Israel’s top diplomat in New York slammed U.N. rapporteur Francesca Albanese’s recent speaking tour at East Coast colleges — and her claim that his country is committing genocide.
“Shame on her,” said Israeli consul general Ofir Akunis during an interview with National Review this week. “Shame, shame, shame, huge shame. She said she used the word genocide. What was the goal of the October 7 massacre? A genocide.”
Akunis, a former minister of science and technology, pointed to provisions in the Hamas charter that call for the destruction of the state of Israel and the establishment of a Sharia-law regime. “She knows the truth. I know it,” he said.
Albanese is an Italian academic who has previously claimed that the U.S. is “subjugated by the Jewish lobby” and that the October 7 terrorist attack was not motivated by antisemitism. These comments prompted the U.S., France, and Germany to condemn Albanese, with multiple senior Biden administration diplomats condemning her as antisemitic. The U.N. Human Rights Council appointed her to the role of special rapporteur “on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967.”
Albanese traveled to the U.N.’s headquarters last month to unveil a report criticizing Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza. During a meeting there, she called on the international body to consider suspending Israel’s membership, alleging that it is committing genocide against Palestinians. U.N. human-rights rapporteurs do not draw a salary from the international body and typically complete their work while they hold jobs in academia.
During a press conference at the U.N., she made light of her previous antisemitic commentary.
Multiple universities invited Albanese to deliver talks about her work during her time in the U.S. last month, including Georgetown University and Barnard College. Albanese also delivered a dean’s lecture at Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs.
“I wonder who can talk about human rights in Gaza or human rights in Damascus or human rights in Tehran on the Georgetown faculty,” Akunis said.
Akunis also offered to teach a Barnard class: “I want to be part of one of their lessons about human rights in Gaza. It will be empty.”
He also praised the New York Police Department and university administrators for keeping a lid on the sort of explosive anti-Israel demonstrations that paralyzed universities across the country last spring.
“It’s much better than it used to be. All of us, we must learn from our mistakes. It’s not the same situation like it was in April,” he said, comparing the campus demonstrations that month to antisemitism at German universities in the 1930s.