Paris, 16 February 2024
One week ago, France’s President, Emmanuel Macron, had defined Hamas’ 7 October attack on Southern Israel as “the largest anti-Semitic massacre of our century.” The unwarranted response by UN Special Rapporteur, Francesca Albanese, who claims to be impartial, was: “No, Mr. Macron. The victims of 7/10 were not killed because of their Judaism, but in response to Israel’s oppression.”
The French Foreign Ministry promptly responded to the UN Rapporteur, underlining that “October 7 was indeed the largest anti-Semitic massacre of the 21st century and defining the situation otherwise is a mistake.” According to the Quai d’Orsay, “these comments [by Albanese] are all the more scandalous given that the fight against anti-Semitism and all forms of racism is at the heart of the foundation of the UN.”
The Wiesenthal Centre Director for International Relations, Dr Shimon Samuels, noted that “again, Ms. Albanese reverts the responsibility of murder, rape and kidnapping onto the victims, implying that it is Israel’s fault if others have repeatedly waged war and killed Jews for decades.”
To those, like her, who seem to be convinced that the history of violence in the region had begun only after Israel’s independence in 1948, the Centre recalls that Arab-Palestinian violence against Palestinian Mandate Jews goes back to the 1920 Nebi Musa riots, the 1921 Jerusalem stabbings, the 1929 massacres in Hebron, Safed and elsewhere, the 1931-32 Black Hand killings of Jewish kibbutzniks, the many murders of Jews between 1936 and 1938, from the Jaffa riots to the Tiberias pogroms...
Violence escalated until the 1947 UN partition plan, which was rejected by the Arabs. The newborn State of Israel was thus attacked by the Arab League armies (Egypt, Transjordan, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and smaller contingents from Saudi Arabia and Yemen) and also the local Holy Jihad Army as well as the Gaza Protectorate militia...
And even after 1948, the Jewish communities of many Middle East and North African countries have been persecuted, expropriated, killed or expelled. These communities found refuge in Israel and further enriched the social fabric of the Jewish State.
Samuels reiterated: “Ms. Albanese is supposed to be an ‘impartial’ Rapporteur, but considering her apparent ideological bias and vested interest, that would explain her disregard of historical facts, we appeal to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres to immediately fire her.”
“The causes of the October 7 massacre are not subject to interpretation. For decades, we have reported systematic anti-Semitism in Palestinian schools, on TV shows, at public events and through NGO campaigns... Hamas leadership has promised to repeat their infamous assault on human dignity until Israel is destroyed, the Jews exterminated and a Palestinian caliphate established ‘from the river to the sea!’. If Albanese finds only justifications for the terrorists’ brutality, then she is clearly not fit for that post,” concluded Samuels.
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