UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine Francesca Albanese, October 27, 2022 (Photo: Screenshot)

A bipartisan group of 18 Congressional lawmakers on Monday published a letter calling to disband the UN’s Commission of Inquiry into Israel and fire the UN’s special rapporteur for Palestine, Francesca Albanese.

Led by Reps. Brad Schneider (D-IL) and Ann Wagner (R-MO) and addressed to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk, the letter cites comments Albanese has made in the past month, including calling Israel a “colonial” “apartheid regime” in explaining her refusal to condemn a Palestinian terrorist attack in which seven Israelis were murdered outside a Jerusalem synagogue.

“Ms. Albanese has repeatedly refused to condemn terrorist attacks against Israelis while continuing her condemnations of Israel,” the letter says. “For an official tasked with serving as an independent, neutral, and expert voice on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, her inexcusable silence against terrorism targeting Israelis and her outrageous and prejudicial remarks clearly reflect the irredeemable bias of her mandate.”

The letter follows a similar effort in January that called for Albanese’s ouster in response to her “outrageous antisemitic statements.”

Since beginning her six-year term in May 2022, Albanese has used her platform to declare that Palestinian rocket fire from Gaza is part of a “right to resist”, praised the Mayor of Barcelona who severed ties between the city and Israel over its alleged “apartheid” policies, and had previously written in 2014 that the United States was “subjugated by the Jewish lobby.”

The UN Commission of Inquiry’s Miloon Kothari made similar comments last year saying that the “Jewish lobby” controls social media and questioned Israel’s membership in the UN. Israel’s Foreign Ministry called Kothari’s apology for those remarks “pathetic and unconvincing.” 

The commission, formally known as “the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and in Israel,” was established by a resolution of the UN Human Rights Council in 2021, and is tasked with investigating alleged violations of international humanitarian law in Israel, the West Bank, Gaza.

The Congressional letter describes the commission as part of the “endemic” anti-Israel bias and antisemitism within the UN system.

“Again, we strongly urge you to call for severing all ties with Ms. Albanese, help disband the Commission of Inquiry into Israel, and recommit to a United Nations system free from antisemitic and anti-Israel bias,” it reads.