UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese has drawn criticism from Jewish and pro-Israel organizations after defending the British Green Party's decision to adopt a policy declaring that “Zionism is racism", the Jewish Chronicle reported.
Albanese, who serves as the UN Special Rapporteur on Palestinian territories and has frequently criticized Israel, addressed the controversy during a discussion with Israeli-British historian Avi Shlaim at St Antony's College, Oxford, on Monday.
Speaking about the policy adopted by the Green Party under Zack Polanski's leadership, Albanese praised the party for “doing something extremely human".
“Frankly the Palestinians... have been the victims of Zionism for... years... if they [the Greens] want to say Zionism is racist, it is our responsibility to protect them," she said, as quoted by the Jewish Chronicle.
Although Albanese described Zionism as “racist", she also appeared to qualify her position, stating: “I don’t think that it is completely fair to reduce Zionism to racism".
She further suggested that the Greens' decision might have political consequences, describing the policy as “not the most strategic" because it could enable “the other side to amplify their movement".
Her remarks prompted criticism from organizations that regard the Green Party's position as antisemitic.
Alex Hearn, co-director of Labour Against Antisemitism, pointed to Albanese's previous statements about Jewish influence in American politics.
“Albanese has talked about the ‘Jewish lobby’ dominating the US," Hearn told the Jewish Chronicle.
"Given her history, it is no surprise to see Albanese supporting the antisemitic policy by the Green Party which casts the overwhelming majority of Jews as racist."
Gavin Stollar, chairman of Liberal Democrats Friends of Israel, also condemned Albanese's position.
"Albanese’s claims are an attempt to delegitimize the Jewish people’s right to national self-determination," he said.
During the Oxford event, Albanese also cited the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement as the “best case study" of effective campaigning against Israel.
She also praised Ireland's approach toward the Jewish state, describing the country as the “perfect example" of successful activism and citing what she said was 97% public support for the Palestinian cause.
Another audience question concerned restrictions on the slogan “globalize the Intifada".
Albanese dismissed the ban as “absurd" and characterized it as “a symptom of anti-Arab sentiment in most Western countries".
Throughout the discussion, she accused Israel of “destroying Palestine" and argued that attitudes toward Israel and Judaism required broader examination.
Campaign Against Antisemitism issued a strongly worded response, accusing Albanese of using her UN position to advance an anti-Israel agenda.
“Francesca Albanese just can’t help herself. She is not a rapporteur but an activist, and her rhetoric and conduct are all designed to undermine the world’s only Jewish state. Her language is appalling. She would have been booted from any other institution long ago, but not the UN.
“Now she is even weighing in on the Green Party’s vile ‘Zionism is racism’ motion. Given the UN reversed itself on this antisemitic charge decades ago, it’s astonishing that she appears not to have learned from that," a spokesperson for the organization said.
Albanese has long been accused of antisemitism and bias against Israel. Last year, the Trump administration sanctioned Albanese in response to her criticism of Israel.
In February, several European Union foreign ministers condemned remarks she delivered at an Al Jazeera conference, where she criticized countries that had continued supporting Israel.
“The fact that instead of stopping Israel, most of the world has armed, given Israel political excuses, political sheltering, economic and financial support ... We who do not control large amounts of financial capitals, algorithms and weapons, we now see that we as a humanity have a common enemy," Albanese said.
She subsequently disputed allegations that she had identified Israel as that enemy.
In an interview, Albanese insisted she "never, ever, ever said ‘Israel is the common enemy of humanity,'" describing the criticism as "completely false accusations."
Controversy surrounding the UN official predates the Gaza war.
In 2022, previously published social media posts emerged in which Albanese claimed that the “Jewish lobby" controlled the United States.
She rejected accusations that the remarks were antisemitic, maintaining that her statements had been “mischaracterized".
Following the October 7 massacre, Albanese argued that the Hamas attack needed to be understood in “context" and characterized it as a response to Israeli “aggression."
Her criticism of Israel has continued in subsequent reports and public statements.
In late March, she accused the international community of giving Israel "a license to torture Palestinians" and alleged that "torture has effectively become state policy" in the country.
Several weeks ago, Albanese also apologized after making historically inaccurate claims about terminology used in Nazi concentration camps and the origins of the word antisemitism.
The controversy began when she asserted that Jewish prisoners being taken to Nazi gas chambers were sometimes described as Muslims.
“In fact, when they were being taken to the gas chambers, there are some accounts of life in the concentration camps saying that Jews were called ‘the Muslims,’" she had claimed.
Albanese made the assertion while arguing that antisemitism originally referred to hostility toward a broader population rather than specifically toward Jews.
“When the word ‘antisemitism’ was coined, it referred to anyone who was not European and who came from the Middle East," she said, suggesting that the term later became associated with Jews because they constituted Europe's largest non-Christian minority at the time.
After facing criticism, Albanese acknowledged that she had misunderstood the concentration camp term and its relationship to antisemitism.
"I sincerely apologize," she wrote on X.
"I misread the term 'Muselmann' (Muslim) used in Nazi camps for prisoners at the brink of death, wrongly inferring that the term antisemitism originally meant hatred of all Semitic peoples. In fact it was coined specifically to denote hatred of Jews."
(Arutz Sheva-Israel National News' North American desk is keeping you updated until the start of Shabbat in New York. The time posted automatically on all Israel National News articles, however, is Israeli time.)