In a long-overdue repudiation of international lawfare cloaked as human rights work, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has slammed sanctions on Francesca Albanese, the United Nations’s so-called “special rapporteur” for Palestinian territories, whose tenure has been the epitome of anti-Western, anti-American, and anti-Israeli provocation theatre.
Albanese, an Italian academic turned ideological inquisitor, was appointed in 2022 by the United Nations Human Rights Council—a body whose moral compass spins like it was borrowed from James Comey, Crossfire Hurricane edition.
Among its current members: China, Cuba, Sudan, and South Africa—a rogue’s gallery of surveillance states, strongmen, and serial rights abusers, nations that take a brief respite from oppressing their own citizens to lecture the West on justice.
From this perch, Albanese hasn’t monitored human rights so much as targeted them, channeling her mandate into a scorched-earth crusade against America, Israel, and the corporations that dare do business with either.
Her latest gambit? A 2025 report accusing Israel of “genocide,” targeting U.S. and European firms as complicit, and demanding the criminal prosecution of Western citizens and corporations.
The timing was grotesque: the report dropped amid the 2025 Israel-Iran war, as Hamas rockets flew, Israeli jets responded, U.S. forces struck Iranian nuclear sites, and President Donald Trump was brokering a ceasefire to bring lasting peace to the region.
Undaunted by reality, Albanese wrote as if the Iranian Revolutionary Guard were a humanitarian NGO and Lockheed Martin the real aggressor.
Secretary Rubio had seen enough.
On Wednesday, invoking Executive Order 14203, the U.S. government:
It marks the first time a sitting UN rapporteur has been added to the U.S. sanctions list.
The provocation, however, has been years in the making.
Her now-notorious report—From Economy of Occupation to Economy of Genocide—is a brazen broadside against nearly every entity aligned with Israeli defense and American foreign policy.
The report calls for corporate executives at Microsoft, Amazon, Palantir, and others to face criminal prosecution under international law, urges countries to sever economic ties, impose embargoes, and take punitive measures against those supporting Israel.
But Albanese’s ambitions extend beyond corporate targets. Her report implicitly endorses ICC arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
She further escalated her campaign in a public social media post by calling on Italy, France, and Greece to “explain why they provided airspace and safe passage to ICC-wanted Benjamin Netanyahu, whom they are obligated to arrest.”
U.S. Secretary of State Rubio denounced Albanese for her “illegitimate and shameful efforts to prompt ICC action against U.S. and Israeli officials, companies, and executives.”
He added that she “has directly engaged with the ICC in efforts to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute nationals of the United States or Israel, without the consent of those two countries.”
And, in a searing indictment of her ideology, Rubio declared: “Albanese has spewed unabashed antisemitism, expressed support for terrorism, and open contempt for the United States, Israel, and the West.”
The United States has never ratified the Rome Statute. Under longstanding bipartisan policy, the ICC holds no lawful jurisdiction over American citizens. But Albanese presses forward anyway—untethered to law, consent, or reality.
She leverages her UN title to launder Hamas propaganda far and wide. She is a blistering advocate for using the International Criminal Court as a star chamber—a tool of political vengeance masquerading as justice.
Enough was enough. These sanctions are not a silencing tactic—though the usual suspects will shriek regardless. They are a sovereign act of self-defense—a foreign policy firewall against the weaponization of international law by unaccountable global clerics aligned with those who wish us harm.
Simply put, Francesca Albanese is an anti-American agent provocateur who has built a career on agitprop against Israel and the United States. Being held accountable is long overdue.
One added benefit of these sanctions? She’ll now face considerable difficulty peddling her venom at U.S. universities—the very institutions that once rolled out the red carpet for her brand of ideological warfare.
Stay tuned.
Charlton Allen is an attorney and former chief executive officer and chief judicial officer of the North Carolina Industrial Commission. He is founder of the Madison Center for Law & Liberty, Inc., editor of The American Salient, and host of the Modern Federalist podcast. His commentary has been featured in American Thinker and linked across multiple RealClear platforms, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearWorld, RealClearDefense, RealClearHistory, and RealClearPolicy. X: @CharltonAllenNC
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