More than a year ago Francesca Albanese and other United Nations experts warned about the risk of genocide in Gaza.
In March 2024, Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, stated in her report “Anatomy of a genocide” that Israel was committing this crime in Gaza.
In her new report, “Genocide as colonial suppression,” the lawyer specialized in International Law and Human Rights affirms that what is happening in Gaza is part of a “centennial project” of colonialism.
For the UN expert, we are at a critical moment in history. “With all the beautiful human rights standards we have we cannot stop this carnage. This is pure darkness to me“he states.
Since her appointment as rapporteur in May 2022, Albanese has been one of the most critical voices of Israel’s actions in the Palestinian territories through the lens of international humanitarian law, in which she has more than two decades of experience.
In February 2024, Israel declared her persona non grata and banned her from entering the occupied territories, after Albanese linked the October 7 Hamas offensive in southern Israel to “Israeli oppression” against Palestinians in an exchange of opinions with the French president, Emmanuel Macron.
Nearly 1,200 people died in that offensive and more than 250 were taken hostage, according to Israeli authorities.
Since then, Israeli military operations in Gaza have left more than 44,000 dead, including more than 17,000 children, and more than 100,000 injured, according to data from the Gaza Ministry of Health.
More than 11,000 people remain missing, presumably under rubble, according to the Palestinian Civil Defense.
Francesca Albanese spoke to BBC Mundo about her new report, what she sees as racism in some sectors of the West, and why Gaza is a “test for humanity.”
14 months have passed since the start of the current Israeli offensive in Gaza. You recently said that “this is a time of darkness”…
It is clearly a moment of darkness because look at the reality in Gaza. As a special rapporteur I have a people-centered approach.
For the Palestinians in Gaza the situation is catastrophic. We have almost 1.5 million people living in tents, outdoors or in ruined buildings because everything was destroyed. There is no way to survive in Gaza in a dignified way. That possibility no longer exists.
They killed almost 45,000 people, including 17,000 children, 11,000 women, more than 710 babies. This is a trauma in itself for the people who remain, who now live without running water or a roof over their heads, without clothes.
Yesterday I saw the video of a 90-year-old person who was sleeping in the sand, without a mattress, without blankets, and it is terribly cold in Gaza because it is winter, imagine being in the sand.
While this is happening, Palestinians continue to be bombed, starved, burned alive.
So of course this is catastrophic. And it is catastrophic not only for the people of Gaza, but also for us, because with all the beautiful norms and human rights systems that we have, we cannot stop this carnage. This is pure darkness to me. Because it seems like we lack hope.
However, as we can see with what is happening in Syria – although we still do not know what will happen there – for many, the fact that a dictator who caused death and suffering has fallen, something that a month ago seemed unthinkable, shows that things change.
If we work to make this happen, it will happen, the apartheid will end, the genocide will end, the occupation will end.
Israel and countries like the United States and the United Kingdom reject that there is genocide in Gaza…
During the Holocaust in Rwanda, or in Bosnia Herzegovina, or the Holocaust of the Jews in Europe, we did not have the entire world rising up and protesting.
We have it now. What this is showing is that deep down the political system that governs us is morally corrupt. It is inadequate to ensure the prevention of atrocity crimes, including genocide.
People, especially the younger generation, know about human rights, recognize injustice and refuse to be forced to accept what happens as normality.
It is true that the use of the term genocide is not homogeneous in the UN system. But there are 34 special rapporteurs and most of them signed statements denouncing what is happening in Gaza as genocide.
The United Nations Special Committee on Israeli Practices also says so. And Amnesty International, which is undoubtedly the largest human rights organization internationally.
He has also mentioned academic experts on the Holocaust, such as Raz Segal, Omer Bartov and Amos Goldberg, according to whom there is genocide in Gaza…
Omer Bartov, for example, says that if we look legally and historically at what genocide is, Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
Because fundamentally, and this is important, people keep talking about this as a war, but it is not a war because the goal of war is to defeat the enemy, while the goal of genocide is to destroy the people as such, in their entirety. or in part.
And the Palestinians as such are being attacked and are being destroyed, physically and biologically, in their ability to live, and to have not only a present and a future. The past of the Palestinians is also being erased. This is genocide.
David Lammy, the British chancellor, rejected the idea that there was genocide in Gaza because it is not like other cases in which “millions of people lost their lives.”
What constitutes genocide is determined by the normative framework contained in Article 2 of the 1948 Genocide Convention, which describes genocide as the intention to destroy a group in whole or in part as such, through five acts: killing members of the group , inflicting serious physical or mental harm, creating living conditions calculated to cause the destruction of the group, forcibly removing children and preventing births.
As you can see, four of the five acts of genocide do not even include an act of killing.
Even if we look at the Holocaust, before being sent to die in concentration camps, Jews in Europe starved in ghettos. There are figures that show how many of them died not in gas chambers but from malnutrition, lack of medicine and lack of essential supplies in the ghettos of Europe.
They were among us and were treated as subhumans and as animals, this is the reality that we Europeans do not want to face: the genocide occurred before our eyes. As also happened in Rwanda, in Bosnia, probably in Myanmar and now in Palestine.
In your most recent report, “Genocide as Colonial Suppression,” you state: “Currently, the genocide of the Palestinians appears to be the means to an end: the complete expulsion or eradication of the Palestinians from the land that forms an essential part of his identity and that Israel illegally and openly covets.”
Could you explain the link you establish between what is happening in Gaza and colonialism?
If there is a continent that understands colonialism better than anyone, it is America. Because America as a continent was plagued by colonialism. And, in fact, settler colonialism in its modern form began in Latin America: people from a metropolis, from outside, go to lands inhabited by other peoples and take their resources, their lands, and subjugate the people who live there.
Settler colonialism also occurs when people from outside are transferred to indigenous peoples’ lands, displacing them, segregating them, and forcing them into submission.
Most of the liberal democracies we have today were born from colonialism and genocide. Think Canada, United States, Australia. But let’s also think about Latin America, how much damage has been done to indigenous peoples.
Let’s think about how many indigenous peoples have been victims of genocide, erased from the Earth, due to colonialism. And there is no doubt that Palestine is a case of settler colonialism.
Some people will ask: How can you say that? The Jewish people are indigenous to that land, they have historical ties to Palestine.
There are also Christian links, Jesus Christ was born in Bethlehem according to the Bible. But that does not mean that all Christians will move to Palestine and turn it into a Christian state.
Even if the ties of the Jewish people of Europe or elsewhere to Palestine are not questioned, no indigenous people have the right to expel another indigenous people.
In his report he says that “the intention to destroy the Palestinian people as such could not be more evident” when looking at Israeli conduct as a whole. And he affirms that a “triple lens” must be used.
There are only two cases in which the International Court of Justice has examined genocide, and both occurred in the former Yugoslavia.
This is the first time that court has examined a genocide that occurs in the context of an illegal occupation in which the occupier takes land and displaces people. There is a long history of forced displacement, dispossession and denial of the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination.
We have to consider not only the killing, but also the purpose behind the killing, the purpose behind the suffering being inflicted on the Palestinians, and that purpose is to force them to leave. Israeli leaders say so.
So, while it is concluded that it is already visible that Israel has committed crimes against humanity and war crimes, at the same time we need to see the totality of the crimes, against the totality of Palestinians, in the totality of the territory that Israel occupies. Because most of what he says and does in Gaza also applies to the West Bank.
Many times you speak of the lack of empathy with the suffering of the Palestinian people in sectors of the West. Even in the face of the slaughter of more than 17,000 children according to the Gaza Ministry of Health.
How do you explain what you call a lack of empathy?
Basically, if I have to be very brief, direct and synthetic, the explanation is racism.
It is racism that does not allow many of us to see others as equal. I see this in Europe, although it is not the majority of people, because many are completely devastated and are marching and facing enormous repression, which is shocking.
The lack of empathy is seen in the political elite not only in most European countries, but in the United States and Canada, but also in the corporate media. It’s shocking what the corporate media has been doing over the last 14 months.
Now they began to change, because what Israel is doing is undeniable, but it took 14 months for them to begin to see the Palestinians as human beings.
Because? Because there is racial prejudice.
I really encourage the readers tors to watch Susan Abulhawa’s (writer and human rights activist) speech to students at the Oxford Union (Oxford University’s debating society).
She said that if thousands of people had been dispossessed, displaced, imprisoned, tortured, and killed 17,000 children among the Jewish people, no one would doubt that it was a genocide. However, since this is happening to the Palestinians in Gaza, there are people who do not want to see it.
But the court of History will judge us. And I know that the conclusion will be implacable with those who now deny that there is genocide.
Furthermore, we don’t even need to recognize this as genocide for there to be action. We should be satisfied with what the International Court of Justice has already concluded (by recognizing a plausible genocide).
Therefore, let’s stop arming Israel, let’s stop trading with Israel. And I repeat, this is not against Israel or Israelis. It is simply asking for the application of international law.
Another reason is that pro-Israel groups are very well established in the West and beyond.
And the third reason is that Israel is convenient. Israel produces and sells tools of repression, from weapons to surveillance technology, that states in the east, west, north and south want. And this is a shame for humanity.
In your report you urge member states of the Genocide Convention to adopt a comprehensive arms embargo and sanctions against Israel.
But it also calls for the prosecution in each country of citizens with dual nationality, such as soldiers, involved in crimes in the occupied territories.
What do you recommend at the level of national courts?
First of all, I want to say that justice for Palestine cannot be reduced to judicial processes.
Because Palestinians need recognition of what they have been suffering as a nation of survivors of the Nakba (the word means “tragedy” or “catastrophe” and is what Palestinians call the founding of the State of Israel in 1948).
This is what the Palestinian people are. And as such they must be respected. Because whatever justified the birth of the State of Israel, nothing justifies what has happened to the Palestinian people.
On the other hand, when it comes to justice, it cannot be left solely in the hands of the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court.
National courts can investigate and prosecute acts of genocide, and often war crimes and crimes against humanity, if there is a law recognizing universal jurisdiction. Most countries have it.
Also there are many nationals, this is true in my country [Italia]in Latin American countries and many in the West, who live in the settlements, sell and buy property in the settlements, do business in the settlements.
There are businesses registered in our countries that trade with the settlements, there are universities with links to Israeli universities, which are an intimate part of the illegality of the occupation and the regime of apartheid and racial segregation. This is fully documented.
But there are also politicians who provide cover for Israel and even justify its actions and are complicit, so these political leaders must also be held accountable.
That’s why I say that justice begins at home.
He also talks about legal actions against companies…
I can’t tell you more because I’m currently researching, but my next report will be on the private sector, what I call the intimate matrix of the illegality of Israel’s presence in the occupied Palestinian territory.
That matrix is made up of companies, corporations, banks, pension funds, military and strategic sectors, technology companies, charities and research institutes, no one is innocent when it comes to Palestine. Nobody.
You receive a lot of criticism that -sometimes- has taken the form of personal attacks. And when they ask him about this he usually says that he is not surprised and that what they should ask him is what is happening in Gaza…
The attacks against me are a small thing. In the four lectures I gave in London there were more than two thousand students. There were twelve hundred people in Vienna. The attacks against me are nothing compared to the support I receive. We need to change the narrative.
Finally, you affirm that what is happening in Gaza is a test for all humanity. Could you explain this?
We must not think that what happens to Palestine is something remote.
As Australian journalist Anthony Loewenstein says, Palestine is used against us in societies that have become, even in the West, increasingly illiberal.
In the repression of the Palestine solidarity movement, which by the way includes many Jews, we should see the reality that is emerging.
Now we are at a critical moment in which we have to decide if we position ourselves, or if we are prepared for a future in which really, as Thomas Hobbes says, Homo homini lupus“man is man’s wolf,” and it is just a matter of a fight between humans for space and resources.
That’s why I say this is a test for humanity.
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