The Persecution of Francesca Albanese - Read by Eunice Wong

This article is read by Eunice Wong, a Juilliard-trained actor, featured on Audible's list of Best Women Narrators. Her work is on the annual Best Audiobooks lists of the New York Times, Audible, AudioFile, & Library Journal. www.eunicewong.actor

Text originally published July 9, 2025.

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When the history of the genocide in Gaza is written, one of the most courageous and outspoken champions for justice and the adherence to international law will be Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur, who today the Trump administration is sanctioning. Her office is tasked with monitoring and reporting on human rights violations that Israel commits against Palestinians.

Albanese, who regularly 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” that allows the genocide to continue. Her office has issued detailed reports documenting war crimes in Gaza and the West Bank, one of which, called “Genocide as colonial erasure,” I have reprinted as an appendix in my latest book, “A Genocide Foretold.”

She has informed private organizations that they are “criminally liable” for assisting Israel in carrying out the genocide in Gaza. She announced that if true, as has been reported, that the former British prime minister David Cameron threatened to defund and withdraw from the International Criminal Court (ICC) after it issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant, which Cameron and the other former British prime minister Rishi Sunak could be charged with a criminal offense for, under the Rome Statute. The Rome Statute criminalizes those who seek to prevent war crimes from being prosecuted.

She has called on top European Union (EU) officials to face charges of complicity of 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 which was intercepted by Israel, was carrying not only supplies, but a message of humanity.

You can see the interview I did with Albanese here.

Her latest report lists 48 corporations and institutions, including Palantir Technologies Inc., Lockheed Martin, Alphabet Inc. (Google), Amazon, International Business Machine Corporation (IBM), Caterpillar Inc., Microsoft Corporation and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), along with banks and financial firms such as BlackRock, insurers, real estate firms and charities, which in violation of international law, are making billions from the occupation and the genocide of Palestinians.

You can read my article on Albanese’s most recent report here.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio condemned her support for the ICC, four of whose judges have been sanctioned by the U.S. for issuing arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant last year. He criticized Albanese for her efforts to prosecute American or Israeli nationals who sustain the genocide, saying she is unfit for service as a special rapporteur. Rubio also accused Albanese of having "spewed unabashed antisemitism, expressed support for terrorism, and open contempt for the United States, Israel, and the West." The sanctions will most likely prevent Albanese from travelling to the U.S. and will freeze any assets she may have in the country.

The attack against Albanese presages a world without rules, one where rogue states, such as the U.S. and Israel, are permitted to carry out war crimes and genocide without any accountability or restraint. It exposes the subterfuges we use to fool ourselves and attempt to fool others. It reveals our hypocrisy, cruelty and racism. No one, from now on, will take seriously our stated commitments to democracy, freedom of expression, the rule of law or human rights. And who can blame them? We speak exclusively in the language of force, the language of brutes, the language of mass slaughter, the language of genocide.

“The acts of killing, the mass killing, the infliction of psychological and physical torture, the devastation, the creation of conditions of life that would not allow the people in Gaza to live, from the destruction of hospitals, the mass forced displacement and the mass homelessness, while people were being bombed daily, and the starvation — how can we read these acts in isolation?” Albanese asked in an interview I did with her when we discussed her report, “Genocide as colonial erasure.”

The militarized drones, helicopter gunships, walls and barriers, checkpoints, coils of concertina wire, watchtowers, detention centers, deportations, brutality and torture, denial of entry visas, apartheide existence that comes with being undocumented, loss of individual rights and electronic surveillance, are as familiar to desperate migrants along the Mexican border, or attempting to enter Europe, as they are to Palestinians.

This is what awaits those who Frantz Fanon calls “the wretched of the earth.”

Those that defend the oppressed, such as Albanese, will be treated like the oppressed.

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Photos

Chris Hedges

Chris Hedges, a former Pulitzer Prize winning foreign correspondent for the New York Times and best selling author of 'Empire of Illusion', stands next to a window for a portrait, Princeton, NJ, November 2010. Hedges is also the author of 'Death of the Liberal Class' and is a columnist for Truthdig. (Photo by Oliver Morris/Getty Images)

NATO Foreign Ministers Meeting April 2024

BRUSSELS, BELGIUM - APRIL 03: Britain's Foreign Secretary David Cameron speaks to the press after his arrival at NATO headquarters on the first day of the NATO Foreign Ministers' meeting on April 03, 2024 in Brussels, Belgium. The meeting of foreign ministers from NATO countries coincided with the 75th anniversary of the alliance's founding. (Photo by Omar Havana/Getty Images)

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LONDON, ENGLAND - NOVEMBER 21: Britain's Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, right, and David Cameron, the Foreign Secretary, left, walk across Horse Guards parade for the Ceremonial Welcome by King Charles and Queen Camilla for the President of Korea Yoon Suk Yeol and First Lady, Kim Keon Hee, on November 21, 2023 in London, England. The President of Korea Yoon Suk Yeol is on a four-day State visit to Britain. (Photo by Frank Augstein - WPA Pool/Getty Images)

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CATANIA, ITALY - JUNE 01: The bow of the Madleen ship, featuring an illustration inspired by the Palestinian flag, ready to set off from the port of San Giovanni Li Cuti on June 01, 2025 in Catania, Italy. (Photo by Fabrizio Villa/Getty Images)

'Freedom Flotilla' And Greta Thunberg Prepare To Depart Italy For Gaza

CATANIA, ITALY - JUNE 01: Greta Thunberg with part of the crew of the ship Madleen, shortly before departure for Gaza, during the press conference in San Giovanni Li Cuti on June 01, 2025 in Catania, Italy. (Photo by Fabrizio Villa/Getty Images)

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WASHINGTON, DC - MAY 10: Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) leaves the Senate Chamber following a vote at the U.S. Capitol on May 10, 2023 in Washington, DC. Republican and Democratic Congressional leaders met with President Joe Biden at the White House yesterday to continue to negotiate how to raise the debt limit. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

TOPSHOT-US-ISRAEL-POLITICS-DIPLOMACY-TRUMP-NETANYAHU

TOPSHOT - US President Donald Trump shakes hands with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a meeting in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, on April 7, 2025. (Photo by SAUL LOEB / AFP) (Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)

PALESTINIAN-ISRAEL-CONFLICT-FOOD

Palestinians shove to receive a hot meal at a charity kitchen in the Mawasi area of Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on July 22, 2025. The head of Gaza's largest hospital said 21 children have died due to malnutrition and starvation in the Palestinian territory in the past three days, amid a devastating assault by Israeli forces. (Photo by AFP) (Photo by -/AFP via Getty Images)

TOPSHOT-PALESTINIAN-ISRAEL-US-BARRIER-TRUMP

TOPSHOT - A man walks past graffiti depicting US President Donald Trump on the controversial Israeli separation barrier in the West Bank town of Bethlehem on August 4, 2017. (Photo by Musa AL SHAER / AFP) (Photo by MUSA AL SHAER/AFP via Getty Images)

Emergency Ministerial Conference on Global Leaders Convene in Bogota

BOGOTA, COLOMBIA - JULY 15: Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on the Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanes attends the Emergency Ministerial Conference on Palestine at the San Carlos Palace in Bogota, Colombia, on July 15, 2025. (Photo by Juancho Torres/Anadolu via Getty Images)

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