30 Dec 2025
https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/francesca-albanese-and-the-lonely

Lede: The U.N. special rapporteur is one of the most courageous crusaders
against the genocide in Gaza. Because of this, she is blacklisted and treated as
if she is a terrorist.

...

Francesca is barred from entering the U.S. even to appear at the United Nations
in New York City, to present one of her two annual reports. The other is
delivered at the United Nations Office at Geneva.

Francesca's assets in the U.S. have been frozen, including her bank account and
her U.S. apartment. The sanctions cut her off from the international banking
system, including blocking her use of credit cards. Her private medical
insurance refuses to reimburse her medical expenses. Hotel rooms booked under
her name have been cancelled. She can only operate using cash or by borrowing a
bank card.

Institutions, including U.S. universities, human rights groups, professors and
NGOs, that once cooperated with Francesca, have severed ties, fearful of
penalties established for any U.S. citizen who collaborates with her. She and
her family receive frequent death threats. Israel and the U.S. have mounted a
campaign to get her removed from her U.N post.

Francesa is proof that when you stand steadfastly with the oppressed, you will
be treated like the oppressed.

She is unsure if her book, "When the World Sleeps: Stories, Words, and Wounds of
Palestine," which has been translated into English and is expected to be
released in April next year, will be distributed in the U.S.

"I'm a sanctioned person," she says ruefully.

But she is not cowed. Her next salvo will be a report that documents the torture
of Palestinians in Israeli prisons. While torture, she says, was "not
widespread," before Oct. 7, it has now become ubiquitous. She is collecting
testimonies of those released from Israeli detention.

"It reminds me of the stories and testimonies I read from Argentina's
dictatorship," Francesca tells me. "It's that bad. It's systemic torture against
the same people. The same people are taken, raped and brought back, taken, raped
and brought back."

"Women?" I ask.

"Both," she answers.

"To have women tell you they have been raped, multiple times. They've been asked
to masturbate soldiers. This is incredible," Francesca says. "For a woman to say
that. Imagine what they have endured? There are people who have lost their
words. They cannot talk. They cannot speak after what they've endured."

Establishment media organizations, she says, not only dutifully parrot back
Israeli lies, but routinely block reporting that reflects negatively on Israel.

"In April, I reported the first cases of sexual harassment and rape that had
taken place in January and February 2024," she says. "People didn't want to
listen. The New York Times interviewed me for two hours. Two hours. They didn't
write a line about it."

"The Financial Times had - because of the relevance of the topic - an embargo'd
version of 'From economy of occupation to economy of genocide,'" she says. "They
didn't publish it. They didn't even publish a review, an article, days after the
press conference. But they did publish a critique of my report. I had a meeting
with them. I said, 'This is really depressing. Who are you? Are you paid for the
work you do? Who are you loyal to, your readers?' I pushed them. They said,
'Well, we didn't find that it was up to our standards.'"

...

The drift towards fascism in Europe and the United States, Francesca says, is
intimately tied to the genocide, as is the emerging resistance.

"There is a brewing anger and dissatisfaction with political leadership in
Europe," she says. "There is also a fear that lingers in many countries because
of the rise of the right. We've been there. There are people who have living
memories of fascism in Europe. The scars of Nazi-fascism are still there, even
the trauma. People cannot process what has happened and why it's
happened. Palestine has shocked people. Italians in particular. Maybe because we
are who we are in the sense that we cannot be silenced that easily, we cannot be
scared as has happened to the Germans and the French. I was shocked in
France. The fear and repression is incredible. It is not as bad as Germany, but
it's much worse than it was two years ago. The minister of education in France
cancelled an academic conference on Palestine at the Collège de France - the
highest institution in France. The minister of education! And he bragged about
it."

Francesca says our only hope now is civil disobedience, embodied in actions such
as strikes that disrupt commerce and government or the attempts by the flotillas
to reach Gaza.

Ctd ...