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Source: https://www.jns.org/laughing-at-francesca-albanese/
When a UN Official Becomes a Megaphone for Hamas
(JNS) Dr. Fiamma Nirenstein - Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the Palestinian territories, told an Al Jazeera forum in Qatar on Saturday that Israel is the "common enemy" against which the global community must now unite. Israel is a country of 10 million people - seven million of them Jews - so small its name barely fits on a map. It is surrounded by states that have spent decades and billions of dollars attempting to erase it. Those states have failed to produce a fraction of Israel's scientific, agricultural, technological and democratic achievements. To Albanese, this is proof of diabolical intent. Iran, she suggests, should not distract us with its own crimes - tens of thousands of Iranian citizens killed for demanding freedom. No, the Jews are worse. They are the universal enemy. Israel's real crime, in Albanese's telling, is that it is still alive. History has seen this story before. What is new is the brazenness with which the accusation is now delivered - under a UN title, on a Qatari stage, to applause. The writer, a fellow at the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs, served as vice president of the Committee on Foreign Affairs in the Italian Chamber of Deputies.