Francesca Albanese on the economics of genocide

(oslobodjene.ba)

For some, Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories since 1967, is a hired heroine who, having advocated and protected Palestinian lives for years, deserves a nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize, while the US administration considers her a completely biased person, with anti-Semitic traits, who deserves some drastic punitive measures. She is malicious, supports terrorism, acts illegitimately - Secretary of State Marco Rubio listed all of Albanese's crimes in a press release - directly imputing to her cooperation with the International Criminal Court (ICC), which President Trump strictly prohibited with Executive Order 14203, announcing sanctions against anyone who wants to investigate, arrest, detain and prosecute citizens of the US and Israel, without the formal consent of those two countries.

Rubio only confirmed this sovereign logic: Albanese violated the sovereignty of both countries, the relatively youthful Secretary of State will write - which is politically inexcusable, and in her recent report entitled "From the Economy of Occupation to the Economy of Genocide", she also lashed out at numerous American companies from the financial, technological, defense, energy and service sectors, so Rubio added the accusation of interfering in American national interests.

The establishment of the position of Special Rapporteur of the UN Human Rights Council on the Occupied Palestinian Territories dates back to 1993, when the Commission on Human Rights decided to appoint a special rapporteur to analyze whether Israel is violating international norms, in particular international humanitarian law and the Geneva Convention relating to the protection of civilians in times of war. Italian Francesca Albanese (1977), a lawyer by profession who has specialized in international humanitarian law with a special emphasis on human rights in the context of Israeli-Palestinian relations in her work, is just - although it sounds a bit prosaic - doing her job. Her character fits the description of a courageous southern woman - she was born in the Italian region of Campania, whose capital is the iconic city of Naples - she is engaged, married, a mother of two children, sharp-tongued, polemical rhetoric, fights against conformity, dreams of a better world and is not afraid of conflict. She will say in a recent interview for an Irish media that her southern origin determined her: the mafia that marked the areas of the south of Italy caused a reaction among Albanese that every similar phenomenon should be fought against, bravely and engaged, dreaming of somewhat fairer social relations.

Her academic and later professional career enabled Albanese, with the aforementioned character traits, to become the Special Rapporteur on Palestine in 2022. She set off, we would say colloquially, “into the heartland”: in her first public appearances, she reminded the world of the historical injustice that the Palestinians have experienced, of the unworthy life they are forced to live, and of the chronic deprivation of rights, legal, economic, and life. She quickly gained a fairly large number of critics. The non-governmental organization UNWatch, which normally monitors UN-related processes, accused her of discrimination, anti-Semitism, bias, and her husband’s connection to the Palestinian Ministry of Economy, for which he had previously prepared several expert documents in exchange for financial compensation.

The aforementioned report, signed by Francesca Albanese, is a tragic witness of our time, a chronicle and factography of the systemic subjugation of the lives of specific Palestinians. In her report, she emphasizes how Western corporate entities have played a key role in stifling the Palestinian economy in recent history. They supported Israeli expansion in the occupied territory, while at the same time imposing “draconian restrictions” on the Palestinians themselves - on basic human and economic activities, bringing them into a state of captive market and captive life. Financial and academic institutions have patronized such activities: some with material resources, others with ideological support.

The technological superiority that otherwise adorns the State of Israel - some consider it the prototype of a start-up nation - after the Hamas terrorist attack in the desert was used as a tool for the mass and indiscriminate killing of civilian populations, and before that it was used for the purposes of technological surveillance and segregation of the population. The Palestinian territory that Albanese mentions in the report served as a testing ground for modern military capabilities, air defense, drones and similar weapons. Military technology that is thus tested in real space and time is certified as proven in combat and is sold more easily and better. A network of intermediaries, consultants, auditors, lawyers, economists, agents and other speculators contributed to this, making astronomical profits.

Albanese wrote that “the repression of Palestinians has become progressively automated, with technology companies providing a dual infrastructure (…) while profiting from the unique testing ground for military technology that the occupied Palestinian territory offers.” All of the world’s most famous technology giants, whose services we use every day, have supplied technology to Israel, which will later adapt it for military purposes, and since 1967, the Palestinians have been left without resources: water, electricity and energy have been delivered to them through an intermediary - Israel - so they are also deprived in terms of resources.

Today in Gaza we are only witnessing the extreme phase of what has been in the making for decades - this is the gist of the report. These are not random, fatalistic events, but intentional actions, well-planned with the support of Western partners, through the corporate and military-industrial complex. For crimes of great magnitude - from war crimes to genocide - it is necessary to establish a complex structure that combines political, military, technological and corporate power and raw executioners. Albanese only documented such actions in her report, securing American sanctions, but at the same time a nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize.