Albanese

Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on Palestine, has taken aim at states complicit in Israel’s genocide in Gaza, calling for a new multilateralism that will prevent it from happening again in future.

Albanese presented her new report – “Gaza Genocide: a collective crime” – to the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, addressing delegates remotely from the Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation in Cape Town, South Africa.

Israel had, she said, left Gaza “strangled, starved, shattered”. Her report, which examines the role of 63 states in Israel’s actions in both Gaza and the West Bank, calls out the multilateral system for “decades of moral and political failure” in a colonial world order sustained by a global system of complicity”.

“Through unlawful actions and deliberate omissions, too many states have harmed, founded and shielded Israel’s militarised apartheid, allowing its settler colonial enterprise to metastasise into genocide, the ultimate crime against the indigenous people of Palestine,” she said.

Genocide had been enabled, she said, through diplomatic protection in international “fora meant to preserve peace”, military ties ranging from weapons sales to joint trainings that “fed the genocidal machinery”, the unchallenged weaponisation of aid, and trade with entities like the European Union, which had sanctioned Russia over Ukraine yet continued doing business with Israel.

The 24-page report analyses how the “live-streamed atrocity” was facilitated by third states, zooming in on how the United States provided “diplomatic cover” for Israel, using its veto power at the UN Security Council seven times and controlling ceasefire negotiations. Other Western nations had collaborated, it said, with abstentions, delays and watered-down draft resolutions, reinforcing “a simplistic rhetoric of ‘balance’”.

Many states had, it said, continued supplying Israel with arms, “even as the evidence of genocide … mounted”. The report noted the hypocrisy of the US Congress passing a $26.4bn package for Israeli defence, just as Israel threatened the Rafah invasion – supposedly a “red line” for the administration of former US President Joe Biden.

The report also points a finger of blame at Germany, the second-largest arms exporter to Israel during the genocide, with supplies ranging from “frigates to torpedoes”, and the United Kingdom, which has allegedly flown more than 600 surveillance missions over Gaza since war broke out in October 2023.

While acknowledging the “complexity of regional geopolitics”, the report also highlighted the complicity of Arab and Muslim states through US-brokered normalisation deals with Israel.

It points out that mediator Egypt maintained “significant security and economic relations with Israel, including energy cooperation and the closing of the Rafah crossing” during the war.

Albanese said the UNGA should have confronted the “dangerous precedent” of sanctions imposed on her earlier this year by the United States over her criticism of Israel’s actions in Palestine, which had prevented her from travelling to New York in person.

“These measures constitute an assault on the UN itself, its independence, its integrity, its very soul. If left unchallenged, these sanctions will drive yet another nail into the coffin of the multilateral system,” she said.

The Gaza genocide “exposed an unprecedented chasm between peoples and their governments, betraying the trust on which global peace and security rest”, said the report.

Speaking at the UNGA, the special rapporteur called for a new form of multilateralism, “not a facade, but a living framework of rights and dignity, not for the few … but for the many”.

Action taken in the past against South Africa, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), Portugal and other rogue states had, she said, shown that “international law can be enforced to secure justice and self-determination”.

WASHINGTON — President Trump and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese signed a critical-minerals deal at the White House on Monday as the U.S. eyes the continent’s rich rare-earth resources at a time when China is imposing tougher rules on exporting its own critical minerals.

The two leaders described the agreement as an $8.5 billion deal between the allies. Trump said it had been negotiated over several months.

“Today’s agreement on critical minerals and rare earths is just taking” the U.S. and Australia’s relationship “to the next level,” Albanese added.

This month, Beijing announced that it will require foreign companies to get approval from the Chinese government to export magnets containing even trace amounts of rare-earth materials that originated from China or were produced with Chinese technology. Trump’s Republican administration says this gives China broad power over the global economy by controlling the tech supply chain.

“Australia is really, really going to be helpful in the effort to take the global economy and make it less risky, less exposed to the kind of rare-earth extortion that we’re seeing from the Chinese,” Kevin Hassett, the director of the White House’s National Economic Council, told reporters Monday morning before Trump’s meeting with Albanese.

Hassett noted that Australia has one of the best mining economies in the world, while praising its refiners and its abundance of rare-earth resources. Among the Australian officials accompanying Albanese are ministers overseeing resources and industry and science, and the continent has dozens of critical minerals sought by the U.S.

The prime minister’s visit comes just before Trump is planning to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping in South Korea later this month.

The prime minister said ahead of his visit that the two leaders will have a chance to deepen their countries’ ties on trade and defense. Another expected topic of discussion is AUKUS, a security pact with Australia, the U.S. and the United Kingdom that was signed during President Biden’s administration.

Trump has not indicated publicly whether he would want to keep AUKUS intact, and the Pentagon is reviewing the agreement.

“Australia and the United States have stood shoulder-to-shoulder in every major conflict for over a century,” Albanese said before the meeting. “I look forward to a positive and constructive meeting with President Trump at the White House.”

The center-left Albanese was reelected in May and suggested shortly after his win that his party increased its majority by not modeling itself on Trumpism.

“Australians have chosen to face global challenges the Australian way, looking after each other while building for the future,” Albanese told supporters during his victory speech.

Kim and Madhani write for the Associated Press.

Israeli leader claims Australian prime minister’s legacy ‘tarnished’ by decision to recognise a Palestinian state.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has stepped up his government’s bitter diplomatic dispute with Australia, claiming that Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s legacy has been irrevocably blackened by his “weakness” towards Hamas.

In an interview with Sky News Australia scheduled to air on Thursday night, Netanyahu said Albanese’s record would “forever be tarnished” by his decision to recognise a Palestinian state.

“When the worst terrorist organisation on earth, these savages who murdered women, raped them, beheaded men, burnt babies alive in front of their parents, took hundreds of hostages, when these people congratulate the Prime Minister of Australia, you know something is wrong,” Netanyahu said in the interview, portions of which were posted online by Sky News before the broadcast.

Netanyahu’s accusation appeared to refer to a disputed statement that appeared last week in the Sydney Morning Herald, in which Hamas cofounder Sheikh Hassan Yousef was quoted praising Albanese for his “political courage”.

Following the report, Hamas publicly denied that any statement had been issued by Yousef. The Palestinian armed group, which governs Gaza, said Yousef had been in Israeli custody for nearly two years without means of communicating with the outside world.

Netanyahu’s broadside against Albanese follows an extraordinary missive earlier this week in which he claimed the Australian leader would be remembered by history as a “weak politician who betrayed Israel and abandoned Australia’s Jews”.

On Wednesday, Australia’s Minister for Home Affairs Tony Burke hit back at the Israeli leader, saying strength was “not measured by how many people you can blow up or how many children you can leave hungry”, though Albanese attempted to play down the spat by saying he did not take it personally.

Relations between Australia and Israel, traditionally close allies, have sunk to their lowest ebb in decades following Canberra’s decision to recognise Palestine.

On Monday, Australia said it had cancelled a visa for Simcha Rothman, a far-right member of Netanyahu’s governing coalition, amid concerns that a speaking tour he had scheduled in the country aimed to “spread division”.

Hours after that decision, Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs Gideon Saar said he had revoked the visas of Australian diplomats to the Palestinian Authority.

Expressing dismay at the tensions, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry said on Wednesday that it had written to both prime ministers to urge them to address their differences “in the usual way through diplomacy rather than public posturing”.

“The sum total of human wisdom would not have been diminished in the slightest if none of these public comments had been made,” the peak body for Jewish Australians said in its letter to Albanese.

“The Australian Jewish community will not be left to deal with the fallout of a spat between two leaders who are playing to their respective domestic audiences.”

Israel has come under mounting international pressure, including from some of its closest allies, over the scale of human suffering being inflicted by its war in Gaza.

More than 62,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel since it launched its war on Gaza following Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attacks, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health.

Hamas killed about 1,200 people and took 251 people captive during its incursion into southern Israel, according to Israeli authorities.

Israel’s prime minister accused his Australian counterpart of having “betrayed Israel” and “abandoned” Australia’s Jewish community, after days of growing strain between the two countries.

Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday that history would remember Anthony Albanese “for what he is: a weak politician”.

Australia barred a far-right member of Netanyahu’s ruling coalition from entering the country on Monday, and Israel in turn revoked the visas of Australian representatives to the Palestinian Authority.

Australian Immigration Minister Tony Burke said Netanyahu was “lashing out” in response to Canberra recently announcing it would join the UK, France and Canada in recognising a Palestinian state.

“Strength is not measured by how many people you can blow up or how many people you can leave hungry,” Burke told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation on Wednesday.

Israel’s opposition leader criticised Netanyahu’s remarks, branding them a “gift” to the Australian leader.

Yair Lapid wrote on X: “The thing that most strengthens a leader in the democratic world today is a confrontation with Netanyahu, the most politically toxic leader in the Western world.

“It is unclear why Bibi is rushing to give the Prime Minister of Australia this gift.”

Diplomatic tensions flared on Monday after far-right Israeli politician Simcha Rothman’s Australian visa was cancelled ahead of a visit to the country, where he had been due to speak at events organised by the Australian Jewish Association (AJA).

Burke told local media at the time the government took “a hard line” on people seeking to “spread division”.

“If you are coming to Australia to spread a message of hate and division, we don’t want you here,” he said.

Last year, Burke also denied a visa to Israel’s former justice minister Ayelet Shaked, a right-wing politician who left parliament in 2022.

A few hours after the revocation of Rothman’s visa was announced, Israel’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Gideon Sa’ar said he had instructed the Israeli Embassy in Canberra to “carefully examine any official Australian visa application for entry to Israel”.

He added in a post on X: “While antisemitism is raging in Australia, including manifestations of violence against Jews and Jewish institutions, the Australian government is choosing to fuel it”.

In recent months, there have been a string of antisemitic attacks in Australia – which is home to one of the world’s largest populations of Holocaust survivors per capita.

On Tuesday, the AJA said Rothman would still appear at their speaking event virtually.

“The Jewish community won’t bow down to Tony Burke or [Foreign Minister] Penny Wong,” it said in a social media post.

Australia announced in early August that it would recognise a Palestinian state, with Prime Minister Albanese saying at the time that Netanyahu was “in denial” about the consequences of the war on innocent people.

“The stopping of aid that we’ve seen and then the loss of life that we’re seeing around those aid distribution points, where people queuing for food and water are losing their lives, is just completely unacceptable,” he said.

The state of Palestine is currently recognised by 147 of the UN’s 193 member states, and Australia’s announcement came about two weeks after similar moves by the UK, France and Canada.

In response, Netanyahu launched a scathing attack on the leaders of the three countries, accusing Sir Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron and Mark Carney of siding with “mass murderers, rapists, baby killers and kidnappers”.

More than 62,004 people have been killed as a result of Israel’s military campaign since 7 October, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

Israel launched the offensive in response to the Hamas-led attack on 7 October, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.

July 15 (UPI) — Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese met with Chinese President Xi Jinping Tuesday in Beijing as part of a nearly week-long trip intended to strengthen ties between the two nations.

“Australia’s relationship with China is important,” said Albanese in an X post Tuesday. “For our economy, our security, and the stability of our region.”

In a joint press conference, President Xi said Tuesday that “with joint efforts from both sides, the China-Australia relationship has rose from the setback and turned around, bringing tangible benefits to the Chinese and Australian peoples.”

Xi was not specific about what that “setback” was, as the two nations have had strained moments over the past several years, such as issues related to the Chinese company that operates Australia’s Port of Darwin, trade sanctions levied against Canberra starting in 2020 and a live fire exercise held by the Chinese navy off Australia’s east coast earlier this year, among others.

“The Chinese side is ready to work with the Australian side to push the bilateral relationship further and make greater progress so as to bring better benefits to our two peoples,” said Xi before ceding the floor to Albanese.

“Australia values our relationship with China and will continue to approach it in a calm and consistent manner, guided by our national interest, which we regard very much as the relationship being positive, which is just that,” Albanese said. “It is in our national interest, and indeed in the interest of the region as well.”

He also took part in a CEO roundtable Tuesday, which focused on developing business relationships and growth opportunities.

“Free and open trade is good for both the Australian and Chinese economies, businesses and people,” said Albanese in another X post Tuesday.

Albanese, along with a delegation of Australian businesspeople, first arrived in Shanghai on Saturday to firm a variety of ways the two countries can economically help each other.

“One in four of Australian jobs is dependent upon our exports and overwhelmingly by far the largest destination for Australian exports is right here in China,” he said Sunday.

Albanese is next slated to visit the city of Chengdu on Wednesday to focus on ties between Australia and China in regard to sports and medical technology and will also pay a visit to the Great Wall.

Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, says sanctions by the Trump administration aim to silence her for exposing genocide and calling out those who profit from it. She urges people to “stand united, denounce, and push back”.

UN rapporteur Francesca Albanese tells Al Jazeera Washington’s move is retaliation for ‘pursuit of justice’ in Israel’s war on Gaza.

United Nations expert Francesca Albanese has slammed the decision by the United States to sanction her as “obscene”, saying she is being targeted for calling out Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

Speaking to Al Jazeera on Thursday, Albanese, who serves as the UN’s special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory, said she would not be cowed into silence by the US move against her on Wednesday.

Albanese stressed that the penalties imposed by President Donald Trump’s administration would not stop her “quest for [the] respect of justice and international law”.

The special rapporteur said Washington’s tactics reminded her of “Mafia intimidation techniques” before suggesting that “sanctions will only work if people are scared and stop engaging”.

“I want to remind everyone [that] the reason why these sanctions are being imposed is the pursuit of justice,” Albanese said.

“Of course I’ve been critical of Israel. It has been committing genocide and crimes against humanity and war crimes,” she added.

While announcing the sanctions on Wednesday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio charged Albanese with waging a “campaign of political and economic warfare against the United States and Israel”.

The UN rapporteur hit back on Thursday, noting that the atrocities being committed in Gaza were not just down to “the unrelinquished territorial ambitions of Israel” and the backing of its supporters but also “companies who are profiting from it”.

Last week, she released a report mapping the corporations aiding Israel in the displacement of Palestinians and its genocidal war on Gaza in breach of international law.

Albanese told Al Jazeera that she was still evaluating the effects the US sanctions would have on her.

However, she said her problems are nothing compared with what Palestinians face in Gaza during Israel’s ongoing bombardments, ground operations and blockade of the territory.

Albanese also took aim at the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), calling it a “death trap”. The Israeli- and US-backed group runs the aid distribution sites where hundreds of Palestinians have been shot and killed since late May while queueing for food.

Move against Albanese ‘a dangerous precedent’

The UN expert also defended the International Criminal Court’s (ICC’s) investigation into Israeli actions in Gaza and its decision to call for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s arrest on charges of war crimes.

Rubio has described Albanese’s push for the prosecution of Israeli officials at the ICC as the legal basis for the sanctions.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’s spokesman was among those to criticise the US sanctions on Albanese.

While highlighting that Albanese reports to the UN Human Rights Council rather than the secretary-general, Stephane Dujarric called the decision “a dangerous precedent”.

“The use of unilateral sanctions against special rapporteurs or any other UN expert or official is unacceptable,” he said.

UN Human Rights Council Ambassador Jurg Lauber also lamented the move against Albanese.

“I call on all UN member states to fully cooperate with the special rapporteurs and mandate holders of the council and to refrain from any acts of intimidation or reprisal against them,” Lauber said.

Israel’s campaign in Gaza has destroyed most of the territory and killed more than 57,575 Palestinians over the past 21 months, according to local health officials.

Trump administration says it is targeting Francesca Albanese for encouraging ICC war crime prosecution against Israel’s Netanyahu.

Washington, DC – The administration of United States President Donald Trump has imposed sanctions on United Nations expert Francesca Albanese over her documentation of Israel’s abuses against Palestinians during its war on Gaza.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the penalties on Wednesday, accusing Albanese of waging a “campaign of political and economic warfare against the United States and Israel”.

Albanese, who serves as UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory, has been a leading global voice in calling for action to end Israel’s human rights violations.

Israel and its supporters have been rebuking Albanese and calling for her to be removed from her UN position for years.

Earlier on Wednesday, she called out European governments for allowing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – who is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crime charges in Gaza – to use their airspace while travelling.

“Italian, French and Greek citizens deserve to know that every political action violating the [international] legal order, weakens and endangers all of them. And all of us,” Albanese wrote in a social media post.

Rubio cited Albanese’s push for the prosecution of Israeli officials at the ICC as the legal basis for the sanctions.

Trump had issued an executive order in February to impose penalties on ICC officials involved in “targeting” Israel.

Last month, the Trump administration sanctioned four ICC judges.

On Wednesday, Rubio accused Albanese of anti-Semitism.

“That bias has been apparent across the span of her career, including recommending that the ICC, without a legitimate basis, issue arrest warrants targeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant,” he said.

The ICC charged Netanyahu and Gallant with crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza for depriving Palestinians in the enclave of “objects indispensable to their survival, including food, water, and medicine”.

Rubio also highlighted a recent report by Albanese that documented the role of international companies, including US firms, in the Israeli assault on Gaza, which she describes as a genocide.

“We will not tolerate these campaigns of political and economic warfare, which threaten our national interests and sovereignty,” the top US diplomat said.

Trump’s ICC decree freezes the assets of targeted individuals in the US and bans them and their immediate family members from entering the country.

Nancy Okail, head of the Center for International Policy (CIP) think tank, decried the sanctions against Albanese as “devastating”.

“Sanctioning a UN expert gives the signal that the United States is acting like dictatorships and rogue states,” Okail told Al Jazeera.

Over the past 21 months, Israel’s US-backed campaign in Gaza has levelled most of the territory and killed at least 57,575 Palestinians, according to local health officials.

Rome Statute signatories Italy, France and Greece accused of ‘violating’ international legal order by letting alleged war criminal fly over territory.

Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the human rights situation in the occupied Palestinian territory, has hit out at countries that allowed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to fly over their airspace en route to the United States, suggesting that they may have flouted their obligations under international law.

Albanese said on Wednesday that the governments of Italy, France and Greece needed to explain why they provided “safe passage” to Netanyahu, who they were theoretically “obligated to arrest” as an internationally wanted suspect when he flew over their territory on his way to meet United States President Donald Trump on Sunday for talks.

All three countries are signatories of the Rome Statute, the treaty that established The Hague-based International Criminal Court (ICC) in 2002, which last year issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and former Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity perpetrated during Israel’s war on Gaza.

“Italian, French and Greek citizens deserve to know that every political action violating the int’l legal order, weakens and endangers all of them. And all of us,” Albanese wrote on X.

Albanese was responding to a post by human rights lawyer Craig Mokhiber, who had said the previous day that the countries had “breached their legal obligations under the treaty [Rome Statute], have declared their disdain for the victims of genocide, and have demonstrated their contempt for the rule of law”.

Netanyahu’s visit to the US, during which he and Trump discussed the forced displacement of Palestinians amid his country’s ongoing ceasefire negotiations with Hamas, was not his first sortie since the ICC issued the warrant for his arrest.

In February, Netanyahu travelled to the US, which is not party to the Rome Statute, becoming the first foreign leader to meet Trump after his January inauguration.

Then, in April, Netanyahu visited Hungary’s leader Viktor Orban in Budapest, the latter having extended his invitation just one day after the ICC issued the arrest warrant, withdrawing the country’s ICC membership ahead of the Israeli leader’s arrival.

From Hungary, Netanyahu then flew to the US for a meeting with Trump, his plane flying 400km (248 miles) further than the normal route to avoid the airspace of several countries that could enforce an arrest warrant, according to Israel’s Haaretz newspaper.

Member states of the ICC are expected to take subjects of arrest warrants into custody if those individuals are on their territory.

In practice, the rules are not always followed. For instance, South Africa, a member of the court, did not arrest Sudan’s then-leader Omar al-Bashir during a 2017 visit, despite an ICC warrant against him.

European Union countries have been split on the ICC warrant issued for Netanyahu.

Some said last year they would meet their ICC commitments, while Italy has said there were legal doubts. France has said it believes Netanyahu has immunity from ICC actions.