US Sanctions UN’s Francesca Albanese for Antisemitism and Targeting Israel

In an unprecedented action, the U.S. State Department has sanctioned Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on Palestinian territories, for her long record of antisemitic rhetoric and active engagement in efforts targeting Israel and the United States through the International Criminal Court (ICC).

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the sanctions Wednesday, citing Albanese’s “unabashed antisemitism, support for terrorism, and open contempt for the United States, Israel, and the West.” The decision invokes an executive order barring individuals who collaborate with the ICC to pursue legal actions against U.S. or Israeli nationals without consent from those nations.

Albanese had urged the ICC to issue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. She also penned letters to global corporations, including major American firms, accusing them of complicity in what she falsely labeled “genocide” in Gaza.

According to Rubio, these actions amount to “political and economic warfare” and represent a gross infringement on U.S. and Israeli sovereignty. He stated firmly: “We will not tolerate these campaigns which threaten our national interests and security.”

Albanese’s report last week named U.S. companies like Google as complicit in Israel’s defense efforts. Sergey Brin, the company’s Jewish co-founder, publicly condemned the report as “transparently antisemitic.” JNS previously revealed that Albanese even targeted Israel Bonds in her ICC-related outreach.

Human rights advocate Hillel Neuer of UN Watch welcomed the sanctions. “No U.N. official has ever been sanctioned like this but none have so openly distorted the Holocaust or defended terrorism,” he said. “Francesca Albanese is an openly antisemitic supporter of terrorism. She blamed the CIA and Mossad for ISIS’s Charlie Hebdo attack and justified Hamas’s October 7 massacre.”

Israeli leaders were quick to praise the move. Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar called it “a clear message” to the United Nations, while Ambassador Danny Danon stated that Albanese had “long crossed the line from human rights into political warfare.”

Even before her sanctioning, Albanese had drawn condemnation from France, Germany, Canada, and both Republican and Democratic officials in the U.S. Dorothy Shea, interim U.S. ambassador to the U.N., recently urged Secretary-General António Guterres to remove her though his office claims it lacks authority over Human Rights Council appointees.

Leo Terrell, chair of the U.S. federal task force on combating Jew-hatred, said the action was long overdue. “Such hatred will not be tolerated,” he affirmed.

This landmark decision marks a significant shift in how the U.S. addresses antisemitism within global institutions. It sends a powerful message: the weaponization of human rights platforms to vilify Israel and its allies will no longer be ignored.

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