The UN appointed Italian legal expert, Francesca Albanese, as a Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories. However, the Israeli occupation felt threatened and denounced the appointment, arguing that the legal expert once compared the Palestinian Nakba to the Holocaust. 

“'Israel does not expect any fair, objective, nor professional treatment from an activist who promotes outrageous libels,” "Israel’s" Ambassador to the UN in Geneva Meirav Eilon Shahar said after the UN Human Rights Council President announced her appointment on Friday.

Shahar argued that Albanese has compared the Holocaust to the Nakba and advocates for the de-facto destruction of the Israeli occupation so-called "Jewish state". 

Albanese replaces Canadian legal expert Michael Lynk, who ended his six-year term as a Special Rapporteur by submitting a report accusing "Israel" of apartheid crimes against the Palestinians.

Who is Francesca Albanese?

She is the author of the book Palestinian Refugees in International Law. Albanese has also spoken in videos posted on YouTube of her support of the Palestinian Right of Return.

Hillel Neuer, executive director of the Geneva-based nongovernmental organization UN Watch, said he expected she would follow in Lynk’s footsteps who entrenched “the discrimination inherent in the mandate through his one-sided UN reports and statements that gave a free pass to systematic violations by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas.”

“Just as tragic, terrible, unspeakable, is the tragedy that befell the Jewish people in the [Holocaust], so for the Palestinians, the Nakba represents the crumbling of the connective tissue of a people,” Albanese said in the video in which her words were translated into English.

Albanese said the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian people was not a war between states, but a “colonial project that has turned into apartheid.”