Francesca Albanese joins Chris Hedges to break down the current starvation campaign in Gaza, and her upcoming report detailing the profiteering corporations capitalising on the erasure of Palestinians.

There is not much more that can be said about the unfathomable levels of devastation the genocide in Gaza has reached. Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, has been chronicling the genocide and joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to shed light on the current situation in Gaza, including parts from her upcoming report on the profiteers of the genocide.

Israel’s siege of the Palestinians is leaving the population starving, and Albanese lambasts other nations for not stepping up and completing their obligations under international law. “[Countries] have an obligation not to aid, not to assist, not to trade with Israel, not to send weapons, not to buy weapons, not to provide military technology, not to buy military technology. This is not an act of charity that I’m asking you. This is your obligation,” she explains.

Albanese compares Gaza and Israel’s siege to a concentration camp, stating it is unsustainable but also allows the world to witness how a Western settler colonial entity functions. “There is a global awareness of something that has for a long time been a prerogative, a painful prerogative of the global majority, the Global South, meaning the awareness of the pain and the wounds of colonialism,” Albanese tells Hedges.

In her forthcoming report, Albanese will detail exactly how Palestine has been exploited by the global capitalist system and will highlight the role certain corporations have played in the genocide. “[T]here are corporate entities, including from Palestine-friendly states, who have for decades made businesses and made profits out of the economy of the occupation, because Israel has always exploited Palestinian land and resources and Palestinian life,” she says.

“The profits have continued and even increased as the economy of the occupation transformed into an economy of genocide.”

Chris Hedges

When the history of the genocide in Gaza is written one of the most courageous and outspoken champions for justice and an adherence to international law will be Francesca Albanese, the special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories. Albanese, an Italian legal scholar, has held the position of UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories since 2022. Her office is tasked with monitoring and reporting on “human rights violations” that Israel commits against Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.

Albanese, who receives death threats and endures well-orchestrated smear campaigns directed by Israel and its allies, valiantly seeks to hold those who support and sustain the genocide accountable. She lambasts what she calls “the moral and political corruption of the world” for the genocide. Her office has issued detailed reports documenting the war crimes committed by Israel in Gaza and the West Bank, one of which, Genocide as Colonial Erasure, I reprinted as an appendix in my latest book A Genocide Foretold. She is at work on a new report exposing the banks, pension funds, tech companies and universities that are aiding and abetting Israel’s violations of international law, human rights and war crimes. She has informed private organisations that they are “criminally liable” for assisting Israel in carrying out the “genocide” in Gaza. She announced that if, as has been reported, former British foreign secretary David Cameron threatened to defund and withdraw from the International Criminal Court if it issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant, Cameron and the former British prime minister Rishi Sunak could be charged with a criminal offence under the Rome statue. The Rome Statue criminalises those who seek to prevent war crimes from being prosecuted. Albanese has called on top EU officials to face charges of complicity for war crimes over their support for the genocide, saying that their actions cannot be met with impunity. She was a champion of the Madleen flotilla that sought to break the blockade of Gaza and deliver humanitarian aid, writing that the boat, intercepted by Israel, was carrying not only supplies but a message of humanity.

Joining me to discuss the genocide in Gaza and the failure by Western governments to intervene or adhere to international law is Francesca Albanese.

Let’s just lay out where we are in Gaza. It’s very bleak. We can’t sugarcoat it, especially since March 2nd.

Francesca Albanese

Yes, Chris. So first of all, thanks for having me. Such a pleasure.

Look, the situation in Gaza has gone so rotten, so horrible that I really don’t have the words to describe it anymore. I remember that when I had the first reports about cases of starvation, it was last year, primarily in northern Gaza, which by the way, is completely cut off from our understanding of what’s going on in Gaza.

In a sense, the misery that we see is in the south of Gaza. The north is completely obscured. But when I received the first reports on starvation, I remember people from Gaza saying we are turning into monsters.

And this is something that I hear more and more from people. The hunger is so much, it’s so widespread, so profound that it’s turning people into a stage of pre-humanity and this is what happens to people who experience this brutality. They are forced, they are pushed back into a space which predates civilisation and, again, thinking that this is strategic, this is intentional from Israel, it’s a stain for all of us.

How can we let it happen? Why European states, why Arab states have not sent their navies yet to break the blockade? It must be done. It’s an obligation, it’s not an act of charity. They must break the siege. And it’s already too late, you know? This is the situation in Gaza. It’s devastating.

Chris Hedges

Well, this is the kind of action of the flotilla with Greta Thunberg, of course they weren’t going to get through, but it was an act of shaming in a way, an act of conscience, certainly an act of courage. Your voice has been one that has just been unwavering since the genocide began. And yet at the same time, I think many of us who speak out against the genocide have to accept that we haven’t been able to save a single life and yet we must keep speaking out anyway.

Francesca Albanese

Yeah, look, I often wonder what is it for? Because, again, I feel in a way restless. I never stop talking about Gaza, the West Bank, the Palestinians. Because I think I’m like many, I carry a wound right now. It’s something that I would have never wanted to see happening again.

I am also from a generation who saw the genocide in Rwanda, who read about the genocide in Rwanda. I have vivid memories of the genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina and seeing the genocide of the Palestinians happening in slow motion and being the chronicler of this genocide somewhat has irreparably wounded me, but it’s okay.

My only form of healing is by making sure that people wake up and realise that this carries the fingerprints of all of us. And when I say that, I’m not using it adverbally, it’s real. Because when you see the profits that companies registered in Western countries and others are making out of the genocide of the Palestinians, you see, I mean, you lose hope in humanity for good.

And it’s true that we have not managed to save lives, but we don’t know. We don’t know, Chris, in fact, because I do believe that had Israel been given a free hand, it would have already cleansed Gaza of the Palestinians, while in fact by denouncing what Israel is doing, we are contributing to make sure that Palestine doesn’t disappear from the maps.

Because somewhat inside me I have this sense that the sacrifice of the Palestinians in Gaza will continue, will continue, really, will continue unless there is an arms embargo and unless the blockade is, I mean, the siege is broken and it cannot happen without coercive measures. The only way to protect Israel, to ensure that Israel is protected, is by stopping Israel. Israel is harmful to the Palestinians, to the region, is harmful to many of us and is harmful to itself and its citizens.

This is something that Israelis must understand. None of us working for human rights and justice have anything… Personally, I have a lot of pain for the Israelis themselves because I think that they must be traumatised to the point that they have lost their humanity. And I can just think of a huge form of healing both for the Palestinians and Israelis.

But again, I don’t know, surely we have not saved lives, but we have contributed to show the real face of Israel’s apartheid.

Chris Hedges

When you talk about coercive measures, I covered the withdrawal of Iraqi forces from Northern Iraq when they were carrying out a genocidal campaign against the Kurds. NATO forces established a no-fly zone. Iraqi forces had to withdraw. What was happening to the Kurds doesn’t begin to compare, finally, to what is happening to the Palestinians in Gaza.

But it was clear at that moment that only coercive measures would save the Kurds. And you’re, of course, correctly pointing out that that is exactly now where we are with the Palestinians. That without coercive measures, and that has to be imposed from the outside, then Israel’s campaign of genocide and probably displacement will not be stopped.

Francesca Albanese

Absolutely. And you know what shocks me is that when I talk to member states, even the most enlightened, so to speak, in the global, I mean in the West, which I call the global minority, given our territorial irrelevance in this world. But even when you spoke to member states who seem to be, to have an enlightened position and a human rights-oriented position on Palestine. When I make my recommendations to them, they say, oh, but you really expect us to boycott Israel?

Well, you’re a state, it’s not up to you to boycott. You have an obligation not to aid, not to assist, not to trade with Israel, not to send weapons, not to buy weapons, not to provide military technology, not to buy military technology. This is not an act of charity that I’m asking you. This is your obligation.

And this sort of nonchalance the member states have, even the ones who appear the most principled toward the disrespect of international [law] because this is what they do with great nonchalance, they violate international law through and through.

And the way, the only thing that comes to their mind is, do you think that we are really going to isolate Israel? Yeah, yeah, I mean the fact that they are really struggling with the thought is a measure of how far we are from the solution of the question.

Chris Hedges

What do you think, I mean starvation and over a half million Palestinians are now on the cusp of starvation. And then there is the whole issue of water. There’s no clean water. And then of course, medical supplies or humanitarian [aid] or anything, 90% of the Palestinians are either living in tents or in the open air. Where is this headed?

They’re luring the Palestinians like mice into a trap in the South with these… and nobody thinks that the aid hubs or the amount of food, the paltry amount of food is anything more than bait to essentially cram Palestinians into guarded compounds in the south. And of course they’re shooting dozens of Palestinians off in a day, who are in desperation trying to get something to eat.

Are they going to push them into the Sinai? Do you have any sense or maybe Israel doesn’t know but do you have any sense of where this is going to go next?

Francesca Albanese

I don’t have a precise sense other than knowing that Israel would be fine with whatever solution takes the Palestinians out of the Gaza Strip for now and then out of the West Bank later and then probably out of Israel. These are the three stages of the planned ethnic cleansing of historical Palestine because your audience should never forget that Israel is a state that was created inside Palestine.

So what we are talking about the Gaza Strip, West Bank and East Jerusalem are the little pieces of land that remain. And even there, Palestinians are not let free to enjoy the right of self-determination, like existing as a people. Israel is after this. Israel doesn’t want the Palestinians in their way. This is the real victory.

Because when 80% of the population supports the government in maintaining this level of violence toward the Palestinians, especially those in Gaza who are starving as we speak, who have nothing left than their dignity and the very few things and loves that remain in their life. The only victory for this government, which represents a large portion of Israeli society, is to get rid of the Palestinians.

I mean of course it doesn’t matter if it’s the Sinai or the Congo, they are begging every country to take the Palestinians. And the problem is that no-one can do that unless they are forced, unless the Palestinians ask and beg for being saved. This is so cruel and this is what’s happening.

But the Palestinians have not done it yet. Eyal Weizman of Forensic Architecture, has a very interesting way, having studied other genocides like the German genocide of the Nama and Herero people in Namibia, saying this way that the Israel are following is to confine the people in a place where they cannot survive on their own.

It’s like a concentration camp. It’s like being fully dependent on a hand that gives you, that hands out something but that’s not sustainable and all the rest is being destroyed. Gaza will not return to what it was because of the environmental damage, because of the contamination, because of all what Gaza is today. But it doesn’t matter. If there is a place where the Palestinians from Gaza will move, it’s Israel.

This is the opportunity to let the Palestinians return to their original homeland. And I understand that this is a huge shock, comes as a huge shock for the Israelis, but sooner or later they would have been confronted with this. They are living like many, like other settler societies. Sorry, you’re living on stolen land.

And you cannot, like the Americans who are not Native Americans and like the Australians who are not Aboriginal, you are living on stolen land. And the only redemption that you can have in this life, it’s fixing, it’s making right the wrongs of the past. So this is what conscientious Israelis should do.

Chris Hedges

I want to talk about erasure. Israel is not just physically erasing Palestine and, of course, has attacked its universities, its museums, its cultural centres. It has physically erased or killed through targeted assassinations, its intellectual class, its writers, its poets, over 200 journalists, its doctors.

And to what extent, and I want you to talk about the heavy campaigns that have been mounted against you by AIPAC and the Israel lobby, not only, I think, because you’re outspoken, but because your reports make it hard for Israel to erase what they’ve done and erase what is happening, which all genocidal killers seek to do.

Francesca Albanese

I often say that the attacks against me are emblematic of various aspects of this struggle. On the one hand, what happens to me is not unique in the sense that being accused of being pro-Hamas, pro-terrorism, antisemitic, it’s the litany of falsehood that everyone from the Pope to the secretary-general to scholars, activists, journalists, anyone with a minimum of decency who has dared denouncing the abhorrent reality in Palestine had to face.

So what has happened to me again is not unique. What I think is unique is the relentlessness of the attacks and how they continue to grow because I don’t give up. I believe it’s that because the more they threaten me, the more I say let me see how better I can do my job because it’s not about… I call them the barking dogs.

They’re really barking dogs and they don’t matter, their objective is to distract me and they will not succeed because I know them, I understand them because I often say I come from a place that has been plagued by the mafia. You know, how many things I’ve realised over the past months also about myself?

Why am I the way? Why I’m not scared by them? Why every time I start my car I am scared. Of course, there are times where I don’t open the door thinking my god, who’s going to be behind it? But this is why I live my life in a way that it’s full of meaning. I love my family. I love my kids. I love my husband. I love my friends. I love my colleagues and this is what I treasure and I cherish every day and every day whenever I manage to go to bed and sleep I have no regrets, because I’m doing what everyone should be doing.

So, on the one hand, if I were someone in Gaza or in other places in Palestine, but even one of the many Israelis with whom I interact constantly and feel desperate, feel devastated by what is being done in their name. If I were one of these people, I would love to have, I would like to have someone who understands them, who listens to them and who connects the dots. This is the thing that annoys my detractors superbly.

The fact that on the one hand they don’t manage to make me shut up, rather the contrary, at every attempted slap there is a storm against them. Doesn’t matter where they come from, doesn’t matter who they are, it always turns into more support over me. This is why when people ask me, how do you feel to be so hated? By whom?

By this bunch of minions and charlatans who are defending the genocide. Who cares? Who cares? But there is an entire world which is in turmoil and somewhat I have the possibility to be listened to, which is a huge privilege for me. And because I know how fallacious human, sorry, yeah, the human nature can be.

My anchor continues to be international law to the best way I can of interpreting it because this is universal. This applies to all of us. This is for all of us. So I’m not bringing my precepts or my ideology. I’m bringing something that belongs to all of us. And this is the thing that annoys the detractors is that I use the solidity of the facts and the law to tell them who they are, to put them in front of a mirror and it’s not that they don’t like me, they dislike the image that through me they get of themselves, genocidaires or supporters of a genocide.

Chris Hedges

How much has this changed the global community? And I’m thinking in particular, of course, within the Global South, which suffered their own Holocaust. You mentioned the Herero and the Namakwa, but the Armenians, the Kenyans under British colonialism, the Indians, especially the 1943 Bengal famine, for instance, three million Indians died.

And these Holocausts are not recognised by their perpetrators. Aimé Césaire in Discourse on Colonialism says that the reason that the Holocaust carried out by the Nazis against the Jews resonated was because the tactics that were employed, and these are his words, against the Coolies in India and the Blacks in Africa and the Algerians by the French in Algeria just were turned on other white Europeans.

And, of course, it’s been the Global South led by South Africa that has stood up to try and impose the rule of law on Israel on the genocide. But is this reconfiguring the global community?

Francesca Albanese

I think it is. I think it is. Not as fast as ending the genocide would require, but it is. So there are different trends that I see. First of all, as you say, there is a coming together around certain basic things. I’ve never heard so many people speaking the language of international law.

Seriously, I mean it’s as a lawyer, as a human rights lawyer, if I were given the opportunity not to look at the genocide for a moment, I would feel that the human rights mission is somewhat fulfilled because people are aware and are aware through a common lens that is allowing many, really, from Africa to Asia to the global minority and other places, really, to look at Palestine and recognise that.

There are some commonalities. People speak the language of human rights. Phenomenal, right? There is also another aspect of awakening is that never before have I heard so many people connecting the dots between the past and the present and the colonial past and the present.

I don’t know if you agree with me, but at least I sense that there is a global awareness of something that has for a long time been a prerogative, a painful prerogative of the global majority, the Global South, meaning the awareness of the pain and the wounds of colonialism.

Israel as a settler colonial frontier, a Western settler colonial frontier, is giving an opportunity to understand what settler colonialism is and has done. The third thing is that the awakening is coming by linking the dots. And look, I mean, we will have a chance to talk once my report is out.

But I keep on saying two things as I prepare myself to unveil what I’ve discovered through the findings of the last six months of investigation that the genocide in Gaza has not stopped because it’s lucrative, it’s profitable for far too many. It’s a business. People have exploited, I mean there are corporate entities, including from Palestine-friendly states, who have for decades made businesses and made profits out of the economy of the occupation, because Israel has always exploited Palestinian land and resources and Palestinian life.

But I mean, the profits have continued and even increased as the economy of the occupation transformed into an economy of genocide. And again, people need to understand that because Palestinians have simply, and I say simply with a lot of pain, and I don’t mean to be disrespectful toward the Palestinians, but they have provided these boundless training field to test the technologies, test weapons, to test surveillance techniques that now are being used against people everywhere from the Global South to the Global North.

Look at what’s happening in the US or in Germany. We are spied [on]. I mean, look at the use of drones, of biometrics. These are all things that have been experimented on the Palestinians first and foremost. So I think that there is this link that unfettered and boundless unchecked capitalism, which has been, colonial racial capitalism also for the Palestinians, is detrimental for all of us.

So how to respond to this? I do see a movement, I do see a revolution brewing, I call it the watermelon revolution and it’s there. There are young people, workers, anti-Zionist Jews or Jews who do not recognise themselves as anti-Zionist but still don’t want to have anything to do with Israel’s crimes and don’t want them to be in their names.

So there is this movement and at the level of countries I see for example the Hague Group which is a coalition primarily of countries from the Global South and it shouldn’t be like that. So I’ve supported, I’ve sustained, I’ve commended these countries and I call on other states from Asia to Africa and especially the West to join the Hague Group, which says let’s start by taking some modicums, some minimal steps to comply with international law.

No impunity, no harbour and no weapons for Israel. Which is really basic, but here’s where we are. Baby steps.

Chris Hedges

Can you talk about in this report that’s coming out some of the global corporations that are profiting off genocide and how they’re profiting off genocide?

Francesca Albanese

I won’t be able to tell you much because the report is still embargoed. But I decided to list about 50 corporate entities, from arms manufacturers to big tech companies to companies providing construction materials or extracting construction materials from the Occupied Palestinian Territory to the tourism industry, goods and services, supply chain.

And also these are the two main sectors of the displacement and replacement of the Palestinians. And then there is a network of enablers like insurers, pension funds, wealth funds, banks, universities, charities. It’s an ecosystem sustaining this illegality.

You know, the private sector tends to escape scrutiny, they’re very smart. And in fact, the private sector has historically been a driver of settler colonialism. During the 1600s, for example, think of companies of the Indies. They were leaving from the Netherlands, the Dutch ports, to co-reach and colonise the West India or Southeast Asia. I mean, why? Why? Why on earth? And this has happened.

But also there are also cases where companies or private entities were not the drivers but the enablers, providing tools, funds for colonial enterprises that then profited them. And this is why big companies and corporate interests have helped shape the law in a way that allowed them to escape scrutiny.

It’s not new that companies have profited from genocides, but think of what happened during the Holocaust. The Holocaust industrialist trials helped understand how companies made businesses out of the tragedy of millions of Jewish people.

And it’s shocking to see that some of the companies who were held responsible in the case of the Holocaust industrialist trials are still involved in the genocide of the Palestinians. And then there was the South Africa experience after the Truth and Reconciliation Commission concluded its work. Some companies were condemned to make reparations. So there have been historical moments that have prompted greater regulation for companies.

And for example, the UN guiding principles imposing due diligence to companies are an outcome of the South Africa experience. And still, it’s not enough. It’s definitely not enough because companies continue to operate in the gray areas of state responsibility.

So, for example, I put on notice 48 businesses and the response was, yeah, but it’s not our fault, it’s Israel. Yeah, it’s not up to you to tell us what we should do, it’s the states. So no, I’m sorry. Today the occupation is unlawful. Israel has been put on notice, is investigated directly or indirectly in at least three proceedings for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. And you cannot continue business as usual.

And if you do, you will have to face justice. So this is probably the storm that I will help to mount against them is to make sure that civil society and lawyers in every country where this business are registered, are active, and also that consumers know that they can vote, they can bail out. They can make sure, for example, there are tourism companies who advise settlement properties. You should see, or for example, real estate agents who sell nice English-speaking neighbourhoods in the heart of Judea and Samaria.

So this is normalisation of the occupation by a clique and you are going to be punished. Maybe not in court but surely you will lose a lot of clients when they will know what you do.

Chris Hedges

Let’s just close by talking about international bodies, the ICC, the United Nations. They’ve certainly stepped up and spoken in opposition to the genocide, attempted to hold Israel accountable for the genocide, but have no enforcement mechanism. How do you look at these international organizations and the role that they’ve played in the genocide?

Francesca Albanese

Look, I do not agree to the fullest with the argument that there are no enforcement mechanisms. There are enforcement mechanisms and this is member states. Member states have an obligation to enforce the decision of the ICJ.

There is even the Security Council. The Security Council last year passed a resolution ordering a ceasefire in Gaza, which was not respected. So there is no enforcement of anything these days that is thought, is conceived to put a limit to Israel’s impunity.

And in a way, yes, I agree with what you were saying before. Israel is seen somewhat like part of Western settler colonialism. Israel is seen as part of the Western confrontation with the rest of the world, which is shameful frankly. We shouldn’t be here, still here, in this racial way of, racial optics, this racialised way of looking at each other.

We are part of the same family. This is what humanity means. Doesn’t matter the colour of your skin, doesn’t matter the God you worship or don’t, doesn’t matter. It’s what makes us human and we are so cruel among all animals among all creatures in this world because we really have so many barriers that we have erected and we need to remove them.

Now it’s the chance I don’t know if we need another genocide, but this genocide is triggering something more Chris. You see the war in Iran? The war against Iran? It was totally predictable. It was totally predictable because Israel has been seeding wars in the region for decades. And it was Iraq, then it’s been other countries, Libya and Syria have also been devastated. It’s true, you cannot blame Israel for everything.

Well, Israel has surely benefitted from an annihilation of all adversaries in the region. And Iran, bombing Iran has been like feeding a demon. It was the long-term goal of several Israeli Governments and finally it has happened.

What would the Israelis have to gain from this seriously? From the death of innocent lives, being Iranians or Israelis? This is why I say this needs to stop. And the enforcement is there, but it’s with member states. Well, member states keep on, you know, kicking the can in the air and expecting that it’s a deus ex machina to intervene, being the European Union as a whole or being the United Nations as a whole. No!

It starts with principal member states and this is why once again I commend so much the Hague Group because they are acting not as a regional or trans-regional organisation but as a coalition of like-minded and principled states.

Chris Hedges

Great. Thanks, Francesca. And I want to thank Diego [Ramos], Victor [Padilla], Sofia [Menemenlis], Thomas [Hedges] and Max [Jones], who produced the show.

This piece is first appeared at ChrisHedges.Substack.com.

 

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations..