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Controversial UN Official Likes Anti-Semitic Posts Railing Against 'Jewish Billionaire Class'

United Nations special rapporteur Francesca Albanese (YouTube)
December 12, 2023

A United Nations official "liked" two social media posts this week that denounced the "Jewish billionaire class," in the latest example of controversial public activity from the anti-Israel official.

Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur for the Palestinian territories, "liked" the two X posts from Norman Finkelstein, who posted them Monday apparently in response to University of Pennsylvania president Liz Magill stepping down from her position after she faced backlash for her widely criticized congressional testimony on campus anti-Semitism.

"Make no mistake about it," Finkelstein wrote in one post. "In order to stifle dissent from Israel's genocidal war in Gaza, the Jewish billionaire class has launched the most concerted assault on academic freedom in the history of our country."

"The Jewish billionaire class must be stopped," he said in another. "The student body at University of Pennsylvania must boycott classes from Day One of the Spring semester until and unless President Magill is reinstated."

 

Finkelstein also wrote replies to both posts that condemned "Jewish supremacists," though Albanese did not engage specifically with those replies.

Neither Albanese nor the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights responded to a request for comment.

This is not the first time Albanese has engaged in social media activity with questionable language directed toward Jewish people. In 2014, eight years before she began her role as special rapporteur, she said in a Facebook post that the United States was "subjugated by the Jewish lobby." She distanced herself from that comment in a statement to the Times of Israel, which reported on it last year.

She has also made multiple controversial statements about Israel's war on Hamas since the Oct. 7 terror attacks. Last month, she said that Israel, under international law, does not have a legal right to self-defense against Hamas-controlled Gaza. A little over a week later, she told an Australian outlet that Hamas was "entitled to embrace resistance" when she was asked whether there were things people in countries like Australia do not understand about the terror group.

Albanese said earlier this month that calling on Hamas to release the hostages it took during the attacks is "unacceptable" and "[puts] the onus to end the carnage in Gaza on the Palestinians, including those being slaughtered in Gaza." She added that it is also a way of "justifying and deflecting the attention from the atrocities committed by the Israeli army in Gaza."