(JNS) Francesca Albanese, special United Nations rapporteur for the Palestinians who has a long history of making anti-Israel comments, ought to read a book after her claim that Jews have been treated only in exemplary fashion in Arab lands since the Inquisition ended in the 19th century.
“Francesca Albanese can either read history books if she wished to—obviously she doesn’t—or she can meet people like my wife,” David Harris, executive vice chair of the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy, told JNS.
Harris, who was CEO of the American Jewish Committee from 1990 to 2022, is married to Giulietta Boukhobza, whose family comes from present-day Libya. That country is Judenrein, he told JNS, using the German for “Jew-free.”
“There is not a single Jew left in Libya. No trace. No plaque. No memorial. No monument. No museum. No school book reference. Nothing,” Harris said. “No citizenship. Any business venture required a majority Arab partner. No legal recourse. The list is a long one.”
After Libya became independent in 1951, new rules made it almost impossible for Jews to remain, and later, after the Six-Day War in 1967, “mobs came to the homes of Jews, including my wife’s family, to burn down and kill the Jews—very, very similar in a way to Oct. 7,” Harris told JNS.
At a June 19 gathering of current and former UN staffers, Albanese, whom the global body considers an independent “expert,” said that “Jews had been discriminated in Europe, not in West Asia, not in the Arab world, where they had been in fact welcomed once they were kicked out from Spain and other parts of Europe.”
Albanese’s comments, which took place during a webinar hosted by the anti-Israel group UN Staff For Gaza, have not been reported previously. She made the remarks as she compared the Holocaust and what she said is a “genocide” that Israel is carrying out against the Palestinians.
Making a comparison like that is antisemitic, according to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of Jew-hatred.
See related: Francesca Albanese’s fascist drift should worry us all
Lyn Julius, a British journalist and co-founder of Harif, a UK charity that represents Jews from North Africa and the Middle East, told JNS that “there’s the great myth of peaceful coexistence of Jews in the Arab countries, which is a staple of Palestinian propaganda.”
“It allows them to delegitimize Israel because obviously, if everything was wonderful between Jews and Arabs in the Arab world, you don’t need Israel,” she said.
There is a well-documented concept in Arab lands of non-Muslims, including Jews, having dhimmi status, in which Islamic law grants protections to the non-Muslims, who subordinate themselves and pay a tax called jizya, according to Julius.
Jews and others had religious and cultural autonomy but faced strict social and legal restrictions, including dress codes, and sometimes suffered harsh persecution and restriction in ghettos, the journalist said.
Some escaped dhimmi status in the Ottoman Empire, where some rose to the level of honorary consuls. “But they were a minority,” Julius told JNS. “They were only given the status, because they had really good networks, good contacts in trade and they were able to benefit the Ottomans with their contacts.
“Basically, the Jews were dhimmis up until the colonial era,” she said. “There’s no two ways about it. They had inferior status to the Muslims, and a kind of apartheid, you could say.”
In the webinar, Albanese also said that Israel is a “colonizer” and an “unlawful occupier.”
“There is no good Israel versus bad Israel,” the UN adviser said.
Albanese also told webinar participants that societies are “moving toward Israelization.” By that she meant that “many people” can vote, while “many others” can’t, and “those who do not vote can be treated as an unwanted encumbrance.”
“These people are already among us, migrants and refugees,” she said. “Look at the way Europe treats them.”
UN Staff For Gaza, which appears to violate United Nations neutrality rules, held an event during which, JNS reported, the executive secretary of the Hague Group seemed to think that she was speaking confidentially when she said that US-sanctioned organizations were secretly advising her anti-Israel group and that her group hid those ties from European states.
Another webinar, which UN Staff For Gaza hosted, included comments from a former deputy at the UN Children’s Fund who told attendees to cite the group “Jews Against Genocide” to combat charges that attendees might be antisemitic.
At the beginning of her remarks at the June 19 webinar, Albanese said, “I would like to start this conversation by acknowledging that I’m sure that among those present in this meeting, there are Israeli ears and not necessarily friendly.”
“Because every time we have a meeting, it’s publicly reported as if it was a like Masonic event,” she said. “So I say everything I say pretty confident that it will be duly reported.”
Several governments have decried Albanese’s anti-Israel remarks, and the Trump administration sanctioned her. The United Nations has told JNS on multiple occasions that it cannot and will not police her speech.
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