association of American Jurists. Her books include Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral and Geopolitical Issues.

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