Francesca Albanese spoke to Arthur Townend about Israel's genocide and the West's failure to act
Francesca Albanese
By Arthur Townend
Wednesday 13 November 2024
SOCIALIST WORKER Issue
United Nations (UN) special rapporteur for Palestine Francesca Albanese has demanded the Labour government stop all arms sales to Israel—and slammed Keir Starmer as a “genocide denier”.
Albanese told Socialist Worker that Britain “has a clear obligation under international law, not to aid or assist the unlawfulness of the occupation or Israel’s connected endeavour”.
She argued that the Labour government “needs to stop trading weapons with Israel, transferring or buying arms and other harmful services”.
Britain “must also suspend its trade with Israel because there is, at least, a plausible risk of genocide, and human rights lawyers holding positions of power should not be genocide deniers”, added Albanese.
She has been speaking at various universities in Britain to detail the destruction Israel is waging on Palestine and help build the student Palestine movement.
At Queen Mary’s university in London, Albanese said that her mandate in the UN is unique because it’s the “first mandate that somewhat confronts the Western system”.
“The reason why Palestine epitomises injustice in such a massive way is because the political wheel does not allow Palestine into international law.”
Albanese said that it’s important to recognise that Israel’s actions before 7 October play a critical role in facilitating Israel’s ongoing genocide.
“The reason why we did not see the genocide coming has much to do with our ignorance, and our lack of understanding about what genocide is. There is agreement that there are stages that lead to genocide as physical and biological destruction of a group,” she said.
“Violence has always been there, but it was very disproportionate and it was state lead by Israel. Of course there has been violence against the Israelis, because their occupation was an oppressive system that generated violence in response.”
But despite many reports prior to 7 October detailing Israel’s atrocious, destructive and murderous actions in Palestine, none confronted the issue of self-determination.
“Even the most progressive reports, like that of Amnesty International, were missing the point that for the Palestinians self-determination is not something that can wait for negotiations.
“Self-determination is what enables people to negotiate, to have a voice, because it’s the right to exist, freely, as a people on a land.”
But how does Israel constrain the self-determination of Palestinians? For Albanese, “People in the West do not understand that Palestinians are framed as a security threat.
“Mass incarceration works through a draconian system, the criminalisation of basic freedoms and no access to justice. This is physical—Palestinians are segregated in their land. There are gates, fences and checkpoints.”
She added that Palestinians are “the most surveyed people on earth because they are guinea pigs for the system. Israel trains weapons and surveillance systems on them and then Israel sells it abroad.”
“So this is all the work Israel has been doing before the genocide. Israel enforced an apartheid system to push through its settler colonial project, which laid the foundations for its current genocide.”
Albanese also unpacked the report she published in March this year on Israel’s first five months of genocide, “which had been destructive beyond belief”.
The report analyses Israel’s use of violence. “Since the beginning, everything has been considered destroyable—anything that is necessary to live.
“The main conclusion of my first report was ‘humanitarian camouflage’—Israel is not denying what it is doing, but it is justifying its actions by capsizing the protection that international law affords and transforming Gaza into a place without civilians.”
“This is what is happening to Lebanon, you see the same script. In March, I said that if this is not stopped, it will become the new way to do wars.”
Israel’s violent and murderous warmongering in Lebanon shows how it is expanding its strategy in Palestine to wage further destruction in the Middle East.
In October, Albanese submitted another report to the UN’s human rights council. It argued that Israel’s direct intention to genocide the Palestinians “could not be more evident from Israeli conduct when viewed in its totality”, and that Israel’s “genocidal intent” has been “rationalised as self-defence”.
The report details how “systematic attacks on Gaza food sovereignty indicate an intent to destroy its population through starvation” and that Israel is targeting health facilities to target Palestinians.
The report concluded, “It is the entire state apparatus that has engineered, articulated and executed genocidal violence, through acts which in their totality may lead to the destruction of the Palestinian people. This must stop.
“This ongoing genocide is doubtlessly the consequence of the exceptional status and protracted impunity that has been afforded to Israel.”
Read the full report here.
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