US has good cause to censure UN

Hamas’s long-overdue announcement that it agrees to the release of another 10 hostages if a Gaza ceasefire is agreed is hopefully a sign of movement and some slight progress in negotiations taking place in Qatar. But, absent an actual deal that releases all the hostages immediately, it is no more than that. Coinciding with it and no less important on Wednesday AEST was the Trump administration’s move to impose sanctions on a top official of the UN, which is supposed to be the world’s top peacemaking body but has, since the October 7, 2023, slaughter of 1200 Jews, played a pernicious role in undermining Israel while sustaining Hamas in its protracted intransigence.

Italian Francesca Albanese (no relation of our Prime Minister) is the UN Human Rights Council’s Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Territories. In announcing sanctions on her that include barring entry to the US, Secretary of State Marco Rubio denounced Ms Albanese’s “campaign of political and economic warfare against the US and Israel”. He highlighted her “illegitimate and shameful efforts to prompt (International Criminal Court) action against the US and Israel”.

Mr Rubio had good reason to do so. Ms Albanese is far from alone among UN officials in the vehement antagonism she has displayed towards Israel and the US. The UN has played a crucial role in undermining perceptions of Israel’s fight for survival against terrorism and, in doing so, helped Hamas. The Wall Street Journal has described Ms Albanese as “notorious” in pointing out, among other examples, instances when, at a pro-Palestinian conference, she declared Hamas had a “right to resist” the Israeli “occupation”, while equating Israel with Nazi Germany and calling the US “a nation founded by genocide” and “subjugated by the Jewish lobby”. As recently as May, Ms Albanese tweeted that the “Israel/US joint venture” of humanitarian aid distribution in Gaza was “concentration camp 2025” and “the worst humanity is capable of from the bastions of power”. At the UN, Ms Albanese called Israel’s war against Hamas “the escalatory phase of a longstanding settler colonial project of erasure”. That such statements – wacky though they may be – from one of the world body’s most senior officials have played into Hamas’s hands and helped the terrorists in their intransigence and defiance of pressure to agree to a ceasefire and release all the hostages seems beyond doubt.

UN officials rarely have to answer for their notorious anti-Israel bias that has been so destructive to what hopes there are for peace in Gaza. But that once-in-a-blue moon event has clearly arrived with Mr Rubio’s justified sanctioning of Ms Albanese. It should not stop with her. UN bias has much to answer for in the building of global perceptions of Israel as the villain in a humanitarian crisis that is entirely the consequence of Hamas’s October 7 massacre. Twenty-one months later it is a disgrace that what hopes there are for a peace deal and the release of the innocent hostages seized in contravention of every tenet of human decency on that day depend on whether the evil thugs currently in charge of Hamas deign to agree.

With senior officials at the UN like Ms Albanese, it is no wonder Hamas feels so emboldened in its intransigence, which now appears to indicate that even if there is a ceasefire, not all the hostages will be released. That is a diabolical reflection on the abysmal failure of the role the world body has played throughout the Gaza crisis. It has benefited only Hamas.

Hopefully Donald Trump is right that, following talks in Washington with Benjamin Netanyahu and the negotiations in Doha, there is a “very good chance that we’ll have a (Gaza hostage) settlement, an agreement, of some kind this week, and maybe next week if not”.

But if there is, it will be no thanks to the UN and its “notorious” anti-Israel officials such as Ms Albanese. They’ve done nothing to help, and that is something Mr Trump and Mr Rubio should not forget when it comes to the US’s critical role as far and away the major funder of the UN’s budget.