Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur “on the occupied Palestinian territories” who has become notorious for her anti-Israel rhetoric, has once again sparked controversy by appearing to draw a connection between the Los Angeles wildfires and the ongoing conflict in Gaza, The Jewish Chronicle reported on Monday.
Albanese drew attention after amplifying a post on X that described the fires and the war in Gaza as "symptoms of the same disease."
The post, shared by Mondoweiss, a progressive, anti-Zionist news outlet based in New York, stated, “The fires burning in Palestine and Los Angeles today are symptoms of the same disease: a system that values conquest over conservation, profit over people, and expansion over existence.”
Mondoweiss linked the post to an article written by Palestinian Arab-American student and outspoken BDS supporter Ahmad Ibsais. In the article, Ibsais argued that the crises in Gaza and California are “connected catastrophes.”
Albanese shared the article on X, adding her own comment, “On our small planet, all injustices are connected.”
Waleed Gadban, a political counselor at Israel’s UN mission in Geneva, responded to Albanese and said, “Hatred doesn’t require a cause, only a chance to manifest. That’s the whole objective of her existence, Francesca Albanese.”
Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, accused Albanese of perpetuating antisemitic tropes. “In the modern incarnation of the Der Stürmer slogan ‘The Jews are our misfortune,’ the UN’s Francesca Albanese is actually blaming Israel for the Los Angeles fires. All symptoms of ‘the same disease,’” he wrote.
Neuer urged action from nations including the US, France, Germany, and Britain to expel Albanese, calling her “an antisemite.”
Albanese’s anti-Israel bias was first exposed in 2022, in the form of antisemitic posts she made on social media, in which she claimed that the “Jewish lobby” controls the US.
At the time, Albanese rejected arguments that the comments about the “Jewish lobby” were antisemitic and claimed they were “mischaracterized”.
Since the Hamas massacre on October 7, she has condemned Israel for defending itself and gone as far as to claim that Israel has no right to defend itself.
Later, Albanese denied that the Hamas massacre in southern Israel on October 7 was antisemitic.
This past July, she endorsed a social media post comparing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. Israel’s Foreign Ministry fired back, slamming her on X as being “beyond redemption.”
In August, the UN rapporteur accused Israel of “genocide” after the IDF struck a Hamas command center which was embedded inside a mosque in the Al-Taba’een school compound.
In November, Albanese told British journalist Piers Morgan in an interview that the nature of Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza following the October 7 attack was illegal.
Albanese acknowledged in the interview that on “the day Israel was attacked, it had all the rights to defend itself, to protect its citizens in its territory and therefore to repel the attack with all necessary and proportional measures — which means using force, including lethal force, arresting, detaining all persons involved and found on its territory — which happened on the 7th, 8th and 9th of October.”
However, she added, “Israel didn’t have the right to wage a war against the Palestinians in Gaza.”