President Trump’s administration is sanctioning Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, on Wednesday over her political “warfare” against Israel.
“Today I am imposing sanctions on UN Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese for her illegitimate and shameful efforts to prompt @IntlCrimCourt action against U.S. and Israeli officials, companies, and executives,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a Wednesday statement on X.
“Albanese’s campaign of political and economic warfare against the United States and Israel will no longer be tolerated. We will always stand by our partners in their right to self-defense,” Rubio, who also serves as the national security adviser, added in the post.
The Trump administration has asked the U.N. to fire Albanese, a vocal critic of Israel’s war in the Gaza Strip who has often accused Israel of committing genocide in the war-torn enclave. Israel has rejected the allegations.
“In recent weeks, Ms. Albanese has escalated her years-long pattern of virulent antisemitism and unrelenting anti-Israel bias by dispatching threatening correspondence to dozens of entities worldwide, including major American corporations,” the United States Mission to the U.N. said earlier this month.
The former Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz welcomed the “moral clarity” by Rubio and Trump in holding accountable the “serial antisemite” Albanese.
“We are deeply grateful for such strong leadership putting an end to the days of hypocritical anti-Israel impunity at the UN,” Gantz said Wednesday on X.
Albanese recently published an extensive report that investigated the “corporate machinery sustaining Israel’s settler-colonial project of displacement and replacement of the Palestinians in the occupied territory.” She outlined more than 60 corporations she argued are involved in backing Israel’s war with the Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza. Israel’s diplomatic mission has called the report “legally groundless, defamatory and a flagrant abuse of her office.”
It is unclear how wide-ranging the sanctions against Albanese will be, but she will likely be barred from traveling to the U.S.
Albanese, an Italian legal scholar, was reappointed to another three-year term earlier this year, despite opposition from the U.S.
In early February, Trump sanctioned the International Criminal Court (ICC) over its push for war crimes cases against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. The ICC issued arrest warrants in November last year for Netanyahu and Gallant on allegations of utilizing starvation as a weapon in the Gaza war. Israel’s government has condemned the ICC’s push.
Rubio said on Wednesday that the U.S. “will continue to take whatever actions we deem necessary to respond to lawfare and protect our sovereignty and that of our allies.”
The Hill has reached out to Albanese for comment.
