GENEVA: Israel on Friday slammed a UN rights expert for “anti-Semitism” after she endorsed a social media post comparing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Adolf Hitler.
Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the rights situation in the Palestinian territories, has faced harsh criticism from Israel previously, especially after she in March accused the country of committing genocide in the war in Gaza.
On Thursday, she responded to a post on X, formerly Twitter, displaying a picture of Hitler being celebrated by a crowd with Nazi salutes and cheers above a shot of Netanyahu appearing to be greeted by US congressmen this week.
“History is always watching,” Craig Mokhiber, a former UN human rights official who resigned late last October accusing the world body of failing to prevent the “genocide” of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, wrote in the post.
“This is precisely what I was thinking today,” Albanese, an independent expert appointed by the UN Human Rights Council in 2022 but who does not speak on behalf of the United Nations, said in her response on Thursday.
Israel’s foreign ministry was quick to respond, slamming her on X as being “beyond redemption.”
“It is inconceivable that (Albanese) is still allowed to use the UN as a shield to spread anti-Semitism,” it said.
Israel’s mission to the UN in Geneva also chimed in.
“When a current UN ‘expert’ endorses Holocaust distortion spread by the former (UN rights office) director in New York... the system is rotten to its core,” it said.
“It’s high time to #UNseatAlbanese!“
Israel’s new ambassador in Geneva, Daniel Meron, used the same hashtag, decrying that “Francesca Albanese abuses her (UN) title to spread hatred and inflammatory rhetoric.”
Israel’s top ally the United States also weighed in.
“UN Special Rapporteur’s comparison of Benjamin Netanyahu to Adolf Hitler is reprehensible and antisemitic,” US ambassador to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva Michele Taylor said on X.
“There should be no place for such dehumanizing rhetoric. Special rapporteurs should be striving to improve human rights challenges, not inflame them.”
Albanese on Friday hit back at the criticism, insisting that “the memory of the Holocaust remains intact.”
“Institutional rants and outburst of selective moral outrage will not stop the course of justice, which is finally in motion.”
The Hamas attack that started the war on October 7 resulted in the deaths of 1,197 people in Israel, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Out of 251 people taken hostage that day, 111 are still held in Gaza, including 39 the military says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive against Hamas has killed at least 39,175 Palestinians in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.
Israel slams UN expert over Hitler-Netanyahu comparison
https://arab.news/vt5m5
Israel slams UN expert over Hitler-Netanyahu comparison
- Francesca Albanese posted a picture of Hitler being celebrated by a crowd with Nazi salutes and cheers above a shot of Netanyahu
Hamas to hold leadership elections in coming months: sources
- A Hamas member in Gaza said Hayya is a strong contender due to his relations with other Palestinian factions, including rival Fatah, which dominates the Palestinian Authority, as well as his regional standing
GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories: Hamas is preparing to hold internal elections to rebuild its leadership following Israel’s killing of several of the group’s top figures during the war in Gaza, sources in the movement said on Monday.
“Internal preparations are still ongoing in order to hold the elections at the appropriate time in areas where conditions on the ground allow it,” a Hamas leader told AFP.
The vote is expected to take place “in the first months of 2026.”
Much of the group’s top leadership has been decimated during the war, which was sparked by Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel in October 2023.
The war has also devastated the Gaza Strip, leaving its more than two million residents in dire humanitarian conditions.
The leadership renewal process includes the formation of a new 50-member Shoura Council, a consultative body dominated by religious figures.
Its members are selected every four years by Hamas’ three branches: the Gaza Strip, the occupied West Bank and the movement’s external leadership.
Hamas prisoners in Israeli prisons are also eligible to vote.
During previous elections, held before the war, members across Gaza and the West Bank used to gather at different locations including mosques to choose the Shoura Council.
That council is responsible, every four years, for electing the 18-member political bureau and its chief, who serves as Hamas’s overall leader.
Another Hamas source close to the process said the timing of the political bureau elections remains uncertain “given the circumstances our people are going through.”
After Israel killed former Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in July 2024, the group chose its then-Gaza chief Yahya Sinwar as his successor.
Israel accused Sinwar of masterminding the October 7 attack.
He too was killed by Israeli forces in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, three months after Haniyeh’s assassination.
Hamas then opted for an interim five-member leadership committee based in Qatar, postponing the appointment of a single leader until elections are held and given the risk of being targeted by Israel.
According to sources, two figures have now emerged as frontrunners to be the head of the political bureau: Khalil Al-Hayya and Khaled Meshaal.
Hayya, 65, a Gaza native and Hamas’s chief negotiator in ceasefire talks, has held senior roles since at least 2006, according to the US-based NGO the Counter-Extremism Project (CEP).
Meshaal, who led the Political Bureau from 2004 to 2017, has never lived in Gaza. He was born in the West Bank in 1956.
He joined Hamas in Kuwait and later lived in Jordan, Syria and Qatar. The CEP says he oversaw Hamas’s evolution into a political-military hybrid.
He currently heads the movement’s diaspora office.
A Hamas member in Gaza said Hayya is a strong contender due to his relations with other Palestinian factions, including rival Fatah, which dominates the Palestinian Authority, as well as his regional standing.
Hayya also enjoys backing from both the Shoura Council and Hamas’s military wing, the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades.
Another source said other potential candidates include West Bank Hamas leader Zaher Jabarin and Shoura Council head Nizar Awadallah.
