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Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) President Morton A. Klein and ZOA Director of Research and Special Projects Liz Berney, Esq. released the following statement:
This week, far-left BDS-promoter Americans for Peace Now (APN) reached a new low by presenting a webinar entitled “Israel’s Violations of Palestinian Rights,” featuring notorious antisemitic Israel-bashing UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, and Albanese’s recent libelous anti-Israel UN report.
At the outset of the APN webinar, Albanese complained that she and other [viciously anti-Israel] UN Special Rapporteurs have been “personally attacked.” Albanese claimed that she was attacked simply for “Jewish lobby” comments she made ten years ago. That’s quite an understatement of Albanese’s hideous record. Bipartisan Congressmembers wrote two group letters calling on the UN to remove Albanese from her position, due to Albanese’s vicious anti-Israel bias and refusals to condemn deadly Palestinian Arab terror attacks against innocent Israelis.
Albanese’s long, sordid history of antisemitic remarks also includes:
- likening Israel to Nazis;
- saying that America is “subjugated by the Jewish lobby”;
- legitimizing Hamas rocket attacks on innocent Israeli civilians as Hamas “defend[ing] themselves with the only means they have”;
- accusing BBC [not exactly a pro-Israel outlet] of having the “Jewish lobby in your veins” and thus being on “big brother’s side of this Orwellian [sic] nightmare caused once again by Israel’s greed”;
- likening the Holocaust with the “Nakba” (the Palestinian word meaning that it is a “catastrophe” that the Arabs did not destroy Israel in 1948);
- joyfully celebrating the EU General Court taking Hamas off of its terror blacklist;
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repeatedly denying Israel’s right to self-defense and justifying Palestinian terrorism, saying in various for a that: “Israel cannot claim self-defense while illegally occupying and while directing an act of aggression against another country. Those who have the right to self-defense are the Palestinians.”, and “An occupation clearly necessitates and generates violence.”, and “The occupier cannot say he is defending himself.”
Albanese also previously worked for Hamas-allied UNRWA.
Albanese has no first-hand knowledge, and ignores reality and truthful sources. Instead, Albanese’s recent UN report and APN webinar repeatedly cited and regurgitated the falsehoods promoted by foreign-funded anti-Israel organizations that specialize in systematically libeling Israel, including: B’tselem; Breaking the Silence; Amnesty International; HRW; Al-Haq and Addameer. The latter two are affiliates of designated terror organization PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine): In 2021, the Israeli government designated Al-Haq and Addameer as terror organizations operating on behalf of the PFLP.
During the APN webinar this week, Albanese touted her latest libelous UN report; minimized Palestinian Arab terrorism (saying, for instance “There is an overuse of the word terrorism that cannot be justified. Not any act using force amounts to terrorism”); falsely claimed that Israel has a “shoot to kill policy”; falsely accused Israel of torturing children, targeting school children going to school and farmers working their land; falsely accused Israel of killing leading intellectuals and teachers; and absurdly claimed that Israeli security measures, e.g., checkpoints, the security fence and cameras have created a “carceral continuum” that is like incarceration and keeps Palestinian Arabs from “growing.” [This is of course belied by the Palestinian Arabs’ 80,000 illegal structures in Area C, the area that is legally under full Israeli administrative and security control.]
Albanese also bizarrely blamed Israel for the Palestinian Authority’s abuses against and arrests of its own people, saying that “the PA operates as sort of an extension of Israeli authority.”
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