Richard Falk, international law scholar and former  UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories Since 1967, talks about the July 2025 U.S.  sanctions imposed on current Rapporteur  Francesca Albanese. Well known for her  criticism of Israel’s Gaza offensive and her classification of  genocide which now includes wilful mass starvation, Albanese has become the most embattled Special Rapporteur to date.  Falk himself was no stranger to such  pressures during his own 2008-2014 tenure.

Albanese has built her work upon previous rapporteurs while expanding legal findings around the topics of  genocide, state violence, and settler colonialism. For instance, Falk’s predecessor  John Dugard (2001-2008) was the South African jurist who first raised the apartheid context. Succeeding Falk was  Michael Lynk (2016-2022), the Canadian academic who formally advanced the legal case that Israeli policies fell under apartheid.  Falk describes Albanese’s U.S. sanctions and  smear campaigns, and reflects on the risks of advancing  international awareness in the face of significant geopolitical obstacles.

Daniel Falcone: How do you see  Francesca Albanese building upon the work you did as Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories and what was the purpose of her  sanctioning?

Richard Falk: Partly due to the context of Israel’s increasingly controversial approach to retaliating against Hamas after its 2023 attacks on a series of Israeli border villages and seizure of an estimated 250 hostages, independent and trustworthy widely available  reporting on the developments in Gaza during the more than 21 months that followed was scarce to the point of absence. The rare reliable reportage turned out to be an invaluable resource superbly brought to the publics of the world in the six reports of  Francesca Albanese in her unpaid role as  UN Special Rapporteur on the Palestinian Territories of Gaza, West Bank, and East Jerusalem occupied since 1967.

To my knowledge, never have the reports and activities of any of the  58 special rapporteurs received the attention, positive and negative as those of  Albanese. Particularly, her courageous naming of the indiscriminate and disproportionate violence by Israel against the people and their vital civilian infrastructure as [ genocidal intent], backed by first-class scholarly analysis and documentation has captured the public imagination of those opposed to Israel’s extreme military operation while simultaneously enraging the complicit government supporters of Israel and their civil society Zionist well-organised allies.

Prior Palestinian SRs have also been on the receiving end of defamatory attacks by Israel and its global NGO network of apologists, starting mildly with  John Dugard, a distinguished anti-apartheid jurist from South Africa and continuing with far harsher criticism of  Michael Lynk, my successor in the years 2014-2022 and  Albanese’s predecessor. I think any objective appraisal of our four performance records would agree that we tried to report truthfully within the scope of the  UN Mandate and were not in any way deserving of antisemitic smears of the sort directed at Michael Lynk and myself.

I may have attracted the nastiest smears from  UN Watch, an NGO headquartered in  Geneva that was unscrupulous in its style of response to my SR criticisms of Israel’s administration of occupied Palestine, perhaps  exaggerated because of my Jewish background. In effect, we SRs were trying our best to discharge the tricky responsibilities of being an SR with competence and diligence, all the while being baited as antisemitic zealots.

We received scant protection from the UN, including the Secretary General during my two three-year terms as SR. SG Ban Ki Moon lamely responded to  calls for my dismissal by saying that he lacked the authority to do so as I was not part of the professional UN civil service. The current SG, Antonio Guterres, has not done much better in relation to Albanese, and until now has refrained from endorsing her central assessment that Israel is indeed patently guilty of  genocide.

In passing, I would note that  Albanese’s reports and talks have done more to achieve an accurate appraisal of Israel behaviour in Gaza and more recently, the West Bank, than the whole of the UN staff, and its two political organs — the Security Council and General Assembly that have been stymied by geopolitical obstacles as well as the  International Court of Justice that possesses  declaratory authority and did acknowledge that the Israeli violence made it plausible to conclude that it constituted genocide. This was an historic interim decision by the  ICJ but had no ability to enforce its interim measures constraining Israeli violence or blockade of the international delivery of humanitarian aid. The  ICJ also has almost no prospect of veto-free enforcement when it issues its final judgment in the years ahead.

The question of why the U.S. Government chose to  sanction Albanese after her sixth report to the UN is, of course, highly speculative although intriguing. The reasons given in the explanatory statement of the U.S. Secretary of State, Marco Rubio emphasise U.S. grave objections to her recommendation that International Criminal Court investigate, and possibly prosecute, individuals associated with profitable undertakings of  48 named prominent corporations whose operations related to the commission of international crimes in Gaza, especially genocide.

This specific allegation, which charges  Albanese with economic warfare against the U.S. and Israel is reinforced in the Rubio statement by a totally unjustified attack on her personal unfitness for the SR position, given her  falsely supposed malice toward Israelis and Jews. It is itself a national disgrace that the U.S. Government would stray so far from reality in its strained attempt to take punitive action against  Albanese and the ICC and exhibit thereby its unconditional affinities with Israel at the expense of undermining a respected international judicial institution that is not part of the UN.

Daniel Falcone: Both you and Albanese faced  accusations of bias and received political pressure from  power systems. How would you state the differences in how the UN system and media responded to your respective tenures?

Richard Falk: The biggest difference was between an abusive occupation in my period as SR, and undisguised genocide in Albanese’s case that was  deliberately obscured for a series of reasons. The shadow of the Holocaust, as invoked by Israeli ideologues and state propaganda specialists tried to discredit the very possibility that the Jews could be guilty of  genocide no matter what they did to another people. Another aspect was the Orientalism or tacit racial character of the  criminalisation of genocide, which limited its political applicability to the targeting of Europeans as in  Srebrenica 30 years ago.

The issue of legal applicability is another matter as demonstrated by the International Court of Justice to the  Gambia submission in relation to allegations of genocide against the Myanmar government and of course, to the South African submission against Israel.

To put the distinction between the separate reactions to our SR performances another way is to point out that to be implicated in giving credibility to accusations of  genocide and  settler colonialism is far more inflammatory than my depictions of Israeli crimes and wrongdoing contained in my reports and linked to the occupation. Besides,  Albanese was a far more prominent and charismatic international personality with a long record of identification with the Palestinian struggle. Among other contributions, she was the co-founder and chair of the influential  Global Network on the Question of Palestine. A further factor may have been differences in style in the face of unpleasant personal attacks that we both experienced. I tended to ignore even the nastiest barbs and went on with my work under the mandate to the best of my ability.

Albanese is more inclined to be a warrior who devotes energy to refuting such scandalous attacks, fighting back to defend her reputation as a professional  human rights defender. As she is much younger, she has more energy at her disposal and more of a reputation for protecting herself. It is appropriate and a hopeful sign of the changing times that she is mentioned so often as deserving of the  2026 Nobel Peace Prize, and even to be championed as the people’s choice to be the next UN Secretary General, fitting rejections of the spiteful U.S. sanctions imposed on July 9 of this year.

Daniel Falcone: Albanese has spoken about  root causes and  structural violence in her reports. How do you read her descriptions in relation to your own efforts to apply international legal standards re:  U.S. and Israeli policies?

Richard Falk: In retrospect, I would have been perfectly comfortable emphasising, as Albanese has so effectively done, structural violence and settler colonialism in my SR reports. Given the situation during my tenure as SR I tended to focus more on the Israeli military incursions of 2008-09 and 2012, and specific violations of the  4th Geneva Conventions, especially the unlawful settler movement, the incorporation of East Jerusalem into sovereign Israeli territory, as well as the excesses of  repression in the West Bank.

I was less sensitive to the  big picture issues delineated by Albanese that rose in awareness during the aftermath of January 2023 ascent to power of the extremist coalition under Netanyahu’s premiership. This formation of government composed of a secular right Likud orientation and the ultra-religious Zionism of  Smotrich and Ben Gvir gave clear signals even before October 7 that this new Israeli leadership was intent on completing the  Zionist Project. This consisted of erasing Palestinian political identity and minimising the physical presence of Palestinians within sovereign Israel, as well as consolidating territorial sovereignty of at least Area C in the West Bank where most of the settlements were located.

Such developments encouraged systemic appraisals of Israel’s domination and exploitation of occupied Palestine, coming after  SR Michael Lynk’s final report detailing allegations and analysis of the international crime of apartheid, a systemic prelude to the  genocide that erupted after October 7 to shape Albanese’s role as the most embattled of this succession of four likeminded Special Rapporteurs when it came to appraising Israel’s behavior from the perspective of international law.

Daniel Falcone: What are the personal/professional risks with holding positions that require speaking critically of  rogue states? Is Albanese navigating this terrain differently than you once did?

Richard Falk: As  Francesca Albanese’s experience has made clear the admirable performance of a controversial UN mandate offers no secure protection against vindictive government pushbacks or defamatory NGO defenders of incriminating behaviour by their patrons and ideological allies. It is  Albanese’s fate to find herself in the eye of the storm generated by Israel’s flagrant criminality that has included demeaning the UN, defying international law, and glorifying behaviour that is increasingly acknowledged, even in the West, as genocide.

On the one side, she has experienced the worst formal backlash by way of the imposition of U.S. sanctions and the most troublesome  civil society hostility in the form of repeated death threats. On the other hand, she has emerged as a hero, the Joan of Arc of our time, celebrated around the world. In coming months, we will bear witness to which of these portrayals gains the upper hand.

In the current atmosphere, the kind of adverse publicity that holders of this SR mandate receive is likely to have some  costs in terms of  academic appointments and invitations. These professional slights are mostly hidden, often exhibiting nothing more than the administrative reluctance to provoke  donor pressures or governmental pressures on themselves. This is especially the case with respect to Israel and Zionism. Zionist sympathisers, along with Christian Zionists are active in their post-Holocaust efforts to discredit Israeli critics, especially if outspoken, occupy important positions, and are influential.

These issues have assumed more salience as pro-Israel foreign policy has come under increasing attack, and in view of the bipartisan support for Israel in Washington even during the current  Trump presidency and the continuing genocide. As the tides of civil society opinion are turning more and more against Israel, the situation may alter, and someone of Albanese’s bravery under fire and professional excellence may make her a celebrity commencement speaker, especially if she does indeed receive the  Nobel Prize soon.

As for myself, I have a lower visibility, although this could change if Zionist activists or Israel focus on the  Gaza Peoples Tribunal that has its final session in October of which I am president. So far, my advanced age and retirement from Princeton has somewhat muted Zionist hostility as I am presumably not worth the trouble. I did experience some protest activity in the past decade when I received an honorary degree from York University in Canada and again when I was invited to give annual  lectures honouring the legacy of  Edward Said at Princeton and Columbia.

In view of the positive aspects of having the honor to be a Special Rapporteur entrusted by the  UN Human Rights Council with reporting on the denial of Palestinian rights under international law this was a small price to pay with many professional and personal rewards, including fascinating encounters with many admirable Palestinians living under the most difficult and humiliating conditions or suffering the anguish of exile.

As earlier suggested, the magnitude of  Francesca Albanese’s overall experience is on an entirely different scale. In many respects, not yet properly acknowledged her performance deserved to be recognised as the most successful and persuasive account of the genocide narrative, which was vigorously resisted in the months immediately following October 7, but has gradually, if reluctantly, become the accepted reality almost everywhere.

The UN by way of  Albanese has provided the most credible truth-telling and witnessing of the Gaza genocide to the increasing embarrassment of governments and leading media platforms supposedly dedicated to truthful communication even when it casts dark shadows over controversial government policies. Such dedication to ensuring an informed citizenry is one of the distinguishing characteristics of genuine patterns of democratic governance.

This implies an ability to resist the pressures of concentrated political  power and wealth. The current attacks by Trump on independent media voices and platforms suggests that the autocrats have so far been denied outright victory, and when the smoke clears,  Albanese will receive some credit for playing a key role in this deep societal struggle against formidable forces of darkness.

Republished from Counter Punch, 24 July 2025

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