United Nations special rapporteur Francesca Albanese has called for Israeli media personalities and government officials to face investigation by the International Criminal Court (ICC) over allegations that they have incited genocide in Gaza.
According to JNS, Albanese made the recommendation in a 29-page report dated July 21 and released last week, arguing that Israeli media outlets have contributed to what she describes as a climate encouraging violence against Palestinian Arabs.
“The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court should investigate direct and public incitement to commit genocide by government officials and media figures as part of the ongoing Palestine investigation," Albanese wrote.
The ICC, an independent international judicial institution based in The Hague that is not part of the United Nations, has previously issued arrest warrants for Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Albanese, whose UN mandate concerns Palestinian Arab territories that the organization considers “occupied", accused the Israeli government of influencing public discussion through its messaging.
In her latest report, she claimed that “the Israeli government’s communication strategy has significantly manipulated media discourse, building on a long-standing pattern of dehumanization of Palestinians across Israeli media."
She further alleged that the Israeli press “does not merely relay or amplify these narratives. In many instances, it explicitly incites to violence, including genocide, contributing to the normalization of mass atrocities."
The recommendation builds on accusations Albanese made in an October 2024 report, in which she urged judicial scrutiny of Israeli news organizations.
“The role of the Israeli media in inciting this genocide, by helping to foster an unchecked genocidal climate, ought to be examined judicially, as has occurred in other contexts," she wrote at the time.
Albanese also claims that Israel has killed 300 journalists in Gaza since the Hamas-led terrorist attacks of October 7, 2023.
However, organizations monitoring journalist fatalities have revised some of their figures after Hamas identified individuals previously listed as journalists among its "martyrs".
The latest report comes amid longstanding criticism of Albanese by Israel, the United States and Jewish leaders, who have accused her 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 current 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."